Richard Serra at the MoMA

I saw it. I got in for free. It was bullshit.

But the real shocker was just how bullshit the Richard Serra retrospective (I don't know: is he dead?) was. The pride of the exhibition was its collection of loopy, sinuous, kind of twisted iron walls with names like Torqued Ellipse and and I really have nothing to say about them conceptually. I was a little annoyed about the MoMA's constant admonitions to not touch the artwork, because they are, after all, just rusty iron walls. Unless Superman comes into the museum and starts leaning against stuff, it's not like there's going to be any major shifts in Serra's vision. But overall, I can see their aesthetic value, if not their artistic value and each one's kind of cool.

You walk into but don't touch the first wall circle thing, out in the courtyard, and look around, and you're like, "This is interesting. It's not really a circle and it's at a bit of angle, so it's kind of disorienting." And then you walk into the second one and you're like, "This is interesting. It's not really a circle and it's at a bit of angle, so it's kind of disorienting." There's four or five more inside, and you're like, "This is a little less interesting. It's not really a circle and it's at a bit of angle, so it's kind of derivative of the first two." By the time you walked through the entire exhibit, you feel a little ripped off. I mean, I know they're not all exactly alike, but they're all exactly alike.

Hey MoMA, that's cheating!

It's like if I write my novel and donate it to the library, and then I write my second novel using the first one and Microsoft Word's find and replace feature, and donate that to the library too. Only one counts. And maybe it's cool in Serra's case because maybe the different curvy sculptures were installed in different locations, but if the MoMA's charging twenty bucks to get in, I expect a little variety.

Also, this thing here: not art.