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Serra has also tried his hand at printmaking, first in 1972 at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Although he has completed about seven series of prints and is accustomed to working with assistants, he is a reluctant printmaker. “I have a resistance to printmaking. One of the problems I’ve found with printmaking, as opposed to drawing, is that it’s mechanical; a quality is invariably lost between the direct expression of the drawing and the print.” [1] His concern for the “mechanical” nature of printmaking seems ironic given his great dependence on steel workers to fabricate and install his large sculptures.
St. Louis is a monotype which the artist, at one time a filmmaker, printed himself for inclusion in a portfolio of prints for the Anthology Film Archives in New York. The print is one of a kind by virtue of its being a monotype, but also because Serra has enhanced the print with black paint stik, the commercial name for oil paint in a stubby crayon-like stick—his favorite medium for drawing. The shape of the flat black image is quasi-triangular: the dominant point of the triangle is at the top of the sheet, defined by the longest edge on the left, and the shortest on the upper right. Its bottom border is not parallel to the lower edge of the paper, but tilts downward to the right.
The design of the print directly relates to and commemorates Serra’s 1982 sculpture commission Twain for a site in downtown St. Louis on axis with Eero Saarinen’s sleek Gateway Arch. Twain consists of eight large steel plates, all ten feet high. Seven of them measure forty feet, while the eighth is fifty feet. Openings large enough for human passage separate one plate from another. Serra’s task was to accommodate existing streets and buildings while directing the focus toward the Arch and the Mississippi River to the west. For Serra this was an unusual assignment: “This piece creates an inside/outside dialogue that no other piece of mine has achieved; it takes you out of the urban landscape and then pulls you into its own constantly shifting containment.” [2] It also creates a dialogue with Saarinen’s arch: horizontal versus vertical; dark versus light; and enclosed versus open.
While Twain was special because of its inside/outside dialogue, it was not exceptional in the controversy that it generated. Funded by a National Endowment for Art in Public Places grant, the project was delayed by local politicians. When it came to fruition, a relieved Serra commented: “I’ve waited eight years to see through this piece and into this piece, and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been with a project.” [3] Its title, Twain, probably originated with Serra and speaks not only of its location near the Mississippi River, so intimately associated with the writer Mark Twain, but also of the gulf between artist and politicians and of the demarcation line that divides the country, much like Rudyard Kipling’s famous line in The Ballad of East and West, “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
Notes:
[1] Serra quoted in Mark Rosenthal, Artists of Gemini G.E.L. Celebrating the 25th Year (New York: Harry N. Abrams and Los Angeles: Gemini, 1993), 160.
[2] Serra quoted in Harriet F. Senie, “The Right Stuff,” Art News (March 1984), 52.
[3] Serra quoted in Senie, “The Right Stuff,” 52.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History
DepartmentAmerican Art
St. Louis
Artist
Richard Serra
(born 1938)
Date1982
Mediummonotype and Paintstik on German Etching paper
DimensionsFrame: 44 3/4 x 33 3/4 in. (113.7 x 85.7 cm)
Paper (approximate): 42 x 31 in. (106.7 x 78.7 cm)
SignedRichard Serra
Credit LineGift of the American Art Foundation
Copyright© 2021 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number1984.2.1.g
DescriptionSculptors who specialize in site-specific work face the dilemma of what to exhibit in gallery and museum shows. Some display models and working drawings, while others develop independent bodies of work. Richard Serra creates smaller pieces in his canonic weatherproof steel which employ the same aesthetic as his outdoor work: simple geometric forms often composed in a dynamically balanced way. In addition, he makes drawings that resemble the sculptures: large, abstract, flat, and frequently inventive in their placement across corners of a gallery or low down on the wall. Serra has also tried his hand at printmaking, first in 1972 at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Although he has completed about seven series of prints and is accustomed to working with assistants, he is a reluctant printmaker. “I have a resistance to printmaking. One of the problems I’ve found with printmaking, as opposed to drawing, is that it’s mechanical; a quality is invariably lost between the direct expression of the drawing and the print.” [1] His concern for the “mechanical” nature of printmaking seems ironic given his great dependence on steel workers to fabricate and install his large sculptures.
St. Louis is a monotype which the artist, at one time a filmmaker, printed himself for inclusion in a portfolio of prints for the Anthology Film Archives in New York. The print is one of a kind by virtue of its being a monotype, but also because Serra has enhanced the print with black paint stik, the commercial name for oil paint in a stubby crayon-like stick—his favorite medium for drawing. The shape of the flat black image is quasi-triangular: the dominant point of the triangle is at the top of the sheet, defined by the longest edge on the left, and the shortest on the upper right. Its bottom border is not parallel to the lower edge of the paper, but tilts downward to the right.
The design of the print directly relates to and commemorates Serra’s 1982 sculpture commission Twain for a site in downtown St. Louis on axis with Eero Saarinen’s sleek Gateway Arch. Twain consists of eight large steel plates, all ten feet high. Seven of them measure forty feet, while the eighth is fifty feet. Openings large enough for human passage separate one plate from another. Serra’s task was to accommodate existing streets and buildings while directing the focus toward the Arch and the Mississippi River to the west. For Serra this was an unusual assignment: “This piece creates an inside/outside dialogue that no other piece of mine has achieved; it takes you out of the urban landscape and then pulls you into its own constantly shifting containment.” [2] It also creates a dialogue with Saarinen’s arch: horizontal versus vertical; dark versus light; and enclosed versus open.
While Twain was special because of its inside/outside dialogue, it was not exceptional in the controversy that it generated. Funded by a National Endowment for Art in Public Places grant, the project was delayed by local politicians. When it came to fruition, a relieved Serra commented: “I’ve waited eight years to see through this piece and into this piece, and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been with a project.” [3] Its title, Twain, probably originated with Serra and speaks not only of its location near the Mississippi River, so intimately associated with the writer Mark Twain, but also of the gulf between artist and politicians and of the demarcation line that divides the country, much like Rudyard Kipling’s famous line in The Ballad of East and West, “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
Notes:
[1] Serra quoted in Mark Rosenthal, Artists of Gemini G.E.L. Celebrating the 25th Year (New York: Harry N. Abrams and Los Angeles: Gemini, 1993), 160.
[2] Serra quoted in Harriet F. Senie, “The Right Stuff,” Art News (March 1984), 52.
[3] Serra quoted in Senie, “The Right Stuff,” 52.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History
Status
Not on viewCollections