Iron Giant
Eighteen years ago, I snipped a paragraph out of a magazine mentioning that a museum in Madrid had lost a sculpture that weighed 38 tons. WHAT? The permanence of art one would think is directly correlated to its size or weight. Or cost. Or who made it. Or its subject matter. Or age. Or... But snap, guys, "Didn't you have it? I thought YOU had it." Well, there goes 200,000 bucks. Probs smuggled out in a backpack...
This week a friend sent me a picture she had just taken of a Richard Serra piece, saying how much she loved his control of space and line. I concurred and rattled off a bunch of his works that I have walked around in LA, Seattle, San Francisco, the Dia Beacon outside of New York and... He is a titan -- the real Iron Giant. Over the years, I have watched a couple interviews with him on Youtube, notably one in which he mentions persistence, that 30 years, at the least, should be devoted to understanding one's craft and vision. Persistence. Like Cor-ten steel over time out in salt air... Like tens of tons of battleship hull plates curved into ludicrous and lucious arcs controlling space with grace and silence... It was a moment -- artists emailing mutual awe and respect.
Later that day I found out Richard Serra died. Left this plane. That's it.
For me, the passing of the heavies is like losing another father. Persistence of the vision is a result of showing up, being there, making art. Michael Heizer's persistence with "City" comes to mind, fifty years working on a sculpture. Carmen Herrera painted until she passed at 106. I won't make a list of the old geniuses who still create masterpieces, but their value to our culture is criminally underappreciated. Serra is one of the last of a generation who expanded the visual vocabulary far enough as to circle back around to petroglyphs and shadows, massive simple objects in a landscape, the movement of the sun, light, just light, and a notion of the primitive as the core of our perception, the basest gesture with paint, the floating smudge of radiance. Space itself can be sculpture. As can light...
And so the eclipse is upon us, well-timed, Richard. The radiance of our star will be briefly extinguished next Monday by our closest dance partner. The universe is taking a moment to show us the sun's corona. The surface is 10,000 degrees while the corona of the sun, a thousand miles above the surface, is between a million and two million degrees Fahrenheit. With the disc completely covered, we will have a moment to witness this dancing firestorm before the blinding inferno returns to being unwatchable. See what can't be seen in the only moment it is revealed.
Serra's immense sculpture, "Equal Parallel -- Guernica, Benghazi", all 38 tons of it, was not permanent. Being a sport, he made a replica, and it has been on display since 2009. Richard Serra, with all his immensity and power, was not permanent. But he shone and still shines. The sun returns after the eclipse. What these visionaries create and share with us mortals will endure and continue to inform us of our strength and perceptual powers AND our smallness, our sense of awe, tweaked by the soaring apse of a 1,000 year-old cathedral, or by the elliptical path and the arched steel walls of Serra's primeval temples. Persistence. Yes please and thank you. Vulcan and Hepheastus will be happy to share a frosty beverage with you.
Humans come and go. Even the brilliant ones. Art, well, the good stuff endures. I am making a piece named "Totality". It will be my first round piece in these decades of doing what I do. Circle. Cycles. No corners. It's about time.
And illumination.
Pictures will follow. Can't make this til I see it... Pay attention on Monday, my friends. In some spots the next eclipse won't occur for 800 years. Light sculpture made by itself. And then gone.
Peace and love and thank you Mr Serra for sharing. I will say my personal thank you when the sun is being devoured. Light and shadow...
b mac
