more corner forms...

after posting the image of richard serra's Gutter Corner Splash: Late Shift, 1969/1995 yesterday morning, today arrived in the mail a book of interviews with serra from 1980 which i won on ebay. serra had not been much on my mind of late, but as i already had scored an incredible book from the seller (one which will definitely make an appearance here soon!), the serra book was cheap and seemed a potential good read, and the combined shipping was too good to pass up.

as these things tend to happen, the serra book arrived right after i posted the image related to his gutter corner splash, and lo and behold in this book are some wonderful images of serra making the first incarnation of the piece, entitled 'casting', inside jasper johns studio!

beyond the visual similarity of the corner forms, i think the relationship between the images of serra and an imaginary gardener making corners on the ground is interesting. both involve a physical process, both involve tools specific to the environment and materials, and in both cases, beautiful geometric wedges are built with the help of both dirty hands and gravity. i don't often think of serra's work in relation to ritual and alchemy, but i like the idea that one can find more of a connection between these two images than one would initially suspect.

serra never seems like a card carrying minimalist, fitting much more uncomfortably between things like minimalism and someone like smithson. certainly throwing molten lead into corner forms is not indicative of most of his processes, but it is insightful as to a potential ritualistic nature in his works. in some ways, it opens the door to a different kind of dialog, where one sees him not only in relation to the gardener (the sculptor), but to a shaman, with his larger works in relation to totems, and perhaps altars. i highly doubt this subjective view holds much water, but it is a beautiful thing when two images collide and can generate ideas, even if they are full of holes, and far from reality...

forms of corners in rooms and in gardens...

the image on the top is from an american home magazine from the 1930's. unfortunately i forgot to notate what issue and exactly what year it is from. the image, from an article on home gardening, attracted me initially simply because of the drawing style, which i think is pretty great.

while clearing some clippings off my studio desk this morning, i found the image again, and i realized how much the wedge shaped troughs reminded me of an early richard serra piece, Gutter Corner Splash: Late Shift, 1969/1995, where he threw hot lead into corners of a room, with the final installation consisting of the lead corners strewn on the floor. the piece is owned by sfmoma, and i remember seeing it installed a few years ago. there's more info here, including some nice little quicktime movies.

thinking differently in each direction...

"i keep thinking of a very simple phenomenon that struck me when i was a little kid. i used to walk to the beach every day, down to the end of a jetty and back the other way, and it always struck me as being completely significant that the ocean was on the left when i was going down, and when i turned around, it was on the right, and i had a totally different experience just from turning around and walking the other way. i always thought this was very curious. i always thought there were two different places. everybody knows that you don't have the same experience in turnabout - your relation to the sun has completely changed, left/right brain coordinates are off - everything is different. in fact, you probably have a side you favor as you walk. you probably think differently in each direction. your anticipation and memory change. to me, that's a sculptural concept. if a sculpture allows for that experience, it implies self-awareness. the content of the work is that the viewer looks at himself in relation to what he's looking at..."

richard serra, interviewed in the pratt journal of architecture, 1985.
(images from todd's new astronomy)