Writings/Interviews

Through writings and interviews, Serra chronicles not only his evolution as an artist but also touches on some of the responses inspired by the large site-specific urban sculptures for which he is best known. Like his method of sandbox construction where scale models are constantly adjusted in situ , the reader gets a sense of the visions and revisions in his writing. With workman-like logic, Serra addresses the structuralist concerns of his installations and sculpture. But with its cadent listing of the qualities of mass, his prose becomes almost poetical in the piece titled ``Weight.'' Serra is at his pugilistic best when he attacks postmodernist architecture as ``signature architecture'' and in ``An Opinionated Museum Goer,'' when he criticizes the tyranny of the well-lit white cubes of those architects who define the space of museums without regard to the art that goes in them. Although his aesthetic position is not intrinsicially political, Serra does manage, in Robert Morgan's words, to ``collide with political issues.'' One such example is the cogent, if opinionated, essay ``Tilted Arc Destroyed,'' although subsequent articles concerned with issues of censorship are merely adequate. Since Serra chose the articles included this volume, it should perhaps come as no surprise that it lacks more controversial interviews on the role of public exchange in public sculpture. Illustrations not seen by PW. (June)