Richard Serra, sculpture, forty years :

[brochure] the Museum of Modern Art,

June 3-September 10, 2007

Author
Serra, Richard, 1939-

Date

2007

Publisher
The Museum of Modern Art

Exhibition URL
www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/14

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art

RICHARD SERRA SCULPTURE: FORTY YEARS
is a major exhibition of the work of Richard Serra (born in San Francisco, California, in 1939).
A forty-year survey of the artist's career, this exhibition includes three recently created sculp
tures. Work by Serra is installed in galleries on the second and sixth floors and in The Abby
Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Encompassing different stages of Serra's career, this
extensive and varied exhibition highlights the extraordinary inventiveness and vision of this
influential artist who has radicalized and extended the definition of sculpture.
Serra has long been acclaimed for his innovative work, which emphasizes materiality and
establishes a profound engagement of the object with the viewer and the site. In the early
1960s, Serra and other artists of his generation turned to unconventional, industrial materials.
Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years begins with Serra's work from this period, when he
was experimenting with materials such as rubber, neon, and lead. Over the years, the artist
expanded the spatial scope of his work and began to focus primarily on large-scale sculptures
that demand to be experienced over time, including site-specific works created for particular
architectural, urban, or landscape settings. Serra's more recent work includes monumental
sculptures such as Intersection II, 1992-93, and Torqued Ellipse IV, 1998, both on view in the
Sculpture Garden, as well as the three new works created specifically for this exhibition.

SIXTH FLOOR: EARLY WORK 1966-86 Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years begins
on the sixth floor of the Museum with a selection of Serra's early sculptures, made in New York
in the 1960s. These range from early Post-Minimalist sculptures in rubber and neon to what
the artist called Prop Pieces, completed at the end of the 1960s, and, finally, to room instal
lations made of steel.
Serra graduated from Yale University's School of Art and Architecture in 1964, primarily
trained as a painter; it was only after two years in Europe that he began to work as a sculp
tor. While living in New York City in 1966, Serra started experimenting with nontraditional
materials, particularly vulcanized rubber, neon, lead, and fiberglass, and began to focus on the
physical act of artmaking. He presented these unique materials directly on the wall and floor,
making an important break with the traditional definition of sculpture as an object placed on
a pedestal.
Belts, 1966-67 (left), is con
structed of discarded rubber that
the artist recovered from a ware
house in his neighborhood, a for
tuitous find. According to Serra,
Belts is very much indebted to
the work of the painter Jackson
Pollock in its "non-compositional
all-overallness." "At that point,"
Serra has said, "I was dealing with
color, plane, line in high relief,
i.e., elements of an extended painted
space." For the artist, Belts was a form
of drawing, like Pollock's paintings, al
though this was an association Serra
soon moved away from.
In addition to his use of rubber, in
1969 Serra began to experiment with
lead, and created his Splash Pieces
by throwing spoonfuls of molten lead
against a wall in the warehouse space
of art dealer Leo Castelli (left). Making
these works, Serra was more concerned with a deliberate action than with a particular result:
"Those lead casts were made ladleful by ladleful," Serra has said. "It was spoon against the
wall, spoon against the wall, a continuous repetition to build up a ton of lead. Those pieces
were built incrementally, they sometimes took days to make."
Serra's early, informal work, such as Belts and the Splash Pieces, was succeeded by
a group of lead works created in 1969, known as Prop Pieces — precarious works that gen
erate a sense of physical tension. Verb List, 1967-68 (below), not on view in this exhibition,
is an important text work by Serra that relates to this series. Literally a list, this work was com
piled by writing down verbs: "to roll, to crease, to fold, to store, to bend, to shorten." Verb List
consists only of projected action; it was process that preoccupied Serra at this time. "I was
very involved with the physical activity of making," he has said. "It struck me that instead of
thinking what a sculpture is going to be and how you're going to do it compositionally, what if

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PHOTOGRAPH: PETER MOORE

you just enacted those verbs in relation to a material, and didn't worry about the results?
So I started tearing and cutting and folding lead."
The result was the Prop Pieces, focused solely on resolving the mechanics of the prop
osition to prop. One Ton Prop (House of Cards), 1969 (above), made of four lead slabs
that together weigh one ton, has an almost weightless quality. "If the pieces are equally
balanced," Serra has explained, "the weight is canceled out, you have no thought of ten
sion nor of gravity." This sculpture is the solution to the practical problem of balancing
four plates of lead, using nothing more than the objects themselves. "What was satisfying
about the piece was that the aesthetic came from the solution of the problem and nothing
extraneous was necessary," Serra has said. The impact of the Prop Pieces, some installed
against the wall and others freestanding, is created by the contradiction between their
seemingly precarious construction, unsupported and entirely dependent on gravity, and
the weight of the material.
Serra's interest shifted to steel in the early 1970s, influenced, perhaps, by his time
spent working in a steel mill. "I started building pieces very early (1968) that had to do
with balance and weightlessness," Serra has explained, looking back at the Prop Pieces.
"Most of the pieces were closed. What disappointed me was that you couldn't enter into
their physical space." He commented, "I consider space to be a material. The articulation
of space has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to use sculptural
form to make space distinct." Although Serra appreciated the malleability of lead, he was
attracted to the weight of steel. Circuit II, 1972-86 (above right), composed of four steel
plates installed in the four corners of the gallery, sets up a new environment for the viewer,
who is forced to move through the spaces created by the work. In Delineator ; 1974-75
(below right), a large plate of steel is installed on the ceiling and a plate of equal size
? rests on the floor; a dialogue is established between ceiling and floor, insistently affecting
the viewer traveling through the environment. "As you walk towards its center, the piece
functions either centrifugal ly or centripetally; you're forced to acknowledge the space above,
s below, right, left, north, east, south, west, up, down," Serra has said. For the artist, this expe-
y rience of space is what the work is about: unlike traditional sculpture, it emphasizes move
ment and its psychological impact, not contemplation from a distance.
SECOND FLOOR: NEW WORK 2006 Three new sculptures by Serra are on view
in the Contemporary Galleries on the second floor of the Museum: Sequence, Band, and
Torqued Torus Inversion, all made in 2006. The steel plates that form Sequence (overleaf)
create connected spirals accessible from two ends: one entrance leads into a finite interior
space, the other to a seemingly endless path through the undulating spaces created by the
inner and outer steel plates. For Serra, this work engages with memory — with the inevi
table inability of the viewer to construct any distinct memory of these almost indistinguish
able and ever-changing spaces. With Sequence, Serra has expanded the psychological,
experiential quality of his earlier work into an essentially abstract spatial experience.
According to the artist, Band (above), more than seventy feet long, is intended to be
read horizontally as one travels the length of the sculpture. Unlike Serra's Torqued Ellipses,
1996-2004, one of which is on view in the Sculpture Garden, Band has no distinct interior
or exterior. Instead, through its undulating curves, the work creates four discrete spaces,
differing according to the angle of the steel plates. Serra has said, "I wanted the speed of
the skin to configure the volumes as you walk them. Nothing repeats. There is no beginning,
no end to the band."
In creating Torqued Torus Inversion (right), Serra started with a familiar shape. "It is easy
to understand what a torqued torus is if you think about the rim of a bicycle wheel laid on the
ground," he has explained. "It is basically a form that curves in two directions: it curves in
elevation and it curves horizontally." The work consists of two such shapes, one of them
inverted, intended to be experienced successively.
SCULPTURE GARDEN: RELATED CURVES 1992-98 The steel sculptures
Intersection II, 1992-93, and Torqued Ellipse IV, 1998, are examples of the range of
Serra's work in the 1990s. With these large-scale works, Serra further developed ideas
first explored with Circuit II. Here, the sculptural object is almost entirely supplanted by
the experience of traveling through spaces created by enormous plates of steel. To make
Intersection II (cover), one of a series of curved works completed in the 1990s, Serra tilted
four identical conical sections in opposite directions —two tilted inward and two tilted
outward. The result is three distinct, contiguous spaces within a single sculpture. Despite
the weight of the weatherproof steel used for this work, the sculpture presents a certain
buoyancy —the four plates evoke the hull of a ship. The size of the plates was carefully
determined; they are just low enough to allow for the sky or ceiling above to remain visible,
and high enough to make a significant impact on the viewer.
Torqued Ellipse IV (right), makes a bold adjustment to Serra's existing vocabulary, a
change largely precipitated by a visit to a church in Rome: "I went to Italy. . . and saw
Francesco Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1665-67). The central space is
simply a regular ellipse and the walls that surround it are vertical. I walked in and thought:
what if I turn this form on itself?" The unique shapes of the works in the Torqued Ellipse
series are his response to this question. Serra's desire to work with new forms has been
largely driven by a desire to construct new experiences: "I wanted to get away from the
imagistic value of an object in an empty space and instead put the focus on the experience
of the entirety of the context."
The exhibition is organized by Kynaston McShine, Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of
Modern Art, and Lynne Cooke, Curator, Dia Art Foundation.

AUDIO GUIDE Listen to RichardSerra speak about his diverse body of work—from his early experiments with
a variety of materials to his recent monumental steel sculptures. MoMA Audio is available at the Museum free of
charge, courtesy of Bloomberg, and as an enhanced podcast at www.moma.org/audio.Available in English only.
WEB SITE The Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty YearsWeb site, www.moma.org/serra,features images of work
from the exhibition, complemented by excerpts from an interview with Richard Serra by Kynaston McShine, Chief
Curator at Large, audio commentary by the artist, a video walk-through of the exhibition, and a chronology of the
artist's career.

LVM H
MOETHENNESSY
. LOUIS
VUITTON
The exhibition is made possible with the major support of LVMH / Moet Hennessy . Louis Vuitton
The Museum acknowledges important grants from Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund,
and Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro.
Additional generous funding is provided by The Henry Luce Foundation, Eli and Edythe Broad, The Buckeye Foundation
in honor of Eli Broad, Marie-Josee and Henry Kravis, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Keith and Kathy Sachs, Sue & Edgar
Wachenheim Foundation, Sarah-Ann and Werner H. Kramarsky, and Elizabeth and Henry T. Segerstrom.
The accompanying publication is made possible by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
Additional funding is provided by the Dale S. and Norman Mills Leff Publication Fund.
Accommodations generously provided by Millennium Hotels and Resorts.
ILLUSTRATIONS PUBLICATION

cover Intersection II. 1992-93. Weatherproof steel. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years
Four identical conical sections, two: 13' 1Va" (4 m) Kynaston McShine and Lynne Cooke. With an
high x 51 ' 9" (15.7 m) along the chord x 2 Ve" (5.4 cm) interview with Richard Serra by Kynaston McShine
thick, two: 13' IV2" (4 m) high x 50' 9" (15.5 m) along and essays by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, John
the chord x 2 Ve" (5.4 cm) thick. Shown installed in
Rajchman, and Lynne Cooke.
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with Torqued
The art of Richard Serra is internationally admired
Ellipse IV. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
for its powerful material qualities and its searching
Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder. Photograph:
exploration of the relationship between the work,
Ken Goebel
the viewer, and the site. Indeed, since his emergence
1 Belts. 1966-67. Vulcanized rubber and neon tubing. in the mid-1960s, Serra is widely understood to
6' x 25' x 20" (182.9 cm x 7.6 m x 50.8 cm). have radicalized and extended the very definition
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Panza of sculpture. Simply the most complete view to date
Collection. Photograph: Peter Moore of the work of this preeminent figure in the art of
our time, Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years offers
2 Richard Serra throwing lead, Leo Castelli
a detailed presentation of his entire career, from
Warehouse, New York, 1969. Photograph:
his early experiments with materials like rubber, neon,
Gianfranco Gorgoni
and lead to the environmentally scaled steel works

3 Verb List. 1967-68. of recent years, including three monumental new

sculptures created for the exhibition that this book
4 One Ton Prop (House of Cards). 1969. Lead. accompanies. 420pp.;381tritone reproductions
Four plates, each: 48 x 48 x 1" (121.9 x 121.9 x
2.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift
of the Grinstein Family. Photograph: Peter Moore

5 Circuit II. 1972-86. Hot-rolled steel. Four plates,

each: 10' x 20' x 1" (3.1 m x 6.1 m x 2.5 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Enid A. Haupt PUBLIC PROGRAMS
and S. I. Newhouse, Jr. Funds

6 Delineator. 1974-75. Hot-rolled steel. Two plates,

each: 1" x 10' x 26' (2.5 cm x 3.1 m x 7.9 m). New York-The Creative Catalyst
Collection the artist. Photograph: Gordon Matta-Clark Thursday, July 12, 6:00 p.m.,Titus 2
Through a series of individual presentations and a
7 Sequence. 2006. Weatherproof steel. Overall: moderated discussion, artists and scholars explore
12' 9" x 40' 8" x 65' 2" (3.9 x 12.4 x 19.9 m), the various ways in which New York has been a
plate: 2" (5.1 cm) thick. Collection the artist. source of adventure, inspiration, and creativity.
Photograph: Lorenz Kienzle
Participants include Douglas Crimp, art critic and
Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural
8 Band. 2006. Weatherproof steel. Overall: 12' 9" x
Studies, University of Rochester; Peter Eisenman,
36' 5" x 71' 9V2" (3.9 x 11.1 x 21.9 m), plate:
2" (5.1 cm) thick. Collection the artist. Photograph: Founder and Principal, Eisenman Architects, New
Lorenz Kienzle York; Meredith Monk, artist; and others. Moderated
by David Joselit, Professor and Chair, History of
9 Torqued Torus Inversion. 2006. Weatherproof steel. Art Department, Yale University.
Two torqued toruses, each overall: 12' 9" x 36' 1" x
26' 6 Vt" (3.9 x 11 x 8.1 m), plate: 2" (5.1 cm) thick. A Conversation between
Collection the artist. Photograph: Lorenz Kienzle Lynne Cooke and Richard Serra
Thursday, September 6 at 6:00 p.m.,Titus 1
10 Torqued Ellipse IV. 1998. Weatherproof steel.
Curator Lynne Cooke and Richard Serra discuss
Overall: 11' 9" x 22' 6" x 35' 7" (3.6 x 6.9 x 10.8 m),
the artist's work and the exhibition.
plate: 2" (5 cm) thick. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Fractional and promised gift of Leon and Tickets ($10; members $8; students, seniors, and
Debra Black. Photograph: Ken Goebel staff of other museums $5) can be purchased at
the lobby information desk, the film desk, or online
ALL WORKS BY RICHARD SERRA © 2007 RICHARD SERRA/ at www.moma.org/thinkmodern.
ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
WORKS ON VIEW

SIXTH FLOOR:
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL GALLERIES
SECOND FLOOR:
Delineator 1974-75 CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES

Equal-Parallel: Guernica-Bengasi 1986 Band 2006

Circuit II 1972-86 Torqued Torus Inversion 2006

Cutting Device: Base Plate Measure 1969 Sequence 2006

Chunk 1967

Doors 1966-67

Trough Pieces 1966-67

To Lift 1967

Belts 1966-67

Untitled 1967
THE ABBY ALDRICH ROCKEFELLER
Slant Step Folded 1967 SCULPTURE GARDEN

Plinths 1967 Intersection II 1992-93

Remnant 1966-67 Torqued Ellipse IV 1998

Equal (Corner Prop Piece) 1969-70

One Ton Prop (House of Cards) 1969

Prop 1968

Shovel Plate Prop 1969

Floor Pole Prop 1969

Four Plates Edges Up 1969

V+5: To Michael Heizer 1969

5:30 1969