Immense in scale and utterly enthralling in appearance, Periodic Table from 1991 is an arresting example of Richard Serra’s exquisite corpus of paintstick compositions. Commenced in the 1970s, the paintstick drawings represent an intensely physical endeavor for Serra. He began by melting down multiple sticks and pressing them into large paintstick “bricks,” which allowed him to tackle his medium with both hands. Attaching large sheets of paper to the wall and pressing the full weight of his body against the paint brick, Serra applies his medium with repetitive, vigorous gestures. In some areas, he presses molten paintstick through a screen of wire mesh, producing a thickly flecked texture that protrudes from the surface. In this way Serra actively engages with the entirety of the picture plane, utilizing his full bodily strength as well as his tremendous artistic ingenuity. Works such as Periodic Table thus exemplify Serra’s position as one of the great inventors of twentieth century art, his transformative praxis challenging the very notion of drawing and its role in the traditional hierarchy of media.

Expanding nearly seven feet high and over twelve feet across, the present work achieves an exceptional balance between elegant simplicity and imposing spectacle. Famed for his monumental installations, Serra conveys the phenomenology of process, weight, and gravity through his towering sculptures, yet a similar approach to materiality and monumentality is manifest within his drawings as well. In works like Periodic Table, Serra translates onto a single plane the same depth, gravitas, and vitality present in his three-dimensional creations. Befitting their importance, similar works from the series reside in such prestigious collections as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Here, the drawing’s surface is densely textured with rich black material that swallows the surround light like a void; as Serra has written, “Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed field… Since black is the densest color material, it absorbs and dissipates light to a maximum and thereby changes the artificial as well as the natural light in a given room. A black shape can hold its space and place in relation to a larger volume and alter the mass of that volume readily.” (The artist in “Notes on Drawing,” in Exh. Cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, 2011, n.p.) These dense, saturated passages are offset by the central section of exposed paper that fragments the two black halves. This stark interruption brings Periodic Table to rest on the precipice of balance and imbalance, a quality it shares with the very best of Serra’s masterly body of work.

Drawing and sculpture are inextricably linked in Serra’s oeuvre. While many sculptors practice drawing as a means of making studies that will be converted to the three dimensional, Serra instead creates these works for their own sake. His drawings, rather than being subservient to his sculpture, advance similar ideas through a different medium. While his sculptures appear to challenge gravity through the use of architectural materials, the works on paper rely on perception. Although flat, they impose themselves physically, their grand scale and geometric forms resembling vertical tectonic plates anchored in space. Their intensely tactile surfaces, physically built up with impenetrable, waxy pigment, evince a palpable weight resembling the weathered steel plates Serra often prefers. Iron strength is implied by their rough, dense blackness; the two solid blocks of pigment flex muscularly across the picture plane just as Serra’s sculptures expand powerfully through space.