Thinking big is a way of thinking that requires a bold, exploratory, nomadic worldview, capable of overcoming natural horizons and prescribing others. Others that are a form of labyrinth, of winding, in a guise reminiscent of Leopardi's lonely hill, in a severe spectacularity, which leaves nothing to the imagination of others, because it understands it. We are talking about Richard Serra, one of the titans of our time (1938 - 2024), whom many call minimalist, but I venture to suggest, Arcadian, severe, structural, because his thinking is not subtractive, but essential, capable of intuiting the hidden forces of what we call matter (no longer with the obviousness of yesteryear) and of its expressive force, even more so, when devoid of the nuances of colour or the prettiness of decoration. I recall my immersion, twenty years ago in Naples, in one of his spirals, in Piazza Plebiscito, a sensory adventure worthy of its architecturality, marked by the search for the new. But immersed in its tradition.
Indeed, it is known that sculpture has undergone the greatest devastation, from the theories and practices of the historical avant-gardes and subsequent neo-avant-gardes, not to mention conceptualism in its various versions, which have reduced it to installation, to a Pinocchio-esque parody, as in the case of Niki de Saint Phalle, next to the Pompidou Centre. But as they say, nothing is eternal and universal, and everything transforms, continuously driven by many originalities, which lead to originality, from the many matrices of the genius loci. But its etymological conception has resisted him, and I also cite the case of the Pomodoro brothers and the Cascella brothers, to whom many can be added, both in Italy and abroad. Even in the case of Richard Serra, it is a colossal version of dimensions, thanks to Corten steel, which makes it look old and in need, while it is strong and vigorous, capable of defying the long, very long time, in a way that recalls the Horses of San Marco, the Marcus Aurelius. In modern guise.
KLESSIDRA | EDITED BY FRANCESCO GALLO MAZZEO
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