…Except, it seems, the Museum of Modern Art. Much of its new Yoshio Taniguchi-designed building was conceived specifically with his work in mind. MOMA is showing “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” through September 10th.
This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, Richard Serra's art is oversized compared to everything else, and the gargantuan space MOMA created on the second floor to show off his sculptures will not work well for other artists. What are they going to do with the space once the Serra exhibit is over in September? As New York Magazine puts it, even his smallest pieces are roughly the size of a car. The largest pieces are like twisty buildings that you can walk through and experience from the inside. It’s art that envelops and consumes its viewer. And secondly, in my opinion, most of Serra’s works belong out of doors. It’s horribly confining to plunk them in a big room and expect viewers to relate with them the same way as they can with his public sculptures.
Unlike a lot of people, I actually do like Richard Serra’s art a lot. I agree that sheet metal can be ugly when it oxidizes and turns that ruddy, rusty color, and Tilted Arc in NYC’s Federal Plaza in the ‘80s was generally a bad idea because of where it was placed. I’m convinced he put it where he did just to piss people off—and, well, it worked, and now it’s scrap metal. But his sculptures are more than just big pieces of oddly shaped metal. They’re cool because they’re both minimalist and maximalist, if you will. They’re so simplistic in shape, but the experience of viewing one is so huge and complex that the sculptures are almost too large to comprehend. My personal favorite is Sequence (2006), which is on the exhibition catalogue and poster (shown above). The curves and tilts are so sensual.
There’s also a neat video of Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the sculpture garden:
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