From Publishers Weekly
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. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The removal of Serra's Tilted Arc from Federal Plaza in New York City was one of the seminal events in recent art censorship history, particularly because the controversy focused strictly on the "artistic merit" of the work and not issues such as pornography or politics. Mostly large, site-specific steel structures, Serra's work has a way of raising hackles as well as the question, "What is art?" Containing material that ranges from 1967 to the present, this collection of interviews and essays will help clarify Serra's position and ideas on the nature of art-particularly sculpture, but with asides on film, architecture, and drawing as well. Combative and opinionated, Serra offers an articulate expression of an important contemporary aesthetic that demands reading by both his admirers and his detractors. Highly recommended for collections covering contemporary art or aesthetics.-Martin R. Kalfatovic, Natl. Museum of American Art/Natl. Portrait Gallery Lib., Smithsonian Inst., Washington, D.C.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
This collection of essays and interviews spans two decades of the sculptor's work and life. Serra is known for his site-specific works and perhaps best known for Tilted Arc, which was commissioned by a federal agency (the General Services Administration) in 1979 to stand at the Federal Plaza in Manhattan; it was then torn down by the agency in 1989, raising all sorts of problematic issues about censorship, government support for the arts, and the conflict between legal property rights and legal rights of expression. Serra here takes himself seriously--some might say too seriously. He also comes off as a man who, understandably, has little patience with troglodyte philistinism such as that exhibited by a judge who suspected that Tilted Arc had caused a ``downtown rat problem'' in its environs. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
One of the most important sculptors of this century, Richard Serra has been a spokesman on the nature and status of art in our day. Best known for site-specific works in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural, or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative, or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra's thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" to Serra's extended commentary on the Tilted Arc fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist's engagement with the practical, philosophical, and political problems of art.

FROM THE PUBLISHER