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Richard Serra b. 1939 Untitled corten steel 119 1/2 by 144 by 2 1/2in. 303.5 by 365.8 by 6.4cm. Executed in 1984. Provenance Gagosian Gallery, New York Acquired by the present owner from the above Exhibited New York, Gagosian Gallery (at Wooster Street), 1995 Yamantaka Donation: Benefit Exhibition for Tibet House, New York, February - March 1995 For all its extreme materiality, Serra's oeuvre contains a conceptual core of premises that the artist has explored with ever-increasing rigor. His oft-quoted and revelatory Verb List of 1967-68 is a litany of transitory action in the infinitive case - actions or concepts with indeterminate objects. From basic verbs, such as "to split", "to roll" and "to fold", to the more complex "of inertia", "of friction", and "of tension", Serra considers a world of transitivity. When his work moved from the focus on "process" art of the 1960s toward the inherent properties of the object itself, Serra considered the modern issue of extending art beyond the narrative. Traditional Western art sought to capture a specific image in space at a specific moment in time. Serra and many artists of his generation strive for a deeper dimension, expanding the spatial and temporal qualities of art to include the experience of the work by the viewer. Serra has commented that the dismissal of a base for sculpture is one of the pivotal changes in art history, since the "pedestal established a separation of the object from the behavioral space of the viewer". (Richard Serra: Writings, Interviews, Chicago, 1994, p. 141) With freestanding outdoor sculptures such as Untitled, the monumentality, material, placement and form of Serra's works all incorporate the environment of the work and the observer as essential components. As a physical object, how does the sculpture affect the viewer by its presence, and can this effect vary from moment to moment as the viewer perceives the work from different vantages? Two phrases from Serra's Verb List come fully into