Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective

Two works in Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) reveal primary elements of the artist’s practice. The first is Hands Tied (1968), in which a man’s hands (likely Serra’s) are shown bound together at the wrists with rough, hairy twine. Over the course of three-and-a-half minutes, the fingers struggle to reach and untie a central knot. The hands bob in and out of the frame, sometimes centered but often almost disappearing from view in the course of extricating themselves from confinement. Eventually the cord is un-looped and with a slight flicking motion the hands are free of the twine, but then the video begins again. Like all of Serra’s works, it is concretely physical but also symbolic, a work whose straightforward presentation states its intentions with hyper-masculine clarity. But metaphor and allegory lie just underneath the surface of the direct and unmediated action. The hands of the artist, bound and struggling, become free, and then the process begins again anew: is there a better allegory for creation? After all, it is not the freedom gained at the end (the apparent goal) that creates the drama of the piece—it’s the limitation imposed by the cord and the way in which the hands exert themselves against confinement, over and over again.

The use of constraints, both invisible and apparent, comes up repeatedly in Serra’s work, in everything from his ascetic lexicon of materials for sculpture to the creation of drawings only in black. Another piece that reveals in direct fashion the innermost workings of both the artist’s mind and his actual constructive processes is Verb List (1967–68), a catalog of actions that Serra used to investigate the physical and

Richard Serra, Hands Tied, 1968; 16 mm black-and-white film transferred to DVD; TRT: 3:30 min.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Circulating Film Library. © 2010 Richard Serra /Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.

metaphysical properties of his materials. “To roll,” “to bend,” and “to fold” tell us about the ways in which Serra conceived of the phenomenal aspects of making his work, but “to expand” and “to distill” are more than merely corporeal. Further still, “of friction,” “of location,” and “of context” show the expansiveness of his thinking and relate closely to the drawings in the galleries. And ultimately, “to continue,” the list’s final action, signals not only the omega but also the alpha point in his work.

Those new to Serra’s work might want to view these works first, using them as a foundational intellectual platform from which to view his drawings and sculptures; those already accustomed to Serra’s work may want to use these pieces as a way to reinvestigate the familiar.

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through January 16, 2012.