Last Thought on Richard Serra

I think. I've been over to MoMA twice this past week for events connected to the Richard Serra retrospective that opens there on Sunday, first for the Serra dinner that the museum gave on Tuesday, then for the members' preview last night. It happened that last night, as I was walking around in one of Serra's massive new works, I had one of those "here's a show I'd like to see" moments.

Richard Serra and Richard Tuttle. And no, not just as a Bambi-vs-Godzilla thing. But as a way of thinking about the different ways that scale, mass and weight can operate in art. Tuttle's work is all about the minute inflection of delicate materials. Serra's — well, you know what Serra's is about. But as it happens, the MoMA show is a reminder that early in their careers Serra and Tuttle were working with similar ideas. A Serra piece like One Ton Prop (House of Cards), which involved four sheets of lead leaned together to form a makeshift cube, was asking what's the smallest intervention with material that could still be said to create a work of sculpture — very much the same idea at the heart of what Tuttle did and still does.

Who could do this sort of compare and contrast exhibition? Well, it's too late for MoMA to throw up a temporary Tuttle gallery. But maybe Eli Broad could make it happen at the UCLA School of Art that bears his name. It already has a Serra Torqued Ellipse out front of the new Richard Meier-designed building. And just a week or two ago, Broad closed on the purchase of one of the biggest pieces in the MoMA show, Band, also for placement on the UCLA campus. So a couple of Serras, the pachyderms of this show, would already be in place.

As for the Tuttles, those things are a lot easier to ship around.

UPDATE: After I posted this it occurred to me to check the dates of Tuttle's latest show at his New York gallery Sperone Westwater, about 40 blocks south of MoMA. It turns out that it's running through June 30. So if you happen to be in Manhattan before that date, for the price of a subway fare you could make that Serra-Tuttle show happen on your own.