Verb List (Richard Serra)

Verb List: pencil on two sheets of paper; 10 x 8 1/2" (25.4 x 21.6 cm) (each) Credit: Gift of the artist in honor of Wynn Kramarsky. MOMA Object number 843.2011.a-b.
Copyright © 2019 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

One way of thinking about the actions of an art/archaeology as proposed on this website (https://www.artarchaeologies.com/about) and the processes of “repurposing” disarticulated artifacts and creating new work with them is to return to Richard Serra’s Verb List (1967-68)

“Serra famously said, ‘Drawing is a verb.’ In Verblist, he compiled a series of what he called ‘actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process.’ Serra has talked at length about the central place this language-based drawing occupies in the development of his early sculptural practice. This work on paper suggests a common ground underlying Serra's practices in all mediums—from early sculptures to later monumental works, which not only twist and curve but also enclose, surround, and encircle. It shows Serra's debt to action painting and his proximity to Conceptual and performance practices; the list was published in the journal Avalanche in 1971 and testifies to the artist’s close relationship to dancers like Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti, with whom he shared not only a milieu but a commitment to carrying out verbs.”

 [text above from https://www.moma.org/collection/works/152793]

For other information see the following:

• Serra, R. 1971. Verb list compilation, 1967-68. Avalanche 2: 20.