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Lot Essay
A colossus of American art, Richard Serra’s massive steel sculptures can be recognized the world over. His works on paper follow the same theme, and emphasize weight, space, and formal directness. Drawing from the tenets of Minimalism, the artist has adhered to a framework of very specific materials and color over his decades-long career. Double Rift is a masterful example of his work in black paintstick on paper, and further cements his place as one of the most singularly provocative artists working today. Esteemed critic Peter Schjeldahl noted about the drawings, "The light-killing blackness makes for delicate balances of...infinite depth. ...You don’t look at this art; you give yourself over to it. The payoff of abiding its deathliness is a sense of being brought fully, tinglingly alive" (P. Schjeldahl, "Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective," The New Yorker, 2011). Visibly and tangibly heavy with pigment, the paper edges closer to the physical presence of Serra’s metallic structures while also swallowing all light and becoming an optical abyss.
Massive in scale, Double Rift brings new monumentality to the art of drawing. Encrusted with thick black paintstick, three vertical sheets of paper are placed side-to-side in an overwhelming tableau of inky night. The center portion has two long, triangular sections where Serra has left the virgin paper clear. This results in dueling splits in the dense blackness that rise upward and fight against the surrounding material. “Black is a property, not a quality,” Serra has professed. “In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a denser volume, holds itself in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging. Since black is the densest color material, it absorbs and dissipates light to a maximum…to use black is the clearest way of marking against a white field” (R. Serra, quoted in L. Cooke and M. Francis, Carnegie International 1991, New York, 1992, p. 124). By pitting white paper against black paint, the artist establishes a dichotomy that echoes his works in Cor-Ten steel; the visual weight of the drawings has corollaries to the actual tonnage of the sculpture
Works like Double Rift give one the distinct honor to appreciate Serra’s masterful hold on notions of shape and space. Through the vigorous physical application of media, the artist approximates the presence of his sculptural work in two dimensions. Noting this correlation, he explains, “The drawings on paper are mostly studies made after a sculpture has been completed. They are the result of trying to define and assess what surprises me in a sculpture, what I could not understand before a work was built. They enable me to understand different aspects of perception as well as the structural potential of a given sculpture. They are distillations of the experience of a sculptural structure” (R. Serra, “Notes on Drawing” in R. Serra, Writings, Interviews, Chicago & London 1994, p. 181). In the late 1960s, Serra would often stage performative works that he would capture in photographs and video. Projects like Throwing Lead (1968) and Gutter Corner Splash: Night Shift (1969/1995) hinge upon physical actions undertaken with raw materials (solid and molten lead, respectively). In a related manner, the artist’s compositions with paintstick on paper offer up a physical record of strenuous processes on the part of the artist.
In the 1970s, Serra started to create paintstick drawings that would eventually result in later works like Double Rift. To begin his process, he would often melt down multiple sticks to create a large brick. By doing so, he manufactured a tool that could be held in both hands and given the full weight of his body in motion. Large sheets of paper attached to the wall became a receptacle for continuous, robust strokes of inky black paint. In some cases, Serra would push paint through a wire screen to create a textural surface that extended outward from the picture plane. Critic Roberta Smith wrote about the artist’s vigorous drawing practice, noting “Few artists have pushed drawing to such sculptural and even architectural extremes as Richard Serra. He has magnified the medium with immense black shapes that sit directly on the wall, their absorptive darkness forcing the space around them to expand or contract. Using black oil paintstick, he has exaggerated drawing’s physical surface, creating expanses of texture that have the rough tactility of bark, or massing dark, roiled spheres as thick as mud pies” (R. Smith, “Sketches From The Man Of Steel,” New York Times, April 14, 2011). When one thinks of drawing, it is usually of marks on paper. The fibrous support is visible, the images are surrounded by the page. Serra broke with tradition when he filled his picture plane with paint, the built up layers of which push Double Rift into three dimensions. A physical manifestation of the artist’s hand and time, Serra’s grand gestures extend from the surface into our existence.
Massive in scale, Double Rift brings new monumentality to the art of drawing. Encrusted with thick black paintstick, three vertical sheets of paper are placed side-to-side in an overwhelming tableau of inky night. The center portion has two long, triangular sections where Serra has left the virgin paper clear. This results in dueling splits in the dense blackness that rise upward and fight against the surrounding material. “Black is a property, not a quality,” Serra has professed. “In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a denser volume, holds itself in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging. Since black is the densest color material, it absorbs and dissipates light to a maximum…to use black is the clearest way of marking against a white field” (R. Serra, quoted in L. Cooke and M. Francis, Carnegie International 1991, New York, 1992, p. 124). By pitting white paper against black paint, the artist establishes a dichotomy that echoes his works in Cor-Ten steel; the visual weight of the drawings has corollaries to the actual tonnage of the sculpture
Works like Double Rift give one the distinct honor to appreciate Serra’s masterful hold on notions of shape and space. Through the vigorous physical application of media, the artist approximates the presence of his sculptural work in two dimensions. Noting this correlation, he explains, “The drawings on paper are mostly studies made after a sculpture has been completed. They are the result of trying to define and assess what surprises me in a sculpture, what I could not understand before a work was built. They enable me to understand different aspects of perception as well as the structural potential of a given sculpture. They are distillations of the experience of a sculptural structure” (R. Serra, “Notes on Drawing” in R. Serra, Writings, Interviews, Chicago & London 1994, p. 181). In the late 1960s, Serra would often stage performative works that he would capture in photographs and video. Projects like Throwing Lead (1968) and Gutter Corner Splash: Night Shift (1969/1995) hinge upon physical actions undertaken with raw materials (solid and molten lead, respectively). In a related manner, the artist’s compositions with paintstick on paper offer up a physical record of strenuous processes on the part of the artist.
In the 1970s, Serra started to create paintstick drawings that would eventually result in later works like Double Rift. To begin his process, he would often melt down multiple sticks to create a large brick. By doing so, he manufactured a tool that could be held in both hands and given the full weight of his body in motion. Large sheets of paper attached to the wall became a receptacle for continuous, robust strokes of inky black paint. In some cases, Serra would push paint through a wire screen to create a textural surface that extended outward from the picture plane. Critic Roberta Smith wrote about the artist’s vigorous drawing practice, noting “Few artists have pushed drawing to such sculptural and even architectural extremes as Richard Serra. He has magnified the medium with immense black shapes that sit directly on the wall, their absorptive darkness forcing the space around them to expand or contract. Using black oil paintstick, he has exaggerated drawing’s physical surface, creating expanses of texture that have the rough tactility of bark, or massing dark, roiled spheres as thick as mud pies” (R. Smith, “Sketches From The Man Of Steel,” New York Times, April 14, 2011). When one thinks of drawing, it is usually of marks on paper. The fibrous support is visible, the images are surrounded by the page. Serra broke with tradition when he filled his picture plane with paint, the built up layers of which push Double Rift into three dimensions. A physical manifestation of the artist’s hand and time, Serra’s grand gestures extend from the surface into our existence.