A minute at the MoMA
Richard Serra is on at the MoMA. I first saw his Torqued Ellipses at DIA in 1997. On view at the MoMA are several new pieces including Sequence, Band, and Torqued Torus Inversion. Speaking of Band, Serra said: I wanted the speed of skin to configure the volumes as you walk them. I leave you to decipher that one.
Serra is an artist who has generated much controversy over the years. After a public hearing his commissioned work Tilted Arc which was installed at the Federal Plaza was voted to be removed by a jury. It was carted off to a scrap metal yard. Serra might well be right that art is not democratic and it's function is not to be pleasing. But Serra's work emphasizes experience over image; that combined with the costs of these huge pieces (Tilted Spheres by Serra at Toronto's Pearson Airport apparently cost $1.5 million) and their dimensions which necessitate the use of public spaces for their installation means tension is inevitable. On the one hand Serra has said that art is not for the public. On the other, the idea of infra-structural sculpture weighing 70 tonnes is hard to imagine outside of the public realm. These ideas in the end just might not be compatible.
The MoMA has put out a beautiful free pamphlet of Serra's work and the photos of his massive swirling shapes of steel as I look at them right now far exceed the experience of them earlier today*. This would probably be problematic for Serra who wants to get away from "the imagistic value of an object." The "psychological impact" of the sculpture which is what his work is about was unfortunately a little paltry for me.
*My moment at the MoMA was rather these two shadow lines of space and negative space.
Labels: MoMA, Richard Serra
posted by abha @ 10:04 PM
2 Comments:
I have no idea what this art looks like in reality or what the artist's intention or vision is. This is a very subjective response. While the shadow lines in 'space' seem luminous and offer different pathways of release, I wish space there was more liberally available. The rectangular boxes in a grill for 'negative space' can be interpreted in many ways. While demarcating and dividing space into boxes, they give it rigid form and constrain the free flow of anything. At the same time, if these are just shadow lines, thought and imagination can transcend them.
This is a response to the photos, not to the actual art which is 'seven seas' away from here.
Cities in India, to a large extent, are negative spaces.(I know that this is an unpleasant statement, but not a thoughtless one.) That people still manage to make something of their lives and achieve both minor and great successes, is always a source of wonder to me.
As long as mindless commerce dictates the creation of habitable spaces, they cannot be anything but ugly and eventually negative.
Thank you for sharing the art.
priti a
I saw this show when I was last in NY but also saw his work in Bilbao, where it is even more impressive because three time larger...One almost gets lost in the spirals of metal.
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