| Responding to Selma's comment further upstream in the thread:
Below is a 1973 Serra piece, Shift, which I think is interesting. It's what got him noticed early on, as opposed to giant slabs of Cor-ten. Like most earthworks, it's probably more interesting in photos than if you encountered these big concrete walls out in the landscape, but it still has a lightness and joy and a sense of discovering or inventing something that's missing from the current work. It's not the big dick thing that bothers me, it's the decay of ideas into empty formalism (and/or funhouse theatricality), combined with the funereal "I hate you and want to crush you" presence. He kept the big walls and lost the theoretical/perceptual reasons for doing them. 
This is similar to the Storm King work that I like (except is the Storm King piece more violent in that it cuts more deeply -and at a sharper angle - into the hillside?).
Maybe he is out of land to work on, or to put it another way, maybe he is out of commissions?
I drove by a home in LI that had a huge Serra steal plate work in the front yard and there was just not enough land to see the work - I felt it needed a lot more land for it to "breathe". This piece Tom seems to have enough room.
(I meant no offense in y'all y'all. I just wanted to say I was listening and not trying to post annoying questions just for the sake of being annoying - but really out of genuine interest).
Goodness Selma, this is the land of blowhards (mostly nice thoughtful blowhards, but blowhards nonetheless) so quit with the apologizing and just go ahead and say your stuff. I for one am digging your input enormously.
Your question about Turell is really challenging. I love James Turell, pretty much without reservation. And yes, I think the call for sublime experience carries about the same weight with him as with Serra. I agree with Tom's characterisation of the "funereal I hate you and want to crush you presence" of Serra's big metal things. And I'm personally not so keen on material and objects. I have never seen any Serra outdoors, and have always been in a relationship to the work of feeling slightly threatened, but also stunned by massiveness. I found the maze (I'm not even going to address its supposed femaleness cause that if that was intended in the work its the dumbest idea for a sculpture I've ever heard) quite unnerving, and I sort of enjoyed the personal challenge of overcoming claustrophobic fear to see it to the end. By far the most engaged I've ever felt with his sculpture.
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Below is a 1973 Serra piece, Shift, which I think is interesting. It's what got him noticed early on, as opposed to giant slabs of Cor-ten. Like most earthworks, it's probably more interesting in photos than if you encountered these big concrete walls out in the landscape, but it still has a lightness and joy and a sense of discovering or inventing something that's missing from the current work. It's not the big dick thing that bothers me, it's the decay of ideas into empty formalism (and/or funhouse theatricality), combined with the funereal "I hate you and want to crush you" presence. He kept the big walls and lost the theoretical/perceptual reasons for doing them.
- tom moody 4-19-2004 11:26 pm
This is similar to the Storm King work that I like (except is the Storm King piece more violent in that it cuts more deeply -and at a sharper angle - into the hillside?).
Maybe he is out of land to work on, or to put it another way, maybe he is out of commissions?
I drove by a home in LI that had a huge Serra steal plate work in the front yard and there was just not enough land to see the work - I felt it needed a lot more land for it to "breathe". This piece Tom seems to have enough room.
(I meant no offense in y'all y'all. I just wanted to say I was listening and not trying to post annoying questions just for the sake of being annoying - but really out of genuine interest).
- selma 4-19-2004 11:42 pm [add a comment]
Goodness Selma, this is the land of blowhards (mostly nice thoughtful blowhards, but blowhards nonetheless) so quit with the apologizing and just go ahead and say your stuff. I for one am digging your input enormously.
Your question about Turell is really challenging. I love James Turell, pretty much without reservation. And yes, I think the call for sublime experience carries about the same weight with him as with Serra. I agree with Tom's characterisation of the "funereal I hate you and want to crush you presence" of Serra's big metal things. And I'm personally not so keen on material and objects. I have never seen any Serra outdoors, and have always been in a relationship to the work of feeling slightly threatened, but also stunned by massiveness. I found the maze (I'm not even going to address its supposed femaleness cause that if that was intended in the work its the dumbest idea for a sculpture I've ever heard) quite unnerving, and I sort of enjoyed the personal challenge of overcoming claustrophobic fear to see it to the end. By far the most engaged I've ever felt with his sculpture.
- sally mckay 4-20-2004 12:11 am [add a comment]