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.

On the other hand, if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to, I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.

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

The thing about coming back to the Bay Area, it's like coming home for me.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's 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 I don't think of any particular viewer in mind other than myself.

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

I used to eat lunch with Billy Wilder when I first came out here.

I think different people have different problems and different relations to the exhibition of their work.

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

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

Now when you have administrators deciding what sexuality is, and whats a taboo and whats not in terms of content, you got guys, like, Trent Lott who equates homosexuality with a disease.

The thing about rigging is, you can learn it if you become a master rigger but there's no book on rigging.

I thought Out of Action was better as a catalogue than the honeycomb because the honeycomb was like walking into one compartment and then another compartment.