Richard Serra quotes

Richard Serra was an American sculptor renowned for his monumental minimalist steel works. His large-scale installations often invite viewers to interact with and move through the space they occupy. He transformed the boundaries of contemporary sculpture and remains a major influence in the art world. Here are 29 of his quotes:

Most of what you see in architecture are watered-down ideas of sculptors who have come before. (Richard Serra)
I was in analysis and I told my analyst I wanted to be the best sculptor in the world and he said: "Richard, calm down." View quote
Richard Serra
To see is to think, and to think is to see. View quote
Richard Serra
With any work of art, what happens is if you're open to seeing it you probably have a sensation," he tells the talk show host, "and that sensation leads to an experience and that experience is private and deals with your background, where you were born, what you've been exposed to, who you know, what your education was; and it will lead to other ways of thinking about other things. View quote
Richard Serra
I think different people have different problems and different relations to the exhibition of their work. View quote
Richard Serra
But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there's a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that's all art can be. View quote
Richard Serra
But you have to take all of those things, you have to take into consideration the paths, the roadways, how much cloud cover there is, how much foliage cover there is, whether there are streams, all of that comes into play. View quote
Richard Serra
Basically, that is my subject: I use steel to organize space. View quote
Richard Serra
I think if you want to make art, at some point you have to suspend judgment, and you have to involve yourself with play and not worry about the outcome. View quote
Richard Serra
You can talk about the 'how' and the 'what', but "when you get to the "why" it gets a little more difficult. View quote
Richard Serra
Space, as my work evolved, really became my subject. (Richard Serra)
Don't start telling me buildings are works of art, because I don't buy it. View quote
Richard Serra
(.. as a practicing artist) You're competing against who came before and came after. You're just another stone in the wall, and if you make a contribution you're lucky. View quote
Richard Serra
The steel and the space, or the object and the void, become one and the same. View quote
Richard Serra
And certainly the history of public sculpture has been disastrous but that doesn't mean it ought not to continue and the only way it even has a chance to continue is if the work gets out into the public. View quote
Richard Serra
Now when you have administrators deciding what sexuality is, and whats a taboo and whats not in terms of content, you got guys, like, Trent Lott who equates homosexuality with a disease. View quote
Richard Serra
The thing about rigging is, you can learn it if you become a master rigger but there's no book on rigging. View quote
Richard Serra
I started working for Bethlehem Steel when I was about 16 during the summers. View quote
Richard Serra
Basically, what you really want to do is try to engage the viewer's body relation to his thinking and walking and looking, without being overly heavy-handed about it. View quote
Richard Serra
I thought Out of Action was better as a catalogue than the honeycomb because the honeycomb was like walking into one compartment and then another compartment. View quote
Richard Serra
I think this, I think basically I'm not interested in people following my work or making work like my work. (Richard Serra)
I think you always have to find where the boundary is in relation to the context in order to be able to kind of articulate how you want the space to interact with the viewer. View quote
Richard Serra
But I'll try to immerse myself in as many of the formal characteristics of site as possible in the landscape. View quote
Richard Serra
I used to eat lunch with Billy Wilder when I first came out here. View quote
Richard Serra
Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work. View quote
Richard Serra

Richard Serra

Richard Serra - Image
Photo: Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: American Sculptor
Born: November 2, 1938
Died: March 26, 2024
Quotes count: 29
Wikipedia: Richard Serra

Related authors

Bruce Nauman  17 
American Sculptor
Robert Smithson  37 
American Sculptor
Donald Judd  60 
American Artist
Sol LeWitt - thumbnail
Sol LeWitt  34 
American Artist
Constantin Brâncuși - thumbnail
Constantin Brâncuși  18 
Romanian Sculptor
Anish Kapoor - thumbnail
Anish Kapoor  77 
British Artist
Frank Stella  51 
American Painter
Carl Andre  40 
American Artist
Claes Oldenburg  6 
Swedish Sculptor
Dan Flavin  5 
American Sculptor