The artist Richard Serra died recently, and I know he’s considered a big deal in the art world, but honestly I’ve never really gotten what all the hype is about. I suppose I can appreciate the scale and the forms of some of the work in the same way that I can appreciate the architecture of Frank Gehry, but overall, it just never really grabbed me. Anyway, one of the posts that came up in my feed contained a quote by him that goes:
“Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It's really not about other people's needs and assumptions. I'm not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful.”
I’ve been chewing on this quote for a bit and while I tend to agree with the first part about concentration, solitude, and determination, the idea that art is useless rubs me the wrong way. Actually, even the “other people's needs and assumptions” part doesn’t hold water from all sides. I think it might make sense from the perspective of the maker, but if you are a buyer of art solely as a commodity—and I’m talking about Art with a capital A, like a Picasso or a Warhol—I think it does serve a need. You as the buyer need it to appreciate in value, and the assumption (or at least the hope) when you buy it is that it will. In that case, you aren’t really buying art per se—especially if the piece is cloistered away in a vault somewhere where you don’t even see it—but just some thing as an investment. It could be a house or a vintage race car or any number of other things, but as long as it goes up in value, you’re good.
As for the idea of art being useless…boy, where do I start? At face value, that statement feels strange coming from someone who made art for most of his life, and taken out of context I can only assume what he meant by it. But rather than assume, I started reading and watching interviews to see whether or not he offered any clarification or maybe a deeper explanation of what he might have meant. I don’t know much about Serra and while I’ve flipped through books that have contained his work, I’ve only seen a few of his pieces in person. Perhaps he’s an artist whose work needs to be experienced in situ because the sheer scale of it doesn’t necessarily translate in books. I texted my friend at the National Gallery, saying, “Someday, I’m going to ask you to explain Richard Serra to me. I’m trying to write about him and it’s a struggle because I just don’t connect to the work on any level other than maybe scale.” She responded and said that he was a materials guy and that his oil stick works and large sculptures are about power, deterioration, scale, and natural materials. Now we’re getting somewhere! Some of my own work is about power and greed, and I would say that on some level, I’m also “a materials guy.” This was progress.
(And just as an aside, one of the things I love about doing these Iterations week after week is the research I often get do when I’m putting them together. It’s a chance for me to learn and go deeper on something or someone that I’m otherwise not very familiar with.)
What I’ve learned so far about researching Richard Serra is that because he was famous for so long, there’s a wealth of information about him. In addition to books, essays, and critiques, there are also tons of interviews and conversations where he’s shared some of his thoughts on materials, process, and in a broader sense, how he feels about art both as a maker and as a viewer.
There was one interview with Charlie Rose that I found particularly interesting, partially because one the themes they discussed has come up for me recently from a number of different artists. Richard was recounting a story about a watching a ship launch as a child and he was talking about the various things things he was interested in—the sea, nautical building, engineering, and drawing—and the value of inquisitiveness in things he didn’t understand. At one point in the conversation, he said, “I think if you want to make art, at some point you have to suspend judgement and you have to involve yourself with play and not worry about the outcome. Play isn’t about what’s foreseen, it’s about what’s unforeseen. I think a lot of what art does is teach us to see in unforeseen ways.”
That absolutely resonates with me. The vast majority of my own paintings end up looking very different than how I imagined them when I started—even the narrative work. Occasionally an element or two from the maquette will still be visible, but not often. One of the reasons for that is in nearly every case, there comes a point where the painting starts to veer away from what I wanted it to be and towards what it wants to be—and a big part of that interim process is play. I end up trying different colors, adding or removing texture, or in some cases, sanding the panel back to smooth and simply starting again.
One of the other interesting interviews is from Art21, which is a fantastic YouTube channel devoted to art and artists. The video is called Richard Serra: Tools & Strategies and in it Serra was talking about the nature of process, which meant—at least at the time—creating “verb lists” for the materials he was working with, such as “to fold, to cut, to roll, to twist, etc.” He would create his pieces in relation to these verb lists. He said that by following that approach, you don’t become involved with the psychology of the piece or what it’s going to look like. In this way, the process, he says, “divorces you from any notion of metaphor.” In a sense, simply trusting the process will get the art and maybe even the artist where it (and they) need to go.
As I said at the top, I don’t want to assume, but maybe in the quote about art being useless, Serra was trying to make a case for the purity of art in that art doesn’t have to have a specific use or fulfill a particular need. A piece of art then becomes an object that exists solely for itself—it doesn’t need to exist to solve a problem. It just is because the maker wants to make it and see it in the world. It seems as if for Serra and process artists like Rauschenberg and maybe de Kooning, art is a verb in the sense that it’s rooted in the mechanics of the doing—and the end result is simply the evidence of it.
QUESTIONS
If you are an artist, does the work you make have a purpose or serve a need, either practical or existential?
More generally, how important is it that art—either art that you make or art that you view—has meaning or purpose?
Hit reply, leave a comment, or email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com.
LINKS
Conversation with an Artist: Richard Serra
Richard Serra - Talk with Charlie Rose (2001)
Richard Serra on his Drawing (2011)
If you enjoyed this Iteration, it would be great if you would share it with a friend or two and if you’re not yet subscribed, maybe you could do that as well.
Thanks for reading.
I'm not an artist by any means( merely try to improve my photography skills and share the contents with those I snap), but art is important so wonder what frame of mind he was in at the time or more likely what context he meant it in. Thank you for sharing about him.
I was just writing on these same themes myself. Ironically, it takes a lot of work to return to that state of play, but once there it's very worth it.