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Thursday, 24 May 2007
Art News: Richard Serra at MoMA

“One of the preeminent sculptors of our era, Richard Serra has long been acclaimed for his challenging and innovative work,” which emphasizes materiality and an engagement between the viewer, the site, and the work. A new exhibition, Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, on at MoMA from 3 June to 10 September, displays the “extraordinary vision of this formidable artist, who has radicalized and extended the definition of sculpture.” If you so desire you can check out the pictures Tropolism has captured of the “wonderful” moment of a Richard Serra sculpture being hoisted into MoMA's courtyard.

But let us remember that public art commissions serve as valuable (and often truer) indicators of the community’s attitude, indeed judgment, of the relative worth of artists and artworks. Perhaps, more tellingly, they can also serve as flashpoints of discord. Over the years, Serra has expanded his spatial and temporal approach to sculpture and has focused primarily on large-scale work, including many site-specific works that engage with a particular architectural, urban, or landscape setting.

Still, New York hasn’t always been so accommodating of Serra’s work. In 1981, the Federal Government’s Art in Architecture Program commissioned Serra’s notorious Tilted Arc, a 120-foot long and 10 feet high rusting steel wall, which was installed in Federal Plaza, New York City. Art “experts” championed Tilted Arc as an important work of Minimal art while workers complained that the sculpture blocked their view and shielded muggers; security personnel said it could serve as a blast wall for terrorist bombs; a judge claimed that it was exacerbating a rat problem.

Tilted Arc, Richard Serra, 1981, sculpture, steel, New York City (destroyed)

Serra insisted that the sculpture was site-specific and couldn’t be moved, and after a public hearing and a legal battle, Tilted Arc was cut up in 1989 and carted off to a warehouse, where it remains. If he learned anything from the experience, Serra said, it’s that “the government has no use for art or artists.” But this position holds that works of art are the product of genius, and impartial “experts” attempt to provide the public with explanations of that art.

Today there is a common trend to assume that fine art is the product of genius, and as such is beyond criticism. Some would go so far as to claim that to dispute the quality of an object produced by a genius is to engage in censorship. But this argument depends on an inane circularity: genius determines art, and art is made by the genius. There is also an inherent arrogance in the claim that works of art are produced by genius and selected by experts. Certainly statements like "I don't think it is the function of art to be pleasing. Art is not democratic. It is not for the people." rankled many New Yorkers, as it should us as well.

Yet, must not artwork also have meaning for the viewer, to give them knowledge that will enhance their lives? The argument follows the premise that art is not made in a vacuum; there is no possible way to break the unity of art and life. Hence, art is a means of communication between one man and another. For the public to reflect on artworks is important because the complex and often ambiguous questions of these works must in the end be answered in our own lives. Seemingly central to our existence is the time to ponder the important questions of life. In accordance works of art ask the bigger questions. What value might my work have for the various men and women who study them as they live out their lives in contemporary American society? That is, with an accurate understanding of the meaning of a work of art, one has the right (and responsibility) of deciding to or not to support the work and the ideas it presents.

Yet, commentary about the retrospective like, “It took decades for ordinary New Yorkers to recognize Serra’s contribution to sculpture, even after the Tilted Arc fiasco” imagine our relationship to contemporary art has shifted. They hope that with this retrospective, the disconnect between the Serra loathed by the public and the Serra lauded by the art world may, finally, be history.

It’s not that the combative artist has become softer or less difficult. The modernist notion of the creative innovator – genius – is bound to see his surroundings differently from the accepted way. Consequently, the more authentic the work of art, the more sincerely it expresses the artist’s revelatory inner self, the less communicable it is. The lamentable result is that creativity, the prime expression of man’s uniqueness and inner self, is least communicable when it is most true to the artist. Too much innovation will bring the “creative” innovator ostracism and stigma: hence, his ability to communicate with his contemporaries is curbed and limited.

So, who is right: the individual who believes in his own creativity, or the social milieu that denies it? Socially accepted art embodies socially accepted values. It follows then, socially unaccepted art embodies socially unaccepted values.

Modern art critics and critics relish the “genius", just as connoisseurs delight in the “discovery” of lost or unknown masterpieces, though too often the sensationalism accompanying the pseudo-discoveries is the price we pay for the cult of relativism. We have long been told that such a conversation about quality cannot occur; that we are trapped in a dogmatic relativism and an empty tolerance. Yet, is it any wonder then that the fine arts have been reduced to leisurely amusement (mere entertainment)? The outcome of this controversy was the dismantling of the installed work, to the great relief of the plaintiffs (including After Fighting for Hours). Perhaps that conversation has begun.