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RICHARD SERRA:
For the most part, work comes out of work
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in terms of how I develop an idea.
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I never begin with an image
and I never begin with a drawing.
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I usually begin with a model.
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It’s a way of working from the inside out.
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I think I’m probably building upward of
12 to 15 pieces
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right now, in various stages—
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I’m building a piece in St. Louis,
I’m building a piece in Woodside, California,
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I’m building a piece in Sinagpore,
I’m building a piece in Qatar,
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I’m building a piece in New Zealand—
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I’m building quite a lot of work right now.
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I never think in terms of metaphor,
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nor do I think in terms of what the image
is going to look like beforehand,
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What concerns me is
the relationship of the elements
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that I happen to find interesting at that
point.
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And if I think I can invent a new way of looking
at those elements,
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or make the possibility of walking in and
through
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and around a piece something that startles me,
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then I think that there’s a possibility
to proceed.
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With “Charlie Brown” in particular,
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the problem was how to
bend a shape as it elevated
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that leaned away from you and turned….
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and that came out of having worked with
the “Ellipses” prior.
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I was surprised in that people who had absolutely
no information about sculpture were able
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to enter into these pieces
and find a certain amount of engagement
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with the sculpture in ways that they
probably hadn’t before.
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The experience for a lot of them was fulfilling
because, in some sense,
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it was startling, because it was new,
because they couldn’t locate themselves.
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It had nothing to do with architecture,
it had nothing to do with landscape,
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it had nothing to do with buildings
or mountains or ravines,
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or anything that they could have a touchstone to.
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This piece has a continuous movement
even if you remain stationary,
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so this piece has a very big stretch,
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and this piece makes you concentrate more
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on the elasticity of the steel itself
than the physicality of the space.
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The steel in this piece becomes something
other than steel.
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It almost has a feeling
that it’s being stretched like rubber.
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It becomes a band, not a plane.
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One of the things I also find gratifying
about this piece
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is that the overhang on the piece
is upward of five or six feet,
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so you’re able to walk under the piece…
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where the overhand is almost like the hull
of a ship.
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Probably one of the most
primal experiences I had,
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or generative experiences I had,
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is watching the launching of a ship
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when I was about four years old in Marin Shipyard—
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I went there with my father.
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To see a big, massive, obdurate shape
being launched where it becomes
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buoyant and free
and afloat and adrift—
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where it changes from something that’s massive
to something that’s weightless,
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was something that affected me, that I never
forgot about,
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and for a while, it really became a reocurring
dream.
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MAN: What do you do in that book all the time,
Richard?
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SERRA: Um, I keep track of myself.
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MAN: Are you writing poetry?
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SERRA: No, it’s a way of keeping your eye
and hand together.
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I started drawing when I was very, very young
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in order to compete for, I guess, affection
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with my parents, because I had an older brother
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who was very articulate,
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and very good-looking, very tall—
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And I was like the little runt.
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And in order to kind of capture my parents’
imagination,
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after dinner I could make drawings every night.
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And they would support those drawings.
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And so it became something that I could do
that was personal and private to me
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as a way of keeping my hand and eye coordinated
in relation to what I would see.
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So if my father and my brother were taking
the car apart,
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I would draw the parts.
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So I’ve always done it, and it’s a way
just to keep
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in touch with,
not only everyday life for me,
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in a diaristic notion,
but in order to enable me to see.
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And I think the eye is king og a muscle.
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And the more you draw, the better shape
the muscle’s in,
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actually, the better you see.
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I don’t particularly think of notation drawing
that I do every day as drawing per se—
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I make other drawings in which I deal with
autonomous things in the world,
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and the history of drawing.
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But in terms of just informing myself,
as a way of keeping a dialogue doing,
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unlike Woody Allen talking into
a tape recorder, I draw.
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MAN: You’re not going to clear it.
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SERRA: It’s this way, yeah?
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Take it back up, take it back up.
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That’s the moment,
it’s called a 5-millimeter moment—
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it’s where you have to set it
and you have to get it within 5 millimeters.
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MAN: Hey, John…
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This is going to be a nightmare,
trying to weld these…
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I didn’t tell it to rain, come on.
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Blame it on Tony, he picked the date.
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MAN: It’s a real collaboration—
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for all the steelworkers putting this together
and everybody that’s involved—
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and I think the art is the process
as well as the piece.
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But I like the way it’s coming together.
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MAN: Definitely, and it’s like omnipresent.
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SERRA: Yeah, yeah, you can’t get away from
it.
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Oh, yeah, it’s right there.
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MAN: Nice job, very nice job.
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SERRA: It’s almost like a pneumatic structure.
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MAN: Pneumatic?
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SERRA: Yeah, because it seems like it’s
being stretched
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and pumped from the inside.
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MAN: Where do you want to weld that now?
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MAN: Here.
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MAN: John…
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SERRA: To be able to contain space and hold
space
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and make space the content of the work
that you’re dealing with
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comes with a certain kind of acuity of understanding
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your relationship to a volume.
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Very simple if I said it’s very different
than walking into a telephone booth
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than a football stadium and say, “Oh, yes,
I understand—
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telephone booth, claustrophobic;
football stadium, vast.”
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If you take something in between
the telephone booth
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and the football stadium, you say,
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“I’m dealing with the subtleties of walking
across the room,
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“about what’s on the right-hand side,
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“And if you turn around and walk back,
what’s on the right-hand side.”
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This piece is generative in that it’s a
new piece for me,
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it opens a whole other body,
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a whole other series of work for me.
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I don’t know how that’s going to spill
out,
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I don’t know what kinds of works are going
to come out of it,
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but there’s still a kind of wonder in that,
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because that piece hasn’t reached closure for me.
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