Richard Serra And Scottish Farmers From 3200 B.C.

Richard Serra is probably one of the most well know contemporary artists who's sculpture is primarily made from steel and other industrial materials. Richard Serra's Art21 segment is worth watching, as he explains how he came to using these materials and also shows the enormity, precision, and excess of how his sculptures work. You also get to see the installation process, which is an art itself. 

When I lived in New York City, I got to see a few Serra sculptures, including walking through "Open Ended" (see below) at the Gagosian Gallery. 

I'm writing about Serra because I recently read an article in Artforum about his new installation in the Brouq Nature Reserve in Qatar: "East-West/West-East".

"East-West/West-East" is composed of four steel plates...

"...thirteen feet wide, but the two outer ones are fifty-five feet high while the two inner are forty-eight feet. These height differences adjust for terrain changes, as the tops of the slabs are calibrated to be exactly even with one another and roughly level with the low plateaus that, formed long ago by the sea, frame the piece to the north and the south. As you walk from east to west and back again (rendering literal the first meaning of the title), you register the line of the plates and sense the evenness of the tops. You also perceive that the middle interval, between the second and third slabs, is greater than the others (the middle section is 450 yards, while the first is 173 and the third 301); this is so because the plates are positioned not with an eye toward even spacing, but at precisely those points in the landscape that allow the tops to be level."

"The very character of the slabs seems to alter as you proceed: From afar they are broad planes; as you approach they become massive objects (the two outer plates weigh eighty tons each; the two inner, seventy-five tons); and, finally, as you pass by them they thin to sheer lines (each is only about five and a half inches thick)."

(Serra in the Desert, Hal Foster, Artforum, Sept. 2014)

In traditional Serra style, "East-West/West-East" is both massive and masculine yet beautiful and delicate. Think about walking the desert (natural) and seeing these massive steel (manmade) structures, and contemplating their relationship and the influence we (humans) continually have over nature. But forget the conceptual piece to the installation, seeing the raw steel "freestanding" in the empty desert (a blank canvas) must be stunning. Like all Serra pieces, photographs don't do them justice. 

The day after I read the article in Artforum, I saw the August 2014 issue of National Geographic on my kitchen counter: 

I was immediately struck by the similarities of these two sculptural works of art. The National Geographic article is about Scottish farmers and herdsmen on Orkney Island around 3200 B.C. who created buildings out of sandstone, the remains of which still stand today.

Unless Richard Serra agrees to an interview, we may never know if he's seen or been inspired by these structures. While Serra's installation has a conceptual purpose, specifically with aligning the tops of the steel, as well as dividing the vast desert into unique segments, not to mention the title that literally comments on the relationship between the "Eastern" world with the "Western" world, and the continual growth and power of the installation's region, the Scottish remains are brilliant in their imperfection and casual placement. There's also an arbitrary nature to why certain segments of this structure remain and others did not. They are accidental pieces of art, rather than precise, as with "East-West/West-East". One must be impressed by the means to which the Scottish structures were erected in a time without modern industrial equipment. I think it we could all agree that both installations are remarkable for many similar and dissimilar reasons. 

In essence, this essay is about the connection between contemporary art and the often-overlooked art of centuries ago. One question continues to revolve in my head: Can an "original" piece of art still be made? I don't have the answer to this question, and quite frankly, I enjoy making and viewing art that comments on past and/or present everyday life or directly references past and/or present art, whether through appropriation or the use of similar media. 

That said, it is a question that every artist contemplates, and at times obsesses over, throughout the course of a life as an artist.