Recorded June 2022. Led by Sculptor Garth Evans, and joined Sculpture Forum regulars, Jock Ireland and Brandt Junceau, Sculpture Forum explores the work of Richard Serra at David Zwirner Gallery, NYC. Video and editing by Rachael Bohlander.
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Thanks for your comment, Carol. I have to challenge your suggestion that Serra’s sculpture will last forever though. Vincent Scully used to talk about how the glass and steel skyscrapers we’re surrounded by in New York won’t last anywhere near as long as the Egyptian pyramids have. Steel rusts. Egyptian civilization was grounded in beliefs about eternal life. Ours, according to Anne Carson, is unconditionally committed to greed. Serra’s sculpture is a product of this kind of “civilization”—but Serra’s also an ordinary, intelligent human being: an awareness of the bleakness of our moment gets into his work. For something more, we have to look to other sculptors—of our time, and other times.
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A friend just wrote that he saw water main or sewer main pipes in Serra’s sculpture. He sees the sculpture as a found object, in other words. Sculpture Forum forums never end!
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I enjoyed hearing all your opinions. i have two contrary thoughts: one is imagining the highly difficult (and expensive) process of making such a large, geometric solid steel object—an incredible industrial feat that has no other function than the purpose of art! a sort of Guiness Book of Records effect. the other side of this, you’ve mentioned—-this thing will go on existing in time no matter what kind of events take place around it because it’s almost impossible to destroy. the import of these facts makes his work singular if not lovable. also, its patina and surface is artistic. maybe it will survive also as a monument to a vanished industrial time that became obsolete on the planet, a curiosity like a menhir.
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