RIP sculptor Richard Serra. One of my first pieces as an art writer was on Serra, who had come to the Detroit Institute of Art in the 1980s after they had acquired one of his sculptures, Mozarabe, currently installed in the sculpture garden at College for Creative Studies. I got the assignment and was working at my day job when I got a call at my desk. The voice on the other end said, "This is Richard Serra. Do I know you?" I told him that I was assigned to cover his lecture for Detroit Focus Quarterly, the publication of the nonprofit arts space I was associated with. We agreed to meet at the museum before his lecture where we had a conversation. He invited me to be his guest at the patron dinner being held in conjunction with the lecture. I hadn't been to one of those things at that point and declined, not only out of anxiety but because my grandfather was in the hospital and I needed to see him before visiting hours ended. (Click here for a PDF of the article, and remember I was pretty much just a kid when I wrote it.)
Many years later, when I was living in New York and working on my MA at The New School, I went to his opening at Gagosian Gallery, which was kind of a coming out party for the New York art world after September 11. Serra's show had been postponed as his studio was in the frozen zone of lower Manhattan in the wake of the World Trade Center attack and he was unable to move his sculpture that was supposed to be part of the exhibition. The opening was over the top. There was a cornucopia of food and drink, something New York galleries rarely did especially when it came to the great unwashed. Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg were there as was Gwyneth Paltrow. The artist Alfred Leslie was also having a show in Chelsea a couple of blocks away and he ditched his own opening to attend the Serra event. I literally ran into Julian Schnabel coming out of one of the sculptures. (I made him say "Hi" first 😉) I wrote about the show for Sculpture Magazine (September 2004, pp 72-73), a pretty decent piece of writing if I have to say so myself. (Click here for a PDF of the article.)
I love his work and was fortunate to have one of his prints in my office when I was a corporate exec.
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