In Constant Motion—Richard Serra’s ‘Waxing Arcs’
From October 2014 the gallery on the street side of the Boijmans, also known as the Serra Gallery, will feature the history of ‘Waxing Arcs’, a work by Richard Serra (San Francisco, 1938). Two large steel arcs in an empty room, it is perhaps one of the museum’s best known works - but it may also be one of the least understood. Certainly no one could guess the history and stories behind the striking rusty arcs in the large gallery overlooking the street. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s In Constant Motion - Richard Serra’s ‘Waxing Arcs’ brings one of the museum’s most striking artworks to life, giving visitors a glimpse of what normally remains hidden.
The multimedia show In Constant Motion opens in the Serra Gallery in October 2014. It examines the history of Richard Serra’s ‘Waxing Arcs’ and the way artworks change over time. The presentation is part of an extensive programme centred on Richard Serra, which includes a symposium and a film cycle.
Richard Serra
The American sculptor and film and video artist Richard Serra (San Francisco 1938) is famed above all for his minimalist metal structures. Many of these sculptures emphasize the weight of the material and are made for specific sites or spaces. Serra was born in San Francisco in 1938. From 1957 to 1961 he studied English literature and helped support himself while still a student by working in a local steel mill. From 1961 to 1964 he trained at Yale University’s art academy in New Haven. In 1964/1965 he won a Fulbright Scholarship that let him live for a time in Paris, where he met the artist Nancy Graves and the composer Philip Glass, and encountered the work of Constantin Brancusi. He made many sketches and drawings of Brancusi’s sculptures. Serra saw Brancusi’s oeuvre as a ‘handbook of possibilities’. It was his first step on the road to sculpture. In 1967 he went to live in New York, where he made a series of sculptures from non-traditional materials like rubber and neon tubing. Soon afterwards he made his first works from lead. In New York he met artists like Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson and Dan Graham. Serra gradually developed a fascination with the space around his sculptures. This ultimately led to large-scale, site-specific works that had a dramatic impact on the surrounding space. Examples include ‘Waxing Arcs’ (1980) in the Boijmans, ‘Tilted Arc’ (1981), which once stood in Federal Plaza in New York, and ‘Matter of Time’ (2005) in the Guggenheim Bilbao. Aside from his sculptures, Serra also works with film, video, performance and drawings and prints.
New experience
Serra made ‘Waxing Arcs’ in 1980 especially for his solo exhibition in the museum. Immediately afterwards it was purchased by the then director Wim Beeren. Serra’s underlying concept behind the imposing and carefully positioned work was that visitors would experience the space differently when they walked past it.
Part of the architecture
Since the 1980s, however, the museum’s architecture has been changed several times - and the gallery for which the artwork was originally made was drastically altered. This caused a dramatic change in visitor flows (the museum’s entrance was once next to the present gallery and was later moved to the middle of the space). The original staircase between the arcs was replaced by a sloping walkway, the ceiling was raised and the tiles made way for a concrete floor. Even the artwork itself has been affected; the whole thing has been replaced by a new version with a different curve and different dimensions. This second version is more than a metre higher and half a centimetre thicker than the original. The gallery itself has doubled in size and is often used to display other artworks.
Multimedia
So that visitors can experience Serra’s original intentions, the space around the arcs will be emptied for the duration of the exhibition. A thirteen-minute multimedia presentation with photographs, film clips and sound immerses visitors in the story of ‘Waxing Arcs’ and the artist Richard Serra, the history of the work and the experience of the space.
New meaning
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s exhibition shows how the appearance and meaning of works of art are not fixed, but change. There are site-specific works by Serra and some early works in rubber and neon, drawings and films in Dutch public collections. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has one of these site-specific artworks, fourteen films and videos and four drawings.
Symposium
On 14 November 2014, in association with the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK), there will be a symposium examining various works by Serra in Dutch museums. The speakers will be restorers and conservators who work at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Bonnefantenmuseum and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. All these museums have work by Richard Serra in their collections. The SBMK will give a short introduction and art historian Jan van Adrichem will open the proceedings.