Reading them and looking at him, both the interviewers and the readers got to sense, once again, Richard Serra’s grandiose presence. Here we have a man that for ordering a burger in a diner will deliver a god-like speech and message to humanity. Permanently dressed in black, fiery-looking and grave, there’s little doubt that Richard Serra has bear on him and his persona the monumentality and drama of his mammoth sculptures.
Famously, Richard Serra’s personality is as large as his creations in Cor-Ten steel. His imposing figure, magnetic stare and cold-like-steel rhetoric has overwhelmed more than one interviewer; he is said to have as many followers of his art as haters of his personality. But those that dislike him personally will not fail to praise his art.
No doubt the infamous “Tilted Arc” polemic and its final destruction embittered him and awoke on him a responsibility for the fate and permanence of his art. Richard Serra works now (didn’t he always?) for mankind, making clear that, as an artist, he has the task of leaving a trace of his work on earth, for generations to come.
Richard Serra works for the same people, just humans, that hated his Federal Plaza installation. But this time they are not grey functionaries narrowingly looking only for an easy way to get to their boring jobs. In Bilbao, art-loving tourists and art pilgrims will witness and experience the emotional impact these sculptures deliver. Having secure, informed commissions from read institutions, the artist has guaranteed his art will survive and influence- the Spirals and Toruses will be inside the Guggenheim Bilbao for at least 25 years.
Museums will always be safer than the government.
In his interviews in Spain he stated that Bilbao’s is an installation for the people: if visitors react and are moved, if “La Materia del Tiempo” makes people think, stop and reflect, even momentarily, on how they have been affected by the sculptures, the purpose will have been achieved. Furthermore, he conceives his Guggenheim installation as a personal and social experience.
All his huge sculptures since the late eighties are (or seem to be) destined for a wide appreciation. Richard Serra does not aim low. And the fact is- it is very difficult, probably impossible, not to feel touched and overwhelmed walking through a Spiral, Sphere, Torus, Snake or whatever form Richard Serra concocts. The difference within Bilbao’s Serras is, as he himself has said, the encounters with people. Whereas in Dia:Beacon you will probably have the experience of your brain and senses shocked alone and surrounded by nothing but rusted steel, the heavily-visited Guggenheim Bilbao will make inevitable that people run into each other in and around the sculptures, entering and “escaping”.
Richard Serra has insisted not to be searching the sublime, but such a feeling is evoked and felt upon entering one of the Torqued Ellipses permanently installed in Dia:Beacon: they inspire awe, reverence, fear, transcendence, grandeur. They overwhelm, suffocate, terrify. They will unsettle you, disturb you and make you feel insignificant, like the open vastness of a desert or the soaring tallness of a gothic cathedral. They might even bring you to tears.
They will surely dislocate your conceptions of space and time. Surrounded by a mountain of oxidized steel, you’ll start looking for an exit, among echoes of your own voice and sounds that could be right behind the steel, or miles away. You will be lost and anxious.
Such is the majestic, infinite power of Richard Serra’s sculptures. Never was cold, hard steel so immensely affective of human senses. Rarely has steel reached the gravity and lyricism of Serra’s sculptures, where tons of massive metal appear to be floating. And then suddenly deeply anchored to earth, heavy and motionless.
Richard Serra’s grand, prophet-like personality is nourished by his sculptures, and his sculptures nurture his ego and godly presence. It probably couldn’t be any other way.
(He is the chosen one. Follow his path)
