Richard Serra

A studious view of Richard Serra’s recently premiered forged steel sculpture and new drawings using his trademark paintstick technique. ---------- “Enigmatic, arresting, audacious: Richard Serra now and forever” — The Brooklyn Rail ---------- Richard Serra’s hugely successful body of work consistently explores the possibilities of form and matter. Serra’s steel sculptures are held in major collections internationally, and his drawings assert themselves as abstract victories. Through the use of black paintstick—a combination of oil paint, wax, and pigment, which he has used since 1971—Serra’s drawings convey a strong sense of optical weight, acutely similar to the physical presence of his sculptures. 2022, the artist’s largest single forged round to date, investigates properties of weight and scale. While the exhibition allowed viewers to encounter Serra’s immense forged round and inky drawings in relation to their own space and bodies, the catalogue is an opportunity for intimate engagement with Serra’s works through stunning reproductions.

“The rhythm of the body moving through space has been the motivating source of most of my work.”—Richard Serra Drawn from talks between celebrated artist Richard Serra and acclaimed art historian Hal Foster held over a fifteen-year period, this volume offers revelations into Serra’s prolific six-decade career and the ideas that have informed his working practice. Conversations about Sculpture is both an intimate look at Serra’s life and work, with candid reflections on personal moments of discovery, and a provocative examination of sculptural form from antiquity to today. Serra and Foster explore such subjects as the artist’s work in steel mills as a young man; the impact of music, dance, and architecture on his art; the importance of materiality and site specificity to his aesthetic; the controversies and contradictions his work has faced; and his belief in sculpture as experience. They also discuss sources of inspiration—from Donatello and Brancusi to Japanese gardens and Machu Picchu—revealing a history of sculpture across time and culture through the eyes of one of the medium’s most brilliant figures. Introduced with an insightful preface by Foster, this probing dialogue is beautifully illustrated with duotone images that bring to life both Serra's work and his key commitments.

This publication focuses on the early work of Richard Serra, one of the most influential artists working today. The works included in this volume represent the beginning of the artist’s innovative, process-oriented experiments with nontraditional materials, such as vulcanized rubber, neon, and lead, in addition to key early examples of his work in steel and a selection of the artist’s films from this period. The interplay of gravity and material that was introduced early in Serra’s career set the stage for his ongoing engagement with the spatial and temporal properties of sculpture. This monograph aims to reconsider the groundbreaking practices and ideas that so firmly situate Serra in the history of 20th-century art.

Richard Serra's reputation as one of the great sculptors of our time is well known, yet the role of sketches in his working practice is not known. This suite of books will change that. Serra keeps a large library of notebooks from throughout his career in his studio, hundreds in total. Contained within them are delicate sketches of his travels, of landscapes, architecture and of other ideas, some of which the artist developed into mature sculptures and drawings. Serra has personally selected five of these precious notebooks, which are reproduced here in facsimile. Born in San Francisco in 1939, Richard Serra is one of the most important contemporary sculptors. His work is famous for its size and weight, and he has created permanent site-specific works for many public and private venues. Serra's books at Steidl include "Sculpture 1985-1998" (1999) and "Torqued Spirals, Toruses and Spheres" (2001).

Best known for site-specific sculptures in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra's thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" to Serra's extended commentary on the "Tilted Arc" fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist's engagement with the practical, philosophical and political problems of art.