Alanna Spence
Minimalism Seminar
CCA April 2007
Serra, pharm Tilted Arc, Anna Chave, Minimalism and the rhetoric of power
The readings for this week discuss the impact of minimalist sculpture in public places, especially Richard Serra’s, Tilter Arc. Both readings are an interesting perspective into the motivations and social influences that shaped attitudes about Minimalist art both from the artist’s, and public’s perspective.
The Serra article is a transcript of speakers who spoke for or against the removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc sculpture from the front of the Federal Plaza in New York. This permanent, site-specific sculpture was commissioned by the GSA. The sculpture is a long tilted solid wall that was installed in front of the front doors to the federal building. People felt it obstructed easy passage to and from the Federal building and the plaza. Serra intentionally built this piece to re-route people through the plaza. Before the piece was installed, Serra felt people were coming and going, without paying notice to their environment. The fountain in the plaza, the focal piece of the plaza, had been without water since long before Serra’s sculpture was installed. In this sense, I think Serra was successful at making people aware of the space of the plaza. He spent a great deal of time considering the foot traffic before and after his sculpture, and felt his piece was an improvement, not a hindrance on the plaza’s traffic flow.
One hundred and twenty-two people spoke in favor of keeping the sculpture. Fifty-eight spoke in favor of removing the sculpture. Much of the arguments were about giving art a fair shake, and allowing for public pieces that may offend some and please others. That art is a controversial beast and that we need to show tolerance if we are to embrace public art as an enhancement to all of our lives. The arguments in favor of removing the piece had to do not so much with art, but with frustrations that the piece obstructed a once usable space.
Anna Chave’s essay asks questions about why minimalist sculpture is so abusable. She sites an experience where she say two girls kick, and then later kiss, a reflective Donald Judd sculpture while a guard stood by and watched. Was it that, as Judd had called it “absolute power” that made the objects look as though they didn’t need protecting? Is there a masculine, phallic, violent, machismo element to Minimalist sculpture and structure that makes it impervious to public scrutiny and abuse? Was Tony Smith trying to “stamp out” art with his piece: Die, was Serra was trying to slay art by slinging molten lead against a wall wearing full body armor?
Chave sites Crimp as saying Richard Serra’s work was “macho, overbearing, and oppressive.” Serra is a product of the working class. He represents America and American art. Serra worked in steel mills for five years of his young adult life. His father was a steel worker all his life. He has a different perspective on the materials than many artists. He has an experiential connection to the people who make the steel that he uses in his sculptures. I think it is Serra’s connection to the source of American working people that makes him so passionate about his public works. In Chave’s essay, she mentions a Serra quote from the 1960s “It was your job as an artist to redefine the society by the values you were introducing.” I think Serra approached the Tilted Arc project with these same ideas. It is the public’s resistance to change that brought about all that turmoil over the project. I wonder, aside from certain frustration, if Serra had gleaned a little enjoyment out of his work ruffling so many feathers. It certainly made a lot of people spend a great deal of time thinking about what the piece meant for them.
I do see a macho side to Minimalist sculpture, and think as with everything, varying levels exist across the artists (who were mostly men) involved in this movement. Was this need to masculine expression a reaction to social changes in the 1960s? It seems likely to me that feminism, global expansion of industrialism and mass production, and a string of bloody wars could have played a part. I think no matter how conscious or unconscious some of the Minimalist artists were of their relationship with masculinity, power structures and obstruction, their pieces successfully served as social and political catalysts simply by irritating people into action. If nothing else, Serra’s Tilted Arc achieved this goal. Without that piece, how many years would the plaza have remained in disrepair?