Iron Man Part 2

                                Iron Man, Part 2

        Outdoors, the public found the rusty finish of Serra's works objectionable and at times intolerable.  As an example, take Serra’s work called Tilted Arc which was erected in 1981 in Foley Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan in New York City.  It was 120 feet long and 12 feet high and formed a barrier wall that people had to detour around. It was removed in 1989 because of public protest.  The rusty finish was depressing and the shape was rather plain.

In contrast, please look at a maze-like wavy steel sculpture called Inside Out, assembled in 2013 in cooperation with the Gagosian Gallery whose credits appear in the photo.  The dramatic back lighting and the fine vantage point in this photo show the beauty of the sculpture, but it is easy to appreciate that outdoors in overcast flat lighting and with the rusty finish, it could feel like being next to the old Berlin wall or next to a penitentiary.  This phenomenon is becoming more frequent ‒ an interesting work for the enjoyment of art tourists but not for the residents who live next to it every day.

Please view our last Serra work, a tall core-ten work in London called Fulcrum 2 from 1986.  Again the photo presents the work attractively. It consists of a tall plate leaning against a still taller plate with another tall plate leaning against the first two.  Notice the building on the left with a color similar to the Serra work. It seems convincing that these plates can stand this way ‒ barring earthquakes or exceptional winds.

The work is 55 feet tall and composed of five massive plates although the exterior photo shows fewer.  Please look at the photo from inside looking up. How does that make you feel? I know nothing else in sculpture as daring and dangerous looking.

                

    

Serra conceives of and designs these works, but he has fabricators and installers bring them to completion.  Serra has this type large scale work to himself. He probably uses core-ten steel because alternative metals like bronze would be prohibitively expensive at the size and thickness he requires.

 By comparison, the Statue of liberty, by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, is large but hollow with a relatively thin non-loadbearing copper outer skin ‒  one of the first examples of “curtain wall” construction in which an interior structure by Gustave Eiffel bears the load.

In what way are Serra’s works minimal?  Which of his four works shown is least minimal, perhaps lyrical in character?  If these works were made much smaller would they lose their impact? Contrary wise, would the Mona Lisa or Pieta benefit from being made larger?
 Sticking with the idea, Michelangelo’s statue of David in Florence is much larger than life size at 17 feet. What qualities would be gained by making it still larger ‒ or smaller?  There are four famous statues of David, very different from each other. The others are by Donatello, Bernini, and Verrocchio. Those other Davids are lifesize or smaller.

This is a blog about abstract art but we took up matters of scale and sensibility because they apply widely throughout the visual arts as well as in music and literature.