Richard Serra Quotes

I consider space to be a material. The articulation of space has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to use sculptural form to make space distinct.

What interests me is the opportunity for all of us to become something different from what we are, by constructing spaces that contribute something to the experience of who we are.

To see is to think, and to think is to see.

Everything we choose in life for its lightness soon reveals its unbearable weight.

Play is a necessary ingredient in art because there is a kind of wonder that goes on when you play. You're directing your activity toward a conclusion that isn't prescribed by a particular method.

Your eye is a muscle, you have to keep it in shape and the more you draw, the more you see.

Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It's really not about other people's needs and assumptions. I'm not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful.

The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes.

Time and movement became really crucial to how I deal with what I deal with - not only sight and boundary, but how one walks through a piece, and what one feels and registers in terms of one's own body in relation to another body.

Art is not democratic. It is not for the people.

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work.

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.'

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.

Most of what you see in architecture are watered-down ideas of sculptors who have come before.

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.

If you reduce sculpture to the flat plane of the photograph, you're passing on only a residue of your concerns... You're not only reducing the sculpture to a different scale for the purposes of consumption, but you're denying the real content of the work.

It could be that people want to consume sculpture the way they consume paintings - through photographs... I'm interested in the experience of sculpture in the place where it resides.

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.

But I don't think of any particular viewer in mind other than myself.

When I moved into making sculpture, I could handle steel the way it had been handled in the technological revolution. I could use it the way bridge builders used it; I could use it the way they used it in industry and building and not the way it had been used in art.

I started working for Bethlehem Steel when I was about 16 during the summers.

But I'll try to immerse myself in as many of the formal characteristics of site as possible in the landscape.

If your educe sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (...) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception.

I think this, I think basically I'm not interested in people following my work or making work like my work.

Most photographs take their cues from advertising, where the priority is high image content for an easy Gestalt reading.