Richard Serra standing in Two Corner Cut: High Low (2012), a site-specific drawing he just created for The Menil Collection in Houston.
This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features Richard Serra, our greatest living sculptor. A retrospective of his drawings has just opened at its originating institution, The Menil Collection. It will be on view through June 10. The exhibition was previously at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was organized by the Menil’s Michelle White and Bernice Rose, and SFMOMA’s Gary Garrels.
The Menil installation results in an exhibition that bears virtually no resemblance to the presentation at the Met. The spaces are more thoughtfully created to emphasize the physicality of the work and they’re better-lit. The show’s narrative is clearer. Just as great: Serra has created a site-specific drawing for the Menil, Two Corner Cut: High Low. White and Serra have installed it in the last gallery of the show — and to me it’s the best work there. It’s the rare, remarkable drawing that leaves a viewer feeling unsteady and disoriented.
On the program, Serra and I discuss:
- How the Met’s installation of the exhibition stacks up against the Menil’s presentation;
- The new, site-specific drawing installation he did for the Menil, Two Corner Cut: High Low;
- The role drawing played in Serra’s acceptance into Yale’s art school;
- The relationship between steel and Serra’s formative years in San Francisco;
- Why Serra thinks there’s a link between his landmark Pulitzer Piece and the first anti-Vietnam War newspaper editorial;
- The emotional responses that viewers have to his torqued ellipses and spirals, complete with special on-tape appearances by Kirk Varnedoe and Emily Rauh Pulitzer; and
- What happened when Richard Serra cut into one of Tadao Ando’s architectural models as he suggested a modification to an Ando design.
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The Modern Art Notes Podcast is an independent production of Modern Art Notes Media. It is released under this Creative Commons license. This week’s program was edited by Wilson Butterworth.
You can also stream the show from the MANPodcast.com post immediately below this one.
