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Lot Essay
“There is no way to make a drawing—there is only drawing”—Richard Serra
(R. Serra in interview with L. Borden in 1977, Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970-1980, eds. R. Serra and C. Weyergraft-Serra, New York, 1980, p. 76).
In Richard Serra’s Large Symmetry #1, a bold impenetrable rectangle is created out of thick applications of pure black paintstick, compositionally dominating the picture plane. The form’s solidity evokes unshakeable feelings of gravity and weight, of massive forms shaping space around themselves. Emphasizing viewer experience, the work actively engages the viewer by unsettling—essentially redrawing—his or her sense of space. As art critic Jane Panetta perceptively commented, “The drawing not only affects the surrounding space but momentarily seems to become space” (J. Panetta, “Richard Serra,” Art in America, June 16, 2011, n.p. [accessed online]). The effectiveness with which Large Symmetry #1 becomes sculpture or space is the dual product of Serra’s facility with form and the several decades that he spent honing his remarkable drawing capabilities.
Serra’s hallmark black paintstick is integral to achieving this sense of space and weight that characterizes the striking work at hand. Serra has always drawn in black, viewing it as a heavy “material” rather than a color. In one interview, the artist noted, “Black absorbs light, and because of its absorption of light it has weight—the opposite of color, which reflects light—and that’s what interests me” (R. Serra in conversation with P. Bui, “Richard Serra with Phong Bui,” Brooklyn Rail, July 11, 2011, n.p.). The ontological impenetrability of black, its reticence in the face of interpretive efforts, is additionally appealing to Serra, who strives to make materially invested work that refrains from making overt (and thus perhaps limited or foreclosed) statements about meaning.
(R. Serra in interview with L. Borden in 1977, Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970-1980, eds. R. Serra and C. Weyergraft-Serra, New York, 1980, p. 76).
In Richard Serra’s Large Symmetry #1, a bold impenetrable rectangle is created out of thick applications of pure black paintstick, compositionally dominating the picture plane. The form’s solidity evokes unshakeable feelings of gravity and weight, of massive forms shaping space around themselves. Emphasizing viewer experience, the work actively engages the viewer by unsettling—essentially redrawing—his or her sense of space. As art critic Jane Panetta perceptively commented, “The drawing not only affects the surrounding space but momentarily seems to become space” (J. Panetta, “Richard Serra,” Art in America, June 16, 2011, n.p. [accessed online]). The effectiveness with which Large Symmetry #1 becomes sculpture or space is the dual product of Serra’s facility with form and the several decades that he spent honing his remarkable drawing capabilities.
Serra’s hallmark black paintstick is integral to achieving this sense of space and weight that characterizes the striking work at hand. Serra has always drawn in black, viewing it as a heavy “material” rather than a color. In one interview, the artist noted, “Black absorbs light, and because of its absorption of light it has weight—the opposite of color, which reflects light—and that’s what interests me” (R. Serra in conversation with P. Bui, “Richard Serra with Phong Bui,” Brooklyn Rail, July 11, 2011, n.p.). The ontological impenetrability of black, its reticence in the face of interpretive efforts, is additionally appealing to Serra, who strives to make materially invested work that refrains from making overt (and thus perhaps limited or foreclosed) statements about meaning.