Serra and Christo have both made art that killed. I think....or is that just an urban legend?
"As the work grew in size, one worker was killed by one such piece, "Joplin", and another worker lost a leg during a de-installation. The floors of the Castelli SoHo gallery collapsed under the weight of Serra's work during this period."
(paragraph 14).
I do love Serra's work. His installation at Gagosian last Summer gave me vertigo - in a good way - and I think his piece up at Storm King is an example of a sculpture working within its environment in a good way.
As someone in a bar once said, "Serra, he's that guy that kills people with statues, right?" He doesn't like to talk about those incidents any more than Christo does, but Serra often "kills" in the sense that stand-up comics use the word; Christo is more likely to suffocate the viewer.
I don't love Serra's work, but I did find myself reluctantly impressed and frightened by the Gagosian show.
Serra makes me want to make all art at less than 10 kilobytes.
"He's the enemy! It's big-dick art. A lot of money and heft; portentous, guy, masters-of-the-universe stuff." An artist friend decreed, "You have to say his sculpture killed someone," while another branded Serra "a grandiose and irrelevant asshole." (I should mention that this person saw Serra two years ago wearing a T-shirt that simply said "Fuck You.")."
Our pal Steve DiB encountered Serra when they were both involved in a Matthew Barney movie. Later he ran into him at an opening and tried to start a conversation with “we were in the same movie.” Serra looked at him, said “I know”, and turned away. But they say Mantegna was a real jerk, and 500 years later no one holds it against his art.
Saltz’s review is pretty good. I recall that our man Jim (without much contemporary art background) was impressed by Switch. It was engaging and surprising in a visceral, perceptual capacity, working on mind and body at a level that precedes interpretation. Some people will always resent too much money, too much size, and work that’s supported by both, but I think Serra is more subtle than he’s often given credit for, although he certainly represents the continuation of a great American tradition of big violent art that goes back to Abstract Expressionism. It’s easy to understand why a generation brought up on special effects movies and cosmic-scale comic books would respond.
Yes, visceral - my vertigo certainly attested to that.
I am having a hard time understanding what is violent about his work. Is it the physical weight of the work and the seeming deception of gravity? Or that it killed (but that is not the work as a complete installed piece)?
I would use the word subtle too.
I am glad you separate the man’s reputation from his art, thank you.
Between violent and violence there seems to be an interesting shift of emphasis between raw physical force and the social dimensions of force. Metaphorizing between the two may be at the root of some people’s animus against Serra.
I suppose we might say “delicately balanced” about the house of card or prop pieces, which sounds pretty, but the chance of collapse is always there as an implicit violence. Then there are the pieces where he flung molten metal the way Pollock flung paint. Pollock’s exertions produced paintings that perhaps appear less “violent” than those of de Kooning or Kline, but his physical activity seems to have had more influence in the end, and hot metal is genuinely dangerous.
All of AbEx is founded in the psycho/sexual violence of the Surrealist reading of Freud, perhaps best exemplified by Gorky. His paintings are exquisite and delicate, but also incredibly violent and painful. No surprise he was a suicide, but then so was Rothko, who represents the sublime side of AbEx, reminding us that the concept of the sublime has perhaps taken a road opposite that of violence: forgetting Burke’s notion that it is founded in “terror.”
Chave is not exactly wrong when she says that Minimalism reveals something “usually far more attractively masked”, but some of us think the unmasking was a service, correcting an imbalance in the equation between individual neurosis and broader cultural pathology, rather than a deployment of controlling power. Certainly Serra’s power was puny in comparison to the coalition (spearheaded by a Federal judge) that destroyed the Tilted Arc. That was an act of violence.
i could care less if he's a jerk. these things could last as long as anything on the planet. that is unless the scrap value would someday outweigh the art value. i thought the last gagosian show very much took a turn towards the feminine (if you know what i mean). some sort of strategy to quell the phallic critique.
"these things could last as long as anything on the planet." ... is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Rust never sleeps.
thats the beauty part, its just a thing.
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- sally mckay 4-13-2004 6:21 am
"As the work grew in size, one worker was killed by one such piece, "Joplin", and another worker lost a leg during a de-installation. The floors of the Castelli SoHo gallery collapsed under the weight of Serra's work during this period."
(paragraph 14).
I do love Serra's work. His installation at Gagosian last Summer gave me vertigo - in a good way - and I think his piece up at Storm King is an example of a sculpture working within its environment in a good way.
- selma 4-13-2004 7:01 pm [add a comment]
As someone in a bar once said, "Serra, he's that guy that kills people with statues, right?" He doesn't like to talk about those incidents any more than Christo does, but Serra often "kills" in the sense that stand-up comics use the word; Christo is more likely to suffocate the viewer.
- alex 4-13-2004 7:23 pm [add a comment]
I don't love Serra's work, but I did find myself reluctantly impressed and frightened by the Gagosian show.
- sally mckay 4-13-2004 7:58 pm [add a comment]
Serra makes me want to make all art at less than 10 kilobytes.
- tom moody 4-13-2004 8:07 pm [add a comment]
"He's the enemy! It's big-dick art. A lot of money and heft; portentous, guy, masters-of-the-universe stuff." An artist friend decreed, "You have to say his sculpture killed someone," while another branded Serra "a grandiose and irrelevant asshole." (I should mention that this person saw Serra two years ago wearing a T-shirt that simply said "Fuck You.")."
- selma 4-13-2004 8:23 pm [add a comment]
Our pal Steve DiB encountered Serra when they were both involved in a Matthew Barney movie. Later he ran into him at an opening and tried to start a conversation with “we were in the same movie.” Serra looked at him, said “I know”, and turned away. But they say Mantegna was a real jerk, and 500 years later no one holds it against his art.
Saltz’s review is pretty good. I recall that our man Jim (without much contemporary art background) was impressed by Switch. It was engaging and surprising in a visceral, perceptual capacity, working on mind and body at a level that precedes interpretation. Some people will always resent too much money, too much size, and work that’s supported by both, but I think Serra is more subtle than he’s often given credit for, although he certainly represents the continuation of a great American tradition of big violent art that goes back to Abstract Expressionism. It’s easy to understand why a generation brought up on special effects movies and cosmic-scale comic books would respond.
- alex 4-13-2004 9:38 pm [add a comment]
Yes, visceral - my vertigo certainly attested to that.
I am having a hard time understanding what is violent about his work. Is it the physical weight of the work and the seeming deception of gravity? Or that it killed (but that is not the work as a complete installed piece)?
I would use the word subtle too.
I am glad you separate the man’s reputation from his art, thank you.
- selma 4-13-2004 10:08 pm [add a comment]
Between violent and violence there seems to be an interesting shift of emphasis between raw physical force and the social dimensions of force. Metaphorizing between the two may be at the root of some people’s animus against Serra.
I suppose we might say “delicately balanced” about the house of card or prop pieces, which sounds pretty, but the chance of collapse is always there as an implicit violence. Then there are the pieces where he flung molten metal the way Pollock flung paint. Pollock’s exertions produced paintings that perhaps appear less “violent” than those of de Kooning or Kline, but his physical activity seems to have had more influence in the end, and hot metal is genuinely dangerous.
All of AbEx is founded in the psycho/sexual violence of the Surrealist reading of Freud, perhaps best exemplified by Gorky. His paintings are exquisite and delicate, but also incredibly violent and painful. No surprise he was a suicide, but then so was Rothko, who represents the sublime side of AbEx, reminding us that the concept of the sublime has perhaps taken a road opposite that of violence: forgetting Burke’s notion that it is founded in “terror.”
Chave is not exactly wrong when she says that Minimalism reveals something “usually far more attractively masked”, but some of us think the unmasking was a service, correcting an imbalance in the equation between individual neurosis and broader cultural pathology, rather than a deployment of controlling power. Certainly Serra’s power was puny in comparison to the coalition (spearheaded by a Federal judge) that destroyed the Tilted Arc. That was an act of violence.
- alex 4-16-2004 10:24 pm [add a comment]
i could care less if he's a jerk. these things could last as long as anything on the planet. that is unless the scrap value would someday outweigh the art value. i thought the last gagosian show very much took a turn towards the feminine (if you know what i mean). some sort of strategy to quell the phallic critique.
- bill 4-14-2004 2:29 am [add a comment]
"these things could last as long as anything on the planet." ... is that a good thing or a bad thing?
- sally mckay 4-14-2004 2:56 am [add a comment]
Rust never sleeps.
- tom moody 4-14-2004 3:10 am [add a comment]
thats the beauty part, its just a thing.
- bill 4-14-2004 3:21 am [add a comment]