Richard Serra

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Returning from a meeting yesterday, I dropped by MoMA to take in the new Richard Serra exhibit. My only past experience with Richard’s work is from his installation at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. For me, the most initially striking thing about this exhibition was the fact that most of it is indoor. If you are not familiar with Serra’s work in recent decades, he creates large scale minimalist sculptures, meant to be experienced as much as viewed. These works are constructed from large warped slabs of rusted steel, approximately two inches thick, and about ten or twelve feet in height. They often take on the appearance of a rusted out hull of some half buried object. The approximate weight of these sculptures is between 100 to 200 tons each (by comparison, an Abrams Tank weighs about 65 tons). May I now reflect back on my prior comment- these are “indoor” (and not even on the ground floor level). From my past knowledge, I believe that Serra’s work is most often viewed outdoors (for the record, his 2005 show at the Bilbao Guggenheim was also indoor). When you walk into the center of his piece at the Pulitzer gallery, you can look up and see sky. It gives the feeling that you could perhaps be anywhere, or in the middle of nowhere- a sensation of meditative solitude. Because most of the pieces at the MoMA exhibit are indoors (two are outside in the sculpture garden), and the museum is teaming with people, my experience conjured the feeling of being in a crowded industrial maze. I found myself loitering about in the sculptures’ interiors with my iPod pumping until a lull in the crowd left me alone in the space for a moment or two, in order to bask in the scale and the solitude. It was staggering to contemplate how much structural reinforcement the actual MoMA building must have, not to collapse under the weight of these objects. The way they lean and bow, you are often standing under the overhang of a slab, a slab that would crush you to death instantly, should it slip and fall from balance. Yet their appearance is quite tranquil and serene. By their manner of construction, they are in multiple parts, usually simply leaning against one another, balanced in place. If you look closely, in some places you can seen through the small gaps at the seams. It is an impressive exhibit. I went in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. I’d like to return when there is not such a crowd, but I’d have thought, well, that would be a Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll go back and see it again. I should spend more time in the sculpture garden.