Tag Archives: Richard Serra

Richard Serra Drawing at the Met

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The artist in his exhibition
My expectations were not high for the Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His monumental, simple sculptures hardly seemed likely to be very impressive in sketch form. But as the artist has mentioned in interviews, this body of work is separate from his sculpture–and his black or two-toned large drawings interact with the space and the viewer in some of the same ways his sculptures do and maintain the impressive scale one is used to in his work. For clarification, see above: those black walls enclosing the artist are the drawing.
Institutionalized Abstract Art, 1976

Altogether, walking through the galleries was a zen experience, and not just because the crowds from the Alexander McQueen show hadn’t stumbled in. The large shapes and neutral palate (more on his use of black below) gave focus to the experience of walking through the exhibition, and noticing how the works interacted with the space, and my space.

From an interview with the artist on Artinfo.com:

  • Could you tell me about your use of black in your drawings?

I think black is a property, a material. And as a property I think it’s the best way to articulate drawings where you don’t have to get into the metaphors present in the use of chartreuse or pink or anything else. And I studied with [Josef] Albers at Yale and I proofed his book and taught the color course and I really got it down to just dealing with black

  • And you see it as a material with a weight?

As a property. Because it absorbs light, it manifests itself as weight more than things that reflect light.  
[….]




  • How does this show relate to your 2007 MoMA retrospective, or how do you want people to relate the two shows?

It’s a different body of work. I’d like it to be seen as an autonomous body of drawing, good or bad, and just be judged that way, or be reviewed that way, or just be viewed that way. But if people start making relationships to the sculpture then they’re really missing the point. It’s about what they are in their definition as drawing. They’re not trying to redefine what the sculpture is, and they’re not pointing to the sculpture. They make spaces and places, but they’re not sculptural spaces and places in the way that sculptures make their own spaces and places.  



Serra’s comment on black having weight seems very true in this show. The works pictured here are mostly from the mid-1970s, when Serra started using black paintstick, a mixture of pigment, oil, and wax. He has continued to use paintstick to make thick black textured surfaces from the first ‘Installation Drawings,’ monumental works on canvas or linen pinned directly to the wall and thickly covered with black paintstick, to the work he created specifically for the Met’s exhibition in 2011.


Rust on the Brain

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A friend told me about photographer and painter Charlotta Janssen, image above left, and I was most intrigued by her working methods. She paints from old photographs in in a color palette limited to black, white, aqua and grey iron. Once the piece is finished, she rusts it and the colors change and bleed into each other. Her next show is August 8 at Boltox Gallery on Shelter Island, if you happen to be in those parts.


Then I came across close up shots (image detail top, above Janssen’s Jones’ Family Car) from Richard Serra’s 2007 retrospective at MoMA that really captured the patina of the steel slabs he works with. To encourage oxidation, or rust, sprinklers are sometimes directed at the large slabs of steel he uses in his sculpture. Natural weathering of his outdoor installations creates the same effect, but it is one I’ve failed to notice when wandering amid his gigantic creations concerned with the space and form.

Rust is such an odd thing to work with, rather than protect works from, and it creates a really rich palette. I’m so intrigued by the idea of paint that rusts–anybody know anything about that? Or how else rust is used?

Ravelled Reviews

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Paul Cezanne, Still Life with Fruit Dish



In honor of Cubism, Gertrude Stein, and Cezanne, a fractured ravels in review that attempts to document the act of ravelling. (Unfragmented links included).

Yesterday, it was Cubism, Visual and Literal, without Gertrude Stein’s mug in the end, before some explicit in odd ways not explicit enough notes on Butt in ASS , dear lord what a title for an exhibition, and horses, really big horses and what glitter at Jack the Pelican and why would they have named the gallery that, whose full name is Jack the Pelican Presents, and then in between is smushed a really great piece written by Richard Serra– Had I dressed it up better, images and all, maybe more people would have read it, my eyes are caked with sleep, before, before is so long ago, and my finger hurts from a paper cut given by a file folder, who knew such barbarities existed, so then here we are, we’re reviewing ravels, but what the hell happened this week, do I drink too much that I have the memory of a goldfish, but wait–I’ll check, oh dear, I really need a new website. And then i had written about loving my ‘hood, which terrible choice of word now strikes me as particularly annoying, and yet we must march on, although to note the accordion shop is choice, and so then- then now my boyfriend came into my room and did a flying ninja pose and told a work story, Gertrude didn’t have to deal with this, and so lastly I see I wrote about the High Line, which is nice, as I tell you, but maybe not so special it needs to be written about so much, but then I broke that cardinal.

Pablo Picasso, The Reservoir, Herta de Ebro

Images from the special exhibition on the fifth floor of MoMA, which leads you by the nose over to the room next door, for this savagery, savagery!: