Richard Serra

Green Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above circa 1969

This work is in very good condition. All surfaces nuances appear inherent to the artist's working method. There are scattered minor surface abrasions consistent with the resting points of the sculpture as a floor piece.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"Many Modernists were committed to geometry – the squares of Malevich, the grids of Mondrian, the cubes, cylinders, and spirals of Tatlin, and so on – and many minimalists appeared to take this commitment to the limit – to reduce the object to its formal essence.  For this reason Minimalism is often regarded as the epitome of modernist purity, yet this reading is mostly mistaken.  Minimalists deployed pure forms, to be sure, but usually in order to show how they are transformed by our impure perception, complicated as it always is by embodiment, placement and context." (Hal Foster in: Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Serra, Torqued Spirals, Toruses and Spheres, October- December 2001, p. 7).  It was in 1969 that Richard Serra revealed this concept in his art, with the creation of free-standing works such as One-Ton Prop (House of Cards) – a work in which four rough slabs of lead were propped up against each other to form a simple cube.  Ever since its execution, Serra has challenged our perception of things versus our conception of them, demanding us to think and question.

 

Untitled , also from 1969, belongs to a series of rolled lead sculptures from a seminal time in the artist's career, some with shorter lengths of 24 inches and culminating in the 8 foot long Double Roll in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.  For all its extreme materiality, Serra's oeuvre contains a conceptual core of premises that the artist has explored with every-increasing rigor. This early rolled sculpture is a pure example of the artist's oft-quoted and revelatory Verb List of 1967-68 which is a litany of transitory action in the infinitive case. From basic verbs such as ``to split'', ``to roll'' and ``to fold'', to the more complex ``of inertia'', ``of friction'' and ``of tension'', Serra considers a world of transitivity. Malleable lead was the ideal medium for these early investigations of form and the inherent properties of the object itself.  Along with his Minimalist contemporaries, Serra turned to unconventional, industrial materials, and lead combined both the properties of weight and flexibility. Long sheets of lead were rolled to make a more self-contained whole, demonstrating Serra's quote that "in all my work, the construction process is revealed.  Material, formal, contextual decisions are self-evident.  The fact that the technological process is revealed demythologizes the idealization of the sculptor's craft." (Ibid., p. 12)

 

The present work, Untitled 1969, from the same year, has been in the same private collection since its execution over thirty-five years ago. The present owner was acquainted with Serra from his days at Yale University, where Serra was studying Fine Art in the early 60s.  He later visited his studio and purchased Untitled through Dick Bellamy, the artist's first dealer. Serra recalled his initial meeting with Bellamy: "While I was in Europe I went to the Venice Biennale in 1966 and it was there that I met Dick on a vaporetto.  He... asked me to look him up when I returned to New York.  He became the first witness of my experimentations with rubber and lead and later my first dealer." (Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Richard Serra, Rolled and Forged, 2006, pp. 7-8)