Richard Serra Drawing at the Met

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

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

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!:

From Richard Serra's Mouth: Dick Bellamy

One of the art dealers profiled in The Art Dealers is Richard Bellamy, and they refer to him as a dealer's dealer. Other dealer's profiles were sprinkled with references to him. But when I read his profile, I don't know that I quite got why or how he was so important. He talks like this:

"In the early years I hadn't formed any allegiances or opinions yet, so there was no static around the art that interfered with what I was seeing. Being unpracticed, I was registering things very clearly, with an innocent eye. I had an intensity of perception, where things just got interiorized immediately."

Interesting, but something was missing. Then I came across this essay by Richard Serra in The Brooklyn Rail. Here's an excerpt:

After I arrived in New York, Dick would phone me every morning. He would always ask the same question: “Richard, how is the weather downtown?” I would put the phone down, walk the length of the loft to the window, look out, go back and report: gray, sunny, fog, rain, snow, whatever. It took me a while to realize that the weather was the same uptown, and this was Dick’s way of keeping in touch. The fact that he phoned every day without fail gave me a sense of security that I needed. I knew that art was being made around the corner and I was nowhere, driving a truck for a living and trying to sort it all out.

The whole piece is great read; I recommend you check it out. The list of artist's who had initial shows through Green or Hansa or Goldowsky gallery--including Serra--is impressive. Now I think the book should refer to him as the artist's dealer.

Ravels in Review Friday (already!)

Has another week really passed? It seems so here in Art Ravel's land, which has been hopefully busy despite a recurrence of hangovers.

Reasons to be hopeful:

1) Spring has returned to Manhattan and gallery hopping can commence again, as I document here. Sure, in between then and now we had some freezing days, but a thaw is coming. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

2) YouTube's content gets more fun by the minute. See Richard Serra shovel Vaseline under Mathew Barney's direction. Not to be missed.

3) A new play by Moises Kaufman shows us how to make time stand still, in addition to its other good qualities.

4) In another exorbitant claim, a man has discovered the secret of beauty. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

5)I said goodbye to Culture Pundits, and hello to cool art magazines.

6) Asking questions about Kara Walker, rather than critique, in a further positive, hopeful effort.

And so what do I think sums up this week, its hopes, its hangovers?

Lobsters, obviously. Why? Ask the Surrealists, or read Signs of Spring.

Vaseline, Serra, and Barney

Hello Sunday morning...and hello hangover. Looking for a fun distraction to keep you from thought of work tomorrow? Hey, me too.

That's how I came across this clip of Matthew Barney filming his best known work, the Cremaster cycle. In it, we see Richard Serra, who is one of the actors in this piece, shoveling Vaseline and hear Barney talk about earlier artists' work and physicality.



This video is one of many interesting clips on art21's YouTube channel. Art21, a part of PBS, is a non-profit that presents artists at work and in their own words. They have hundreds of great clips to check out, featuring artists from Kara Walker to Bruce Nauman to Sally Man. Even if a gore-smeared Barney directing is too much, you won't be thinking about Monday morning.

The Modernist's Versailles, Dia:Beacon

If the city isn't wintry enough for you, take MetroNorth out of Grand Central some morning up to Beacon, New York. Along the frozen Hudson River, this small town is home to Dia:Beacon, and Dia is a monument of a museum to Modernist art.

The scale of the place lends Modernism a lighthearted air. One feels distanced from the small people walking on the other side of the gallery and more immersed in an aesthetic experience. The huge works beg to be played with just as they play with your perceptions. The atmosphere invites you to touch the works (Dont!, however). It even begs for you to do a little dance inside the center of a Richard Serra sculpture. This sense of exploration is with you around every corner.

A former Nabisco factory, its proportions are suited to the huge works its showcases. Galleries of open windows and bare white wall, stretching miles, make it a pared down Versailles. The works, of Sol LeWitt and Joseph Beuys and other important Modernist figures, take up the space beautifully. Rooms bigger than most New York City apartments contain rows of Robert Ryman's white paintings or compacted cars.

Robert Ryman, Vector, 1997.

Dia also has spaces set off from the main galleries on the ground floor, so that smaller, darker brick rooms hold Louise Bourgeois's womb-like sculptures and her impressive bronze cast of a spider resting its huge weight on spindly legs. On the basement level, there are dark rooms showcasing neon light sculptures and movies playing on the walls. In a former loading dock are Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses, large circular wall installations of to wander in and out of.

Such extremes of Modernism can be overwhelming. I left wondering if the canvases painted white, the pieces of string attached floor to ceiling, and the compacted cars really hold meaning or if the whole experience was a colossal joke. Yet it does feel wonderfully playful to wander there, and the whole trip is a pleasant escape.

Louise Bourgeois, Spider, 1997