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Flash Art 286 October 2012[1]

ABSURD TENACITY
WHEN ART HISTORIAN Rosalind Krauss wrote about Richard Serras work in
1977, she described the artists unrelenting and vigorously exploratory practice as
one of absurd tenacity. Within the history of pro
cess art and Postminimalism, as
it emerged in the late 60s, as well as Krausss game-changing reappraisal of art
production in the expanded field, art in that era seemed to have limitless
possibilities. Unrelenting persistence, therefore, is truly an apt way of defining a
group of artists who wanted to push forward, making, working and chal
lenging the
static object by not being satisfied with an end point. It is also a fitting way to
explain why an artist of this generation, cre
ating work now, would not be content
with being considered within the boundaries of a

7, 2011. View of the installation and the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. 7
steel plates (each 2400 x 350 x 10 cm). Courtesy Qatar Museums Authority.
Richard Serra.
Such is the case with Richard Serra, whose momentum is moving forward and
forcing us to rethink the limitations of historical categorization. In December 2011
he com
pleted his first commission in the Middle East. Called 7, the sculpture is
installed in Doha, Qatar, for the new Museum of Islamic Art. It sits at the end of a
man-made peninsula that extends into the bay between a building by I.M. Pei and
the rapidly ris
ing city. The 80-foot sculpture, made with seven rectangular plates of
vertically placed pieces of steel, dramatically rises into the air. Like his other
sculptures with tall plates propped against each other at tilted angles to form a
hollow shaft that the viewer can walk into, the work compels you to look up and see
a patch of sky. In this case, it is a heptagonal hole.
Yet unlike Serra sculptures that might draw formal comparison to 7, such as Charlie
Brown (2000) in San Francisco or Vortex (2002) in Fort Worth, the steel slabs that

comprise the tower-like form are not slightly torqued, twisted or bent, but are flat
planes. In fact, the inspiration for the work was ignited by the artists study of the
two 12th-century Persian minarets in Ghanzi, Afghanistan, where towering
cylindrical shafts were built with flat slabs made of terracotta.

RICHARD SERRA, Circuit, 1972. Hot-rolled steel, four plates (each 240 x 730 x 2
cm). Installation view at Documenta 5, Kassel, 1972. Richard Serra
And like the Islamic minarets, 7 punctu
ates the landscape with a compelling state
ment. The opening to the interior of the work is on the same axis as the architecture
across the water; the artist hopes this deci
sion will bring the building into the work

as a component of the experience. In a con

versation at the Museum of Islamic Art
in Doha with Alfred Pacquement, Serra said, I wanted there to be a dialogue with
I.M. Peis building and what I could offer up as an experience of sculpture: to relate
my language to his language in a way that was not obvious, but would make sense,
so that a decade from now people might think that the entire thing went up at once
and was conceived as one.
Perhaps more compelling is the works placement in an in-between space: amid
public and private, art and life, East and West. The dichotomy is most evident in
pho
tographs of the work that place it against the elaborate lines of the
contemporary skyline, marked by futuristic new constructions that the New York
Times have called glittering and ephemeral. (1) When placed in the fore
ground,
the severity and restraint of the raw steel form becomes a counterpoint to the shiny
vertical lines of the urban landscape.
This year also marks the completion of the tour of a retrospective exhibition
devoted to Serras drawing, as well as the comple
tion of one of the artists most
ambitious drawings installed and created for the presentation of the show in Texas:
Two Corner Cut: High Low. Organized by the Menil Collection, the show opened
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, traveled to the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art and closed in Houston. What follows is largely derived from a public
conversation I had with the artist in Houston on the night of the opening. (Unless
noted, all quotes are taken from our discussion.)

RICHARD SERRA (from left to right), Out-of-round X, 1999; Vico, 2002;

September, 2001; Black Tracks, 2002. Installation view from Richard Serra
Drawing: A Retrospective, at SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2011-12. Richard Serra.
Photo: Ian Reeves.
For Serra, drawing has always served as an important perceptual tool. He draws his
sculptures after they are finished in order to gain a deeper understanding of the
works and his physical experience of them. He fills notebooks, recording his
experiences in the world, traveling, looking and think
ing. In fact, Serra has said that
he sees the world in terms in drawing, and he often plays graphic games in his
mind, reorienting his perception of the space in front of him. He explains that he
does this to subvert my own vision and to rethink the possibility of redrawing
vision itself.
We can also understand the impulse be
hind his constant practice of drawing as a
de
sire to maintain engagement with the hand and the eye. In a review of the
exhibition, Jeffrey Weiss made the observation that for the artist, who works with
the fabrica
tion of steel sculpture, drawing becomes a refuge of process, where he
can continue to physically engage with material directly.(2) Serra has also discussed
the importance of drawing during the lag that occurs between the conceptualization
of a sculpture and the myriad steps towards its completion. A much-needed place of
concentration, draw
ing is a place where he can get immediate return from effort.
Yet, Serras drawing practice is also one of autonomy, apart from his sculptures. He
doesnt consider the notebooks as draw
ings in a formal sense, but more like no
tions. His drawings as drawings are independent forms that are not involved in
transcription, but rather with the in
ternal vocabulary of drawing itself: line, form,
gesture, and the bodys contact with a surface. It is also through drawing that he
experiments with ways of making and marking, and where he figures out how the
traditional language of drawing, that is, the relationship of the figure to the ground
that makes a mark a representation of something, can be upended in such a way
that the mark is something. Pushing and pulling black paintstick, his medium and
color of choice since the early 70s, he con
tinues to be interested in developing ways
to manipulate the materiality of the waxy pigment. Melting, using a meat grinder,
pounding viscous waxy black substance into thick pieces of paper, or smoothing it

across linen, the resulting works defy the idea of a drawing. Yet at the same time,
they can really only be drawing.

RICHARD SERRA, Houston Two Corner Cut: High Low, 2012. Installation view
at The Menil Collection, Houston, 2012. Paintsick on Belgian linen. Collection of
the artist. Photo: Paul Hester
For the presentation in Houston, the art
ist completed a new site-specific drawing
made with two pieces of paintstick-covered Belgian linen. In a long narrow gallery,
Two Corner Cut: High Low extends across either side of 38-foot facing walls. Each
trapezoidal piece (only the top and bottom of the forms are parallel) is installed at a
descending tilt, so that the viewer entering the room experiences an uncanny
physical sensation of compression created by the visual weight of the facing planes
of black, as well as a distinct sinking feeling due to the orientation of the
downward-pointing diagonal thrust. A reporter from the lo
cal Houston paper
remarked that the work made her want to do a summersault. The term Installation
Drawing has come to define this body of work, and it encom
passes all of Serras
drawings made with paintstick-covered linen and stapled to the wall on site. After
the artist made some major breakthroughs with sculptural work like Circuit in 1972,
with steel plates extend
ing at perpendicular angles from the four corners of the
gallery, he determined that drawing too could be something that offers a kinesthetic
experience. His approach turns a drawing into something you can walk into, an
intervening gesture that addresses the architectural container, a perceptual con
frontation and a challenge to the viewers experience and perception of space.

What is also significant about this new drawing in Houston is that it harks back to
one of the artists earliest drawings, Abstract Slavery (1974). First shown at Castelli
and later in the important exhibition Drawing Now in 1976 at the Museum of
Modern Art, the trapezoidal drawing is characterized by a slight incline from left to
right, so that a skinny white triangular wedge forms be
tween the floor and the
bottom of the work. That is to say the black forms relationship to the floor is not
parallel, and only the left edge is perpendicular to the floor. As such, the works
askew shape creates a sense of unease, tapping into that wonderfully hu
man desire
to straighten lines (or crooked picture frames) that conflict with our per
ception and
expectation of perspectival or
der. With the Menils dark ebony-stained floors, the
revealing white wall below the edge of the linen and above the floor makes a
partially pronounced crevice that accentu
ates the careful tilt of the work.
For the new drawing, Serra has referenced this original play with dislocation that he
first manifested in Abstract Slavery. But here, the perpendicular edge forms where
the canvases hit the wall at opposite sides, and the top right corners just touch the
end of the wall. The perceptual alteration is both subtle and profound, and as a
gesture in the final space of the retrospective, it is a crescendo that points to the
past, while demonstrating Serras seemingly limitless possibilities.
Notes:
1. Anthony Shadid, Qatars Capital Glitters Like a World City, but Few Feel at
Home, New York Times (November 30, 2011): A8.
2 .Jeffrey Weiss, review of Richard Serra Drawing: A Retro
spective, Artforum
(September 2011), pp. 338-339.
Michelle White is Curator at The Menil Collection, Houston.
Richard Serra was born in 1939 in San Francisco. He lives and works in New York.
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1. http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=rivista_det&id_riv_let=86&title=October2012
2. http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=ordine&cosa=rivista