I’m Sorry, Mr. Serra

Schunnemunk Fork, 1990-91 @ Storm King

It was a perfect day for Storm King (if not for Banana Fish). I was with a few friends, we were full from lunch eaten during the drive up and happy and lazy and warm but not too warm and we were lounging near your installations, out far beyond the main stone house where the Noguchi sculptures are, and mostly alone.

As we sat there, I experienced an odd mix of nostalgia, feeling young like a teenager, happy to be out of reach of the authority of parents and other grownups, then younger still because the expanse of sky and field made me feel small in the way that trying to reach for the Doublemint gum tucked away in my grandmother’s (I kid you not) ceramic cabbage that was waaaay back tucked away on her very tall counter. It required all kinds of gymnastics for me to get up there, but I had my eye on the prize. It turns out that that counter isn’t high at all, in fact it’s a bit on the low side. But I was small and everything seemed big, and I was alone in that world but not so totally alone that I felt scared or unsafe.

So we were sitting there, and I was feeling both wondrous and rebellious at the same time and I just really couldn’t help diving deeper into those feelings. We were on the small embankment, where one of the forks slices into earth and disappears. Looking at it from there, the razor thin profile stretched out straight as an arrow as the grassy ground fell out of sight. Sure there were signs. They didn’t say “Do Not Touch” but I’m pretty sure that they said “Do Not Walk on the Artwork”. I couldn’t help it, though - I knew that if I walked out on along that edge, I’d feel closer to the sky, which was so perfectly blue with just the right amount of clouds, and just far enough away from the ground to give me the slightest shiver of danger. (Like wading out just a bit into a calm ocean while your parents watched vigilantly from the shore.) And so I walked and my friends coaxed me along and once I caught my balance and could be there in the moment, closer to the sky with the ground far away, I felt everything I thought I might and it was amazing. So, I’m sorry Mr. Serra, but also thanks for making those things that you did and putting them there.

What got me thinking about Serra was Michael Kimmelman’s piece in the New York Times the other day: Abstract Art’s New World, Forged for All. Kimmelman describes Serra’s new permanent installation at the Gugg in Bilbao as “one of the great works of the past half-century, the culmination of a remarkable fruition in Mr. Serra’s career.”

Torqued Elipses @ DIA: Beacon

If this hot weather holds, visiting Serra’s Forks installation would be unbearable, but DIA: Beacon houses his Torqued Elipses, and the concrete floor stays cool beneath your feet and you can run your hands alongs the curves of the sculptures as you get lost in their pathways.