Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years

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Richard Serra
(American, born 1939)
Chunk
1967

Richard Serra. Chunk. 1967

Vulcanized rubber, 48 1/2 x 18 x 19 3/4" (123.2 x 45.7 x 50.2 cm). Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest (by exchange) and promised gift of Emily Rauh Pulitzer. © 2018 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artist, Richard Serra: Chunk is a piece of vulcanized rubber.

When I was first in New York, I had come back from Italy. And while I was in Italy, I really decided to stop painting, and I got into dealing with barnyard material: sticks, stones, rocks, things that animals would push around, straw, whatever. And I really wanted to continue working with found material, or raw material. And it so happened that a warehouse was emptying out all the rubber on West Broadway. And I lived right across the street.

So I got a couple of friends to help me move the rubber up to my loft. And some of the rubber we took actually was solid, solid vulcanized rubber. And this piece was big and obdurate, but it was very ruffled on the edge.

So I took this big piece of rubber back down to Canal Street, and I had them recut the surface of it to reveal its inside, and I just leaned it up against the wall.