Remarks from the Fray:
My husband and I went to the show on Sunday and were amazed, not so much at the sculptures as at the reactions of the people as they walked through the exhibit.
Children were having a ball. They were fascinated by the constantly changing view gained by moving from one sculpture to the next. The feeling was of moving into another room every time a corner was turned. It was a massive game of "peek-a-boo" that they discovered almost instinctively. Parents were either unnerved that they couldn't lay eyes on their progeny every second or joined in with gusto.
Some were uneasy. Many of the works, especially those rendered in lead, appear to by very precariously balanced. The obvious weight of each one appeared to lead some to visualize the fact that if one fell, it would be a disaster. This is also evident in the steel sculptures - the sense of motion can be slightly dizzying. At the entrance is a massive visual joke - a slab of steel suspended from the ceiling.
However, we spent an hour or so outdoors eating ice cream and watching people walk through that portion of the exhibit. Those that had the audio tour were marching like soldiers, dutifully examining what they were told to. Others moved slowly around, then through, mostly looking up, but periodically sideways, as though to assure themselves that the walls didn't go on forever.
The only fly in the ointment is that there are signs everywhere telling people not to touch anything, and large docents who reinforced the dictum vigorously. The pieces are very tactile. In the case of the works in steel, the process of decay makes them even more interesting - lines of rust and corrosion decorate all of them, and since many were meant to be displayed outdoors, the rule seems silly.
--MessyONE
(To reply, click here.)
When a several-ton slab of cor-ten steel crushed an installation worker at the Walker Art Center in the early 70s, Serra's work acquired a mortal dimension that most people don't associate with art.
Pop art had wooed the middlebrows through the power of mass publications like Life and Look magazine. There was a denaturing involved in the widespread acceptance of Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and other chic fabulists of the American commercial image.
Serra more than any of the others invested in gravity in a manner so extravagantly literal that it pushed the existential envelope of art to overlap with war itself. It wasn't a cartoon from any angle. It dug beneath the merzbild of the dadaists, and the mobius strip tease of the cubists, and tried to reconnect with art as life and death. But for the midtown party and chelsea gallery orchid eaters, art has no real business intersecting with war. It should at best play with cap guns, with the faux abbatoir pretense of Damien Hirst, but not with real honest-to-god dead people.
The deadly gravity of Serra's work still look at us, a question that can only be answered with a eulogy delivered in a language like molten lead.
--zeitguy
(To reply, click here.)
Tilted Arc was one of the most unpopular pieces of public art to grace downtown Manhattan: I remember commuters hating to have to walk around it to get to work. They had a nickname for it, which translates into ********** here at the Fray. The piece was moved to the Holland Tunnel entrance at some point in the 80s, where it made more sense visually, even if its purpose was neutralized because no one could legally hop into the neutral ground to walk around it and complain.
The new location also had the advantage of being much closer to Puffy's Bar (and McGovern's, and the Raccoon Lodge and every other dive populated by Tribecasoho artists like Serra, John Chamberlain, Tom Woodruff, that creepy fish lady (ok, Marisol), their offspring, and their hangers on. And they were spotty tippers, too.
I guess that's why DIA decided to buy the building across the street from Puffy's and fill it with (I can't remember if it was dirt, brass rods, or what. It was the 80s). They must have known that the drunken trek from the Village to Canal Street and the Tilted Arc, down to that bar way down by West Street that got torn down in 82 would naturally have to pass them, and no minimalist fan could possibly walk by an unmarked building with an occult front entrance without hoping that something almost nonexistent lurked artfully within. If not DIA space, then maybe a model bar full of foxes in brown leather YSL pants with puffy white shirts and lots of aubergine eye shadow. Or even better, a pool table and cheap beer.
--Isonomist
(To reply, click here.)
(6/7)
Click here to read a slide-show essay about the vertiginous spaces of Richard Serra.
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Remarks from the Fray:
My husband and I went to the show on Sunday and were amazed, not so much at the sculptures as at the reactions of the people as they walked through the exhibit.
Children were having a ball. They were fascinated by the constantly changing view gained by moving from one sculpture to the next. The feeling was of moving into another room every time a corner was turned. It was a massive game of "peek-a-boo" that they discovered almost instinctively. Parents were either unnerved that they couldn't lay eyes on their progeny every second or joined in with gusto.
Some were uneasy. Many of the works, especially those rendered in lead, appear to by very precariously balanced. The obvious weight of each one appeared to lead some to visualize the fact that if one fell, it would be a disaster. This is also evident in the steel sculptures - the sense of motion can be slightly dizzying. At the entrance is a massive visual joke - a slab of steel suspended from the ceiling.
However, we spent an hour or so outdoors eating ice cream and watching people walk through that portion of the exhibit. Those that had the audio tour were marching like soldiers, dutifully examining what they were told to. Others moved slowly around, then through, mostly looking up, but periodically sideways, as though to assure themselves that the walls didn't go on forever.
The only fly in the ointment is that there are signs everywhere telling people not to touch anything, and large docents who reinforced the dictum vigorously. The pieces are very tactile. In the case of the works in steel, the process of decay makes them even more interesting - lines of rust and corrosion decorate all of them, and since many were meant to be displayed outdoors, the rule seems silly.
--MessyONE
(To reply, click here.)
When a several-ton slab of cor-ten steel crushed an installation worker at the Walker Art Center in the early 70s, Serra's work acquired a mortal dimension that most people don't associate with art.
Pop art had wooed the middlebrows through the power of mass publications like Life and Look magazine. There was a denaturing involved in the widespread acceptance of Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and other chic fabulists of the American commercial image.
Serra more than any of the others invested in gravity in a manner so extravagantly literal that it pushed the existential envelope of art to overlap with war itself. It wasn't a cartoon from any angle. It dug beneath the merzbild of the dadaists, and the mobius strip tease of the cubists, and tried to reconnect with art as life and death. But for the midtown party and chelsea gallery orchid eaters, art has no real business intersecting with war. It should at best play with cap guns, with the faux abbatoir pretense of Damien Hirst, but not with real honest-to-god dead people.
The deadly gravity of Serra's work still look at us, a question that can only be answered with a eulogy delivered in a language like molten lead.
--zeitguy
(To reply, click here.)
Tilted Arc was one of the most unpopular pieces of public art to grace downtown Manhattan: I remember commuters hating to have to walk around it to get to work. They had a nickname for it, which translates into ********** here at the Fray. The piece was moved to the Holland Tunnel entrance at some point in the 80s, where it made more sense visually, even if its purpose was neutralized because no one could legally hop into the neutral ground to walk around it and complain.
The new location also had the advantage of being much closer to Puffy's Bar (and McGovern's, and the Raccoon Lodge and every other dive populated by Tribecasoho artists like Serra, John Chamberlain, Tom Woodruff, that creepy fish lady (ok, Marisol), their offspring, and their hangers on. And they were spotty tippers, too.
I guess that's why DIA decided to buy the building across the street from Puffy's and fill it with (I can't remember if it was dirt, brass rods, or what. It was the 80s). They must have known that the drunken trek from the Village to Canal Street and the Tilted Arc, down to that bar way down by West Street that got torn down in 82 would naturally have to pass them, and no minimalist fan could possibly walk by an unmarked building with an occult front entrance without hoping that something almost nonexistent lurked artfully within. If not DIA space, then maybe a model bar full of foxes in brown leather YSL pants with puffy white shirts and lots of aubergine eye shadow. Or even better, a pool table and cheap beer.
--Isonomist
(To reply, click here.)
(6/7)