Richard Serra
Pasadena Art Museum 1970
Exhibition catalogue
Spiral binding, 27 p
24,8 × 19,6 cm
Text in English
Rare publication
Published on the occasion of Richard Serra’s first solo museum exhibition that took place at the Pasadena Art Museum from 26 February to 1st March 1970, this sublime publication shows views of this site-specific exhibition and its preparation through full-page photographs of great beauty, as well as a few drawings. An uncut gem.
For this exhibition, Serra has filled one entire room with gigantic red fir logs – 80mtons of them – that shout for attention.
The overall product is labeled sculpture. It consists of 12 individual logs, originally 20 to 25 feet long, about 4v feet in diameter and provided by trees that were 400 to 500 years old. They lie athwart a cement base 50 feet long, 7 feet wide and 10 inches high. The overhang at each side has been sliced off by a commercial tree expert wielding a power saw under the artist’s direction. The severed hunks rest where they fell at miscellaneous angles to the main mass. It is significant, Serra explains, that the 36 pieces resulting from this trisection “found their places according to the process in which they were done, not by arrangement and placing. It reveals what was done and how.” Another vital element is the sculpture’s relationship to the room housing it. “This piece was made for this place, in this place,” Serra noted. “This is different from shipping things around, or constructing things meant to be shipped around or reviewing things after they have already been made.”
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