Richard Serra

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), the most important sculptor of the first half of the 20th century, has been a fascinating and enduring influence on a generation of contemporary American artists. Insights into Brancusi’s legacy are presented by Carl Andre, Lynda Benglis, Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Puryear, Richard Serra, and Joel Shapiro, with additional commentary on Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Isamu Noguchi,and Claes Oldenburg. In 1995, Anne d’Harnoncourt, Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, asked Checkerboard to document the PMA’s acclaimed retrospective on Brancusi for the Museum’s archive. The resulting footage became the genesis of the documentary.

The Making of Amarillo Ramp documents the construction of Robert Smithson's earthwork Amarillo Ramp. At age thirty-five, while photographing the site of the earthwork in progress, Smithson died in a small airplane accident, along with pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Robert E. Curtin. After Smithson's passing, Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and Tony Shafrazi completed Amarillo Ramp according to Smithson's specifications. This film documents the sounds and actions of the powerful machinery necessary to create an earthwork of this scale, while underscoring the human skill and personal relationships that were integral to the completion of the work.

The life and work of enigmatic Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 disappeared under mysterious circumstances at sea in the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic. As seen through the eyes of fellow emigrant filmmaker René Daalder, the picture becomes a sweeping overview of contemporary art films as well as an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean.

CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...

Made in collaboration with Clara Weyergraf.

The Masters of Modern Sculpture series concludes with a look at post- World War II America, where sculpture became a deeply innovative art form. Using the objects at their disposal and the inspiration surrounding them, artists such as George Rickey, Claes Oldenburg, and Louise Nevelson cast sculptor in a new light. The New World observes the sculptors creatively utilizing wood, metals, and junkyard finds, bringing forth lively and shocking work. America's remote spaces, discarded objects and abundant materials enabled them to add to the concepts of European modernism in daringly unique ways.

“…Railroad Turnbridge is about the meeting of machine and machine [camera and bridge] and how they and their movements, sometimes parallel, sometimes in opposition, frame the landscape which surrounds them. A shot of the landscape seen through the rectangles of the bridge’s opening, the bridge [becomes], in movement, a giant extension of the camera viewfinder…” Amy Taubin, Soho News

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue, this film is reminiscent of the playful and parodying elements of the Beat fantasy Pull My Daisy. The interweaving of documentary and fiction with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue presents an absurd buzz of activity reminiscent of Beckett’s abstract comic grotesque.

Film by Richard Serra and Robert Bell

Artists Nancy Holt and Charlemagne Palestine attempt to have a conversation with one another while their voices are distorted.

Originally broadcast on public television in Amarillo, TX, Richard Serra’s BOOMERANG features Nancy Holt framed in a medium shot with a pair of headphones on her ears. We observe her as she speaks and then hears her words relayed back to her through a delayed transmission. Remarkably eloquent for one caught in such a feedback loop, Holt provides a monologue on experiencing time, thought, and oneself through technology. She remarks, “I have a double take on myself. I am once removed from myself … we are hearing and seeing a world of double reflections and double refractions.”

A pair of one person's hands toss a block of lead back and forth.

Television Delivers People is a seminal work in the now well-established critique of popular media as an instrument of social control that asserts itself subtly on the populace through “entertainments,” for the benefit of those in power—the corporations that mantain and profit from the status quo. While canned Muzak plays, a scrolling text denounces the corporate masquerade of commercial television to reveal the structure of profit that greases the wheels of the media industry. Television emerges as little more than a insidious sponsor for the corporate engines of the world. By appropriating the medium he is criticizing—using television, in effect, against itself—Serra employs a characteristic strategy of early, counter-corporate video collectives—a strategy that remains integral to video artists committed to a critical dismantling of the media’s political and ideological stranglehold.

Made in collaboration with Gerry Schum

Made in collaboration with Joan Jonas.

Soundtrack by Philip Glass

The film is an adaptation from two sources: Kinesics and Context by Ray L. Birdwhistell, and Choreomania, a performance by Joan Jonas

Like the three "Hands" films by Richard Serra (1968), the subject of "Color Aid" are fingers as actors of real time activity. Monochrome colour cards lying on top of each other and filling the whole screen are being pulled away individually with a swishing sound by a single finger, each time bringing a new colour into view.

Like the three "Hands" films by Richard Serra (1968), the subject of "Color Aid" are fingers as actors of real time activity. Monochrome colour cards lying on top of each other and filling the whole screen are being pulled away individually with a swishing sound by a single finger, each time bringing a new colour into view.

A short film by Richard Serra

In Frame (1969), Richard Serra emphasizes the disconnect bewteen the real space of the cinema and the illusory space of the screen. We first see Serra's hands methodically measuring and marking the boundaries of the film frame, followed by the projected image of a blank surface whose perimeter is similarly marked. The surface is then moved aside to reveal a window which looks out upon a bustling city street. The In the final stage, Serra interacts with the projected image of the window, remeasuring and remarking its borders.

Footage of an arm and a hand holding a block of lead

A subject struggles to break free from a cord restraint

In "Hands Scraping" we see two male pairs of hands, those of Serra and Phil Glass, sweeping up steel filings strewn on the wooden floor with their bare hands, and carrying the gathered heap in their hands out of the picture.

In "Hands Scraping" we see two male pairs of hands, those of Serra and Phil Glass, sweeping up steel filings strewn on the wooden floor with their bare hands, and carrying the gathered heap in their hands out of the picture.

Echoing the vertical movement of the film through the projector, pieces of sheet lead fall into the image field. Serra’s hand opens and closes as it tries to catch them, and when it succeeds, immediately lets them go again.

Echoing the vertical movement of the film through the projector, pieces of sheet lead fall into the image field. Serra’s hand opens and closes as it tries to catch them, and when it succeeds, immediately lets them go again.