[da-bacon]

My favorite Serra story is when he was hired to build a sculpture by Caltech. In typical fashion he decided he wanted to build a giant wall across one of the few remaining wide open green spaces on campus, the lawn adjacent to Beckman. In a nod to Caltech he called it “Vectors”.

The students were not happy. This was great lawn to just lay out, play frisbee, etc. A few days after this blew up in the student news, a large wall showed up right in front of the main coffee shop, the Red Door. That was a nice space with beautiful trees and tables (ah, the Southern California weather). The wall was right in the middle of this and blocked off the thoroughfare. The wall was called “Eigenvectors” and that word was painted on it, along with a ton of other linear algebra formulas. I remember walking by and going “holy shit is that the Moore-Penrose inverse?!” In the end the students won, the sculpture was never built.

[salomon812]

I was a undergrad senior at Caltech during that time, and as luck would have it, I was taking an art history course. Caltech humanities courses tended to have visiting professors that would come for a single night a week. I mentioned to my professor that I did not think Serra's piece should be considered art and it turned into a debate that spanned several weeks. At first, I was worried I was taking a harsh stance but the professor was so excited that Caltech students took an interest in art and we happily debated for a while. I told her I hated Serra's Tilted Arc but conceded I did like his Sea Level and The Matter of Time.

While I was not one of the students that put up Eigenvectors, I would have gladly helped if I realized they were doing it. I argued to my professor that Eigenvectors was art because it stood for something and my professor could not have been happier about the situation.

Another protest piece that occurred was dumping a bunch of indoor and outdoor furniture on the very lawn that was going to host Vectors and then placing a sign on it that read something along the lines of "Invoice: Qty 1 art installation. Price: $1,000,000" in protest of the amount Caltech was going to pay Serra.

If I recall, while the students won, Caltech never admitted it was due to the outcry. The official statement argued that a geological report of the area deemed it unsuitable for such a heavy art piece.

I just looked online and it looks like they ripped up the entire lawn in a last few years to create another building and parking lot.

[slim]

among other things what's inspiring is the fact that if they had let the iron wall be built, maybe the lawn would be still there today

[slim]

thank you for this inspiring story

[fsckboy]

yes! we should tear up more open spaces and build more buildings?

[Daub]

Thanks for the story,.

I love Serra's work, but I'm glad this piece was never built. For artists of his generation, the thoughts/feelings of the Hoi polloi were of little regard. A space was their stage, dam the little people.

[cutemonster]

Seems he got to build one eigenvector at least - the last photo in the article, the Tilted Arc. Across a public square, everyone needs to walk around the eigenvector. I had a reaction similar to that of the students

But beautiful small figures :-)

[fsckboy]

> the thoughts/feelings of the Hoi polloi were of little regard

pedantic language note: "hoi" means "the" in greek. So, the thoughts/feelings of hoi polloi can be ignored just like that.