Merlion
07-25-2006, 06:06 PM
Two good news articles about Richard Serra's 'Wake' being installed at the Olympic Sculpture Park at Seattle.
Serra firma: Dogged artist stood his ground (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/278672_serra25.html)
Powerful 'Wake' becomes first piece installed at Olympic Sculpture Park
Seventeen years ago, when construction crews cut Richard Serra's curving steel wall ("Tilted Arc") into three pieces and trucked it from its site on New York City's Federal Plaza to a scrap-metal yard, many people thought the artist got what he deserved.
Even some supporters didn't dispute that he was an aggressive man making aggressive art. Artforum magazine sided with the disgruntled public, not the sculptor.
Few artists are so publicly thumped.
What did Serra do?
"I kept working," he said Monday, looking at his sculpture "Wake," installed during the weekend as the first piece to be placed in the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. The park is scheduled to open on the Elliott Bay waterfront Oct. 28.
"I knew if I kept working, the wheel would turn. That's the advice I give to young artists, to keep working and to work out of your own work. Don't worry that the scene changes. It always does. Stick to what you're doing, and if you have a few witnesses, consider yourself lucky."
Serra's wheel not only turned, it made a complete revolution.
Today, Serra generally is considered to be the most important living sculptor, and his work, viewed in the early '80s as bully-boy abstraction designed to intimidate the audience, is now celebrated for the profound engagement it offers those who move within its orbit, the space charged by its presence. ....
In its own valley within the park, "Wake" consists of five gently undulating steel slabs in a staggered cluster. Seen from the elevated platform to the south or atop the wall to the west, the piece suggests water reeds or small waves rolling toward shore.
Standing in front of it, its massive weight -- 300 tons -- is apparent: The five pieces are 14 feet high and cover an area 125 feet long and 46 feet wide. If one of them fell on you, there would be nothing left to bury.
Walking between these sculptural slabs, each one softly swelling as if it had an organic root, the audience's consciousness of weight recedes, and the entire work appears to float.
Every angle of approach offers a radically different experience. Move left, and the elements spread out like a hand of cards. Move right, and they're coming at you, like ships.
Concave and convex, the sculpture is fluid in its meanings, conveying the artist's radical intent: to inhabit space with rigor and purity, and to charge the very air around it with the sensations it inspires.
Not being a representational artist, metaphors don't interest Serra, although he said he's "not bothered" by nautical ones. ......
Richard Likes It (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=44781)
The Sculptor Richard Serra Declares Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park ‘Fucking Magnificent’
..... Wake is a pod of five undulating forms made of Cor-ten steel, each one 50 feet long, 14 feet high, and weighing 60 tons. Two slabs of curving steel, shaped very loosely like the hull of a ship, are joined back to back in each one; the hollow space between them gives each form a footprint about 6 feet across. Each slab has identical curves but they’re inverted before they’re put together, like reflected versions of each other. They’re scattered on a bed of gravel, at irregular distances from each other that are nonetheless highly choreographed to provide echoing views as the light falls on each rusty surface slightly differently.
Like all of Serra’s imposing installations, Wake will be well worth spending time with. Those who criticize him as an implicitly chauvinistic maker of intimidating monuments miss the way his sculptures are not fixed, but variable, how they always refer back to the human ability to register space as though it were an emotional state, and to make discoveries based on however you are moved to navigate it.
The installation isn’t finished yet, but it stands low, in a valley beneath a sloping bed of trees that run along Western Avenue. Because it’s outdoors and doesn’t have the benefit of enclosure to emphasize its massive scale (plenty of his works are outdoors, but I like the truncated areas of the ones indoors best; especially this at Dia Beacon), Serra designed retaining walls that circumscribe the space. .....
Serra firma: Dogged artist stood his ground (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/278672_serra25.html)
Powerful 'Wake' becomes first piece installed at Olympic Sculpture Park
Seventeen years ago, when construction crews cut Richard Serra's curving steel wall ("Tilted Arc") into three pieces and trucked it from its site on New York City's Federal Plaza to a scrap-metal yard, many people thought the artist got what he deserved.
Even some supporters didn't dispute that he was an aggressive man making aggressive art. Artforum magazine sided with the disgruntled public, not the sculptor.
Few artists are so publicly thumped.
What did Serra do?
"I kept working," he said Monday, looking at his sculpture "Wake," installed during the weekend as the first piece to be placed in the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. The park is scheduled to open on the Elliott Bay waterfront Oct. 28.
"I knew if I kept working, the wheel would turn. That's the advice I give to young artists, to keep working and to work out of your own work. Don't worry that the scene changes. It always does. Stick to what you're doing, and if you have a few witnesses, consider yourself lucky."
Serra's wheel not only turned, it made a complete revolution.
Today, Serra generally is considered to be the most important living sculptor, and his work, viewed in the early '80s as bully-boy abstraction designed to intimidate the audience, is now celebrated for the profound engagement it offers those who move within its orbit, the space charged by its presence. ....
In its own valley within the park, "Wake" consists of five gently undulating steel slabs in a staggered cluster. Seen from the elevated platform to the south or atop the wall to the west, the piece suggests water reeds or small waves rolling toward shore.
Standing in front of it, its massive weight -- 300 tons -- is apparent: The five pieces are 14 feet high and cover an area 125 feet long and 46 feet wide. If one of them fell on you, there would be nothing left to bury.
Walking between these sculptural slabs, each one softly swelling as if it had an organic root, the audience's consciousness of weight recedes, and the entire work appears to float.
Every angle of approach offers a radically different experience. Move left, and the elements spread out like a hand of cards. Move right, and they're coming at you, like ships.
Concave and convex, the sculpture is fluid in its meanings, conveying the artist's radical intent: to inhabit space with rigor and purity, and to charge the very air around it with the sensations it inspires.
Not being a representational artist, metaphors don't interest Serra, although he said he's "not bothered" by nautical ones. ......
Richard Likes It (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=44781)
The Sculptor Richard Serra Declares Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park ‘Fucking Magnificent’
..... Wake is a pod of five undulating forms made of Cor-ten steel, each one 50 feet long, 14 feet high, and weighing 60 tons. Two slabs of curving steel, shaped very loosely like the hull of a ship, are joined back to back in each one; the hollow space between them gives each form a footprint about 6 feet across. Each slab has identical curves but they’re inverted before they’re put together, like reflected versions of each other. They’re scattered on a bed of gravel, at irregular distances from each other that are nonetheless highly choreographed to provide echoing views as the light falls on each rusty surface slightly differently.
Like all of Serra’s imposing installations, Wake will be well worth spending time with. Those who criticize him as an implicitly chauvinistic maker of intimidating monuments miss the way his sculptures are not fixed, but variable, how they always refer back to the human ability to register space as though it were an emotional state, and to make discoveries based on however you are moved to navigate it.
The installation isn’t finished yet, but it stands low, in a valley beneath a sloping bed of trees that run along Western Avenue. Because it’s outdoors and doesn’t have the benefit of enclosure to emphasize its massive scale (plenty of his works are outdoors, but I like the truncated areas of the ones indoors best; especially this at Dia Beacon), Serra designed retaining walls that circumscribe the space. .....