brief encounters #6 — richard serra: what a piece of work

Richard Serra oversees monumental installation for 2007 MoMA retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

World-famous artist Richard Serra, who died this week, yelled at me once. It wasn’t pleasant.

Back in 2007, I was invited by my friend and colleague Meg at MoMA to photograph the installation of Serra’s 1992–93 Intersection II in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and another in the adjoining empty lot. The result was a pair of detailed photoessays on the awe-inspiring process. The only other photographer there was from the New York Times, and she left early after snapping a handful of shots. I took so many pictures that my battery ran out; Meg generously lent me her camera so I could take more.

The two majestic works that I documented were part of the immense retrospective “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years.” It took nearly all day as the heavy metal made its way on a flatbed up Sixth Ave. and onto Fifty-Fourth St., where a crane was waiting to lift the sections into place. Intersection II consists of four identical curved sections of weatherproof steel that stand more than thirteen feet high and fifty-one feet long, weighing thirty tons.

Eventually Serra, who was born in San Francisco on November 2, 1938, and earned a BA from UC Santa Barbara and a BFA and MFA from Yale between 1961 and 1964, appeared, dressed head to toe in black once he took off his green jacket; he carried a yellow tape measure everywhere with him. He carefully walked around the space, speaking with the engineers and riggers to make sure everything was placed exactly, down to the millimeter.

Richard Serra carefully measures key stages of MoMA sculpture garden installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

He knew I was there, but I stayed out of his way; I was well aware of his notoriety. In the October 2008 Guardian article “Man of Steel,” Sean O’Hagan wrote, “Richard Serra’s reputation precedes him: he is cerebral, single-minded, austere, as steely and uncompromising as his work.”

Once the installations were complete, a handful of press people met briefly with Serra in a MoMA office. He asked me what I thought of the show, and I responded by saying how impressed I was with the many pieces.

The other journalists let out a groan and took a step back.

Serra glared at me.

“They are not pieces!” he declared sternly. “They are slabs.”

I apologized profusely, tail between my legs.

He was significantly kinder after that in the few minutes we had with him to pose questions.

I think of that moment often when I am conducting interviews, trying mightily to avoid saying the wrong thing and annoying my subject. It flashed into my memory again when I heard that Serra had died of pneumonia four days ago in Orient, New York, at the age of eighty-five.

I am now reconsidering the word I said that had set him off. I’ve always remembered it as being pieces, but I just listened to a MoMA audio of Serra describing the exhibition, and he uses pieces over and over. I also used the word in my review of the show in This Week in New York, something I certainly would have avoided given my encounter with him.

Navigating through Richard Serra’s Junction Cycle at Gagosian (video by twi-ny/mdr)

Now I am completely flummoxed. Currently running through my head are slabs, sections, forms, sheets — anything that could replace pieces. I still recall the look on his face and the gasp from the others, but I cannot confirm exactly what I said or what he answered.

Regardless, I am a lover of his work, from his drawings and avant-garde videos to his architectural sculptures and Props.

And I am sad that there will be no more pieces, slabs, sections, forms, sheets — or whatever he preferred to call them — in any of our futures.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]