I use the word “impressions” because this is not meant to be a meticulously crafted critique but merely some thoughts that popped into my head while wandering around the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. There is currently (until September 2007) an exhibit at the MoMA of Richard Serra’s sculptures, spread across three floors of the museum and four decades of the artist’s life. Of the three floors, two are breathtaking (a word that I fear is used too often and too casually in the art world) and one is rather subpar.
Let’s get the subpar one out of the way: SKIP the 6th floor. (I know that there are probably a lot of people that would disagree with that statement.) The 6th floor shows Serra’s older works—his experiments in industrial materials like rubber and neon, as well as his first attempts at using steel slabs to create new spaces. But to be honest, I found the whole floor utterly unnecessary and also aesthetically unappealing. True, the experiments show Serra’s initial thought process. True as well, this sheds light on what Serra eventually wants to do. Yet the beauty of Serra’s mature works are not enhanced by looking at his clumsier early works. Nor in fact is it all that hard, without studying his early works, to determine what Serra seeks to do in his later creations. And furthermore, there are many other artists during the 20th century that have created much more compelling and thought-provoking experiments with different materials.
But enough of that rant…
The installations on the second floor and in the garden are spectacular. The garden features two works that date from the 1990s; the second floor contains three works that were specially created for the exhibition. In both cases, Serra’s works are monumental sculptures, formed from huge slabs of steel that bend, curve, torque, and soar--creating entire environments through which the viewer walks and experiences new spaces.
With these mammoth sculptures, Serra has managed to produce works that are both intimate and imposing, natural and industrial. The rust-colored steel has a rich, brown-red hue, and the eroding patches add an earthiness to the steel that is warm and welcoming. At the same time, the viewer gets lost in the narrow corridors, enclosed oases, and sinuous curves of Serra’s sculptures. No two patches of steel are identical, and hence there is never a sense of repetitiveness. Everything is novel, changing, evolving…In the garden, even the sky above and the water fountains are enclosed by Serra’s works: each sculpture thus becomes a frame that engages and defines the surrounding space.

The effect is really amazing. I could—and did!—spend several hours exploring Serra’s sculptures and the environments that I found within them. His works are truly beautiful, in both aesthetics and in the concepts that they raise. I urge everyone, including those who know nothing about art, to check it out.