192 Books, New York
November 2018
Art historian and critic Hal Foster gave an introduction to Conversations About Sculpture, a new volume bringing together talks between Richard Serra and Foster over a fifteen-year period.
Thursday, November 29, 7 PM (free and open to the public) 192 Books, 192 10th Avenue
Published this month, the book examines Serra’s life and work, offering insight into six decades of artistic practice committed to sculptural form and his belief in sculpture as experience. As the artist has said, "The rhythm of the body moving through space has been the motivating source of most of my work." Introduced by Foster, who also wrote the text in Richard Serra: Early Work, the catalogue accompanying the critically acclaimed exhibition at David Zwirner in New York in 2013, Conversations about Sculpture is both candid and provocative. Ranging from the intimate to the analytical, these dialogues cover subjects including Serra’s work in steel mills as a young man, the impact of music, dance, and architecture on his art, sources of inspiration from Donatello and Brancusi to Japanese gardens and Machu Picchu, and the trials his groundbreaking work has faced.
This year, Serra received a J. Paul Getty Medal for his contribution to the arts. James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, praised his ability to “transform our ideas about sculpture itself." "No living sculptor has shown a more radical ongoing capacity to rethink fundamentals," David Carrier wrote in a review of the artist’s most recent solo exhibition at David Zwirner; "Serra is a great artist because he remains wonderfully innovative."
Image: Installation view, Richard Serra: Sculpture and Drawings, David Zwirner, New York, 2017