Form

Richard Serra's Tilted Arc, a curved metal wall, was intended to exist in the Federal Plaza in New York City as a formalist piece. Serra created the work to stand alone in the park area and exude no more meaning than a bench or lamp post. Years of controversy over removing the sculpture, however, provided a place for discourse and story-making around the art piece. Serra's original concept of the piece was decimated as Tilted Arc became a site for "a story that acts as if the site preceded it" (Carson 332). As the pure voice of an art piece is reiterated and repeated through writing and discourse, the value of the original creation is threatened. "A boomerang effect is thus in play here, one which the minimalist claim against authorial intentionality is undercut by the inherent intentionality of such a claim" (Carson 341). By moving the site-specific Titled Arc and entering into discourse over the art piece, the minimalist intentions of the piece were deferred.

In theory, the minimalist meta narrative cannot persist in contemporary culture because formalist ideologies lose their intended meanings through deconstruction. We are all subject to an excess of meanings. Current artists must accept this fact and enjoy its possibilities or grapple with its unsettling implications. Serra's Titled Arc gained far more notoriety and appreciation after entering into discourse, even if original intentions were invalidated.

Juli Carson, "1989" (Kocur and Leung, 331-344)