In each separate historical period, the artist seeks to bring the spirit of this time. He achieves this through topics, techniques, or materials. So, for example, Andy Warhol began to use the techniques of mass marketing in art, or Richard Serra brought the steel melting process to the sculpture, which had not been used before. I examine here the reasons for creating the video works “Hand catches lead” in 1968 and “Boomerang” in 1974 by Richard Serra.
With the advent of the opportunity to use video on daily use, artists have paid special attention to this medium. in 1967 SONY developed the brand "Portapack" the first portable video cameras available to everyone. And then immediately a generation of artists reacted to a newly accessible medium.
A Sony DV-2400 Portapak [Photography] At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portapak(Accessed 16.03.2020)
The pioneers of video art Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, as well as Bruce Conner, Ron Rice, Jack Smith, Rainer Yvonne, Warhol and others, began to reflect issues of movement, time and all that a static photograph could not convey. “… “opticality” was also serving as more than just a feature of art; it had become a medium of art.” (Krauss, 1999 p.30)
So, delving into a more detailed analysis of the work, we can say that the issues of repetition, movement and the passage of time were important for Richard Serra. He creates a "Verblist", which he calls "actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process." (MOMA). He will reveal and analyse them together or separately in his subsequent artworks.
Richard Serra, Verblist, 1967–68, Pencil on two sheets of paper, (25.4 x 21.6 cm) (each) © 2020 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [Drawing] At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/152793 (Accessed 16.03.2020)
«...I was building sculpture, using material for the sake of its manipulative possibilities. Seeing "Chelsea Girls" and Yvonne's hand film, I felt that making film was open to me. Up to that point, I'd felt a difference for film, and maybe I was a little bit frightened of it; I wouldn't have picked up a camera. That must been in '67 and then we started to shoot film in '68.» (Serra, 1979) Some times the operator of his films was Kathryn Bigelow and not artist himself.
The 1968 video, Hand Catching Lead, is a repeating process in which the hand catches pieces of lead material. As this metal is a dirty material, the fingers gradually turn black. This shows the involvement of the human body as an integral part of the creation of art, certain materiality of the process. Lead as a material also was chosen not by chance, Serra worked at a steel mill, which allover him to learn the whole process of melting inside-out. That what made a difference for the future life of the artist.
Also, Serra denied spontaneity and chance, contrary it is important for him to evaluate the process itself and the time that the viewer spends on viewing the work. If Serra’s later sculptures need to be felt physically by our body, often viewer needs to walk through the sculpture, then in the video, Serra determines the time spent on viewing the work with the duration of this video series.
Lucky Llamas (2003) Seeing the landscape: Richard Serra's te tuhirangi contour, prod./dir. Alberta Chu [Photography] At: http://www.asklabs.com/seeing-the-landscape-serra#/i/3(Accessed 16.03.2020)
The following films, for example, 1974 Boomerang or 1973 Television Delivers People, examen the deeper issues of materiality, the reflection of space, time, and begin to criticize. “… only Serra himself immediately acknowledged that video was in fact television, which means a broadcast medium, one that splinters spatial continuity into remote sites of transmission and reception.” (Krauss, 1999 p.30) So in Boomerang Nancy “Holt's words are fed back to her through headphones with a one-second delay. She describes the experience, in which her words are suspended in time and space, as "a world of double reflections and refractions." As her voice echoes back to her, she continues, "words become like things," disconnected from their individual meanings and from their contexts. This interferes with Holt's thought process and establishes a distance between the artist and her sense of self, an effect intensified when pre-recorded sound samples are played or when glitches in the broadcast cause momentary periods of silence” (MOMA, online)
Here the video, like a medium, shows such effects that Serra probably could have experienced in his large works when the viewer's words echo off the iron sculpture. But in sculpture, this experience is natural, such as it exists in nature. The new medium (video) allows revealing the meaning of words and context at the angle of this medium itself. Here, as it were, what the video was created for is contrasted with it.
Serra, Richard: The Matter of Time, weathering steel sculpture, 1994–2005; in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. [online] At: https://www.britannica.com/art/Praemium-Imperiale (Accessed 16.03.2020)
As according to Greenberg - discipline should be criticized by the procedures of the discipline itself. So the video can reproduce the process, and therefore it is necessary to consider it through this process. Serra contrasted two processes - a recorded dialogue with a difference of a second. And then the questions of timeliness and context were raised.
From this sample, we can say that the characteristic of the video is its broadcast in space. For example, one screen can show the same object to different viewers here and there. Serra also contrasted this point - what is transmitted? the video to the viewer or the viewer to the video?
Summing up, we can distinguish that, the specifics of the medium, which appeared just at the beginning of the formation of the Serra art language, made it possible to consider the issues of interest to the artist from a different angle. In addition to sculptures, the artist analyzes time, its boundaries, material, viewer, process, repetition and much more through a new medium. The reasons for using the new medium for the artist is a keen interest in the new and the ability to develop issues of interest through relevant techniques.
Bibliography and references
1. Thomson-Jones, K. , (2015) The Philosophy of Digital Art [online] At: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/digital-art/ (Accessed 13.03.2020)
2. Krauss R. 1999 A Voyage on the North Sea. Art in the Age of the post-medium condition, Thames&Hudson Ltd.
3. Garage Museum, GARAGEMCA (2014) Lecture of Irina Kulik “Richard Serra - Anish Kapoor” [online] At: https://youtu.be/iCPt02GIfdo (Accessed 14.03.2020)
4. Wikipedia, Video art [online] At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_art (Accessed 15.03.2020)
5. MOMA, Richard Serra 1974 Boomerang [online] At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/143808 (Accessed 15.03.2020)
6. Greenberg Clement 1960 Modernist Painting
7. Michelson A., et al. “The Films of Richard Serra: An Interview.” Autumn, vol. 10, 1979 [online] At: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778630?origin=crossref&seq=1(Accessed 16.03.2020)
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