A standing-room-only crowd of enthusiastic supporters was captivated at the recent visit of renowned contemporary American art sculptor Richard Serra at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (MCASD). Serra has been commissioned by the MCASD to create and install a site-specific public art sculpture at the MCASD downtown. Dr. Hugh Davies, the David C. Copley director, acknowledged the generous contributions of the Dr. Charles C. Edwards family and J. Todd Figi for making this monumental work possible.
The sculpture will consist of six forged steel blocks, each 52 by 58 by 64 inches and weighing 27 tons.
Davies was joined in welcoming Serra by Dr. Derrick Cartwright, executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art.
When Serra first visited the Santa Fe Depot, he was taken with the classical, beautiful Spanish building with its sequence of arches. When he found out there was the possibility of putting a sculpture within the arches of the portico, he liked the building’s historical aura and began to wonder how he could deal with the circulation of the train, the tracks and the museum to the passerby.
Taking into account all of these elements, Serra had a model made by the same people who are renovating the gallery. After reviewing the model, the proposal was made and accepted; work on the construction has been going on for five years. One of the steel blocks recently was installed and adjusted. Serra was pleased with the outcome.
The artist went on to explain that when the blocks are viewed from the height, width and depth perspective, each becomes a different image to the viewer. Taking those three combinations in turn yields six different spaces, and even though the blocks are identical, each space will read differently.
“Perception is not only a way of seeing, but it is also a way of thinking,” Serra explained. “Basically, the way to see is to think, and if people become engaged with the work on that level, of where they become involved with what these elements are doing relating to how they pass by, then they start adjusting their scale to the scale of the elevations in rotation to the sequence of the pieces.
“That will make them think of something that had not occurred to them in relation to the form that is very fundamental in relation to the volume of that space.”
There is something about aesthetic sensibilities that can develop and often it occurs through a certain kind of mental activity. Serra cited the range of artists, from Giacometti to Cezanne to Pollock to Warhol, noting there’s not familiarity to it, it just takes a generation of people, decade after decade, to reformulate whatever the experimentation may be.
The sculpture here can stand on its own in relation to its public space.
Serra stated that “when you leave a body of work, you hope that through your work new artists will be empowered to find their own individual expression and do their own work for their own context in time.”
“I am very happy that this piece is here because for some young artist, it may provide the inspiration they desire,” he added.
The installation completion date of the currently named “Untitled,” commissioned for the Jacobs Building at the Santa Fe Depot space, is January 2007.
A model of Serra’s installation and planned building is displayed at MCASD, La Jolla, 700 Prospect St. For further information, call MCASD, (858) 454-3541.