The Art of Richard Serra

In his youth Richard Serra worked in West Coast steel mills and shipyards of California. Today the industrial materials he tolled with early in life are the basis for his minimalist site-specific sculptures that have earned him worldwide acclaim.

Born in San Francisco in 1939, Serra studied English literature at the University of California. He graduated from Yale University in 1964 with both a BFA and MFA. He received a Yale Traveling Fellowship which took him to Paris, France, followed by a Fullbright grant for a year in Florence, Italy.

By the mid 1960s, Richard Serra was recognized an emerging artist and an influential innovator in site-specific art. His minimalist sculptures use industrial materials like lead and steel to emphasize the fabrication process.

One of his earliest works was a studio installation of abstract lead waves undulating across the floor. Serra threw molten material in much the same manner that painters like Jackson Pollock threw paint. The raw and physical process was reflected in the resulting piece completely engaged with the space in which it was made.

From those beginnings, Richard Serra's work evolved into ever expanded masses of interactive sculptures. Commissions were often specific to outdoor spaces or vast interior landscapes. One of his most famous sculptures Charlie Brown is 60-feet-tall occupying the interior courtyard of a San Francisco office building. The massive sculpture of gigantic steel plates required the building be built around it.

Serra's sculptural constructs are self supporting, emphasizing the weight and nature of the materials. Often left in a raw state, his steel sculptures interact with the environment and develop vibrant patinas of rust in gold, auburns, greys and blues. Both the process by which the materials are made as well as how they react to external conditions are emphasized in his work. Gravity, oxidization, temperature and location change his pieces over time as they continually react to their physical environment.

The scale of Richard Serra's sculpture often dwarfs the observer. The large steel plates that balance against one another or under their own weight are built landscapes that the viewer can move around, in and through. Serra's art engages the observer and the site instilling a range of feelings from tension to comfort. The scale of the pieces and their relation to their site change the viewer's perception of the architectural, urban and sometimes rural landscapes where they are installed.

Serra's pieces are truly applications of physical possibilities. The steel sheets that form his work are neither bolted to the ground nor to each other. Instead they are exercises of precise fabrication and exquisite balance.

Inside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, under architect Frank Gehry's freestyle design, is one of Richard Serra's largest and most recent installations. The ambitious site-specific installation is a culmination of over forty years of sculptural study and creation.

The permanent exhibit is called "The Matter of Time" and housed in the largest of the museum's galleries. It is the most ambitious site-specific sculptural installations in modern history comprised of seven commissioned pieces.

The pieces that comprise "The Matter of Time" were forged in a German steel mill under Serra's watchful eye. The shape of each steel sheet was transferred from Serra's imagination through pouring vessels of molten material, cooling chambers and computerized cutting stations. They were then carefully transported by trailers to open barges which traveled down the Rhine River and out to sea. On the northern coast of Spain the massive sculptures were once again loaded onto trucks and moved to their final destination in Bilbao.

The exhibit includes Serra's massive sculpture Snake, three undulating steel sheets that create varying curved paths both below and above the viewer. Also included are two pieces from his Torqued Ellipses series based on two perfect identical ellipses that overlap at differing angles. The curved planes lean in choreographed unison that challenges the laws of physics.

Richard Serra titled the exhibit in reference to the viewer's perceptual experience. As observers move in and out of the sculptures the artist's objective is to "kindle memory and anticipation." Some of the pieces seem repetitious only to surprise the visitor with new views in interior spaces. The effect is not unlike passage through a garden maze except in Serra's art the "hedges" are massive steel sheets bent and twisted with absolute precision. The result is an unforgettable experience in perception and sensation.

Like many sculptors, and architects, Richard Serra's intent is to create spaces that transcend aesthetics. His main motivation is to create places that challenge perception, emotion and experience that inspire people to gather and dialogue new ideas. His massive steel sculptures fulfill this intent by offering unique experiences in space, time and scale.

Resources:
Art:21 Richard Serra, PBS film, 2005