Pedro (Pere) Serra, St Peter Preaching, c. 1400. Tempera on panel, 125 x 101 cm. Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.
Bilbao’s Other Serras
Exterior view of the Guggenheim, Bilbao, by Frank Gehry. The museum opened in 1997.
‘The idea of this looking like a boat was my response to the river,’ Frank Gehry explained when the Guggenheim Bilbao Musuem, opened in 1997. ‘The other side, more fragmented and covered with stone, is more in scale with the city. The whole thing is about fitting the building into Bilbao. So for me it's about the imagery of the river and the imagery of the city’ (New York Times, 24 June 1997).
The star exhibit in this spectacular structure, the catalyst for the regeneration of Bilbao’s former port district on the bank of the Nervion River, is Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time, installed in 2005. Absorbed in the space of Serra’s sculptures, ‘pacing out their convolutions’, Robert Hughes remarked when the sequence of works in steel was unveiled in 2005, ‘you feel suddenly free’ (The Guardian, 22 June 2005). This is the paradox of Serra’s work. Despite the immense size and weight of the steel plates, as well as the directed movement that these huge pieces demand, all of which might induce a fearsome sense of claustrophobia, it’s hard to disagree with Hughes.
The other unexpected fact about these sculptures, whose consummate newness is beyond question, is the effortless way in which they forge links with the art of other ages. Hughes quotes Johann Winckelmann on ‘noble inwardness’ and ‘calm grandeur’. Numerous classical connections are traced in Paul Williamson's Ekphrasis (2014), which sets itself the task of placing Serra’s achievement in a tradition stemming back at least as Homer. A more fortuitous link with the art of a previous age can be found in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a short walk from the Guggenheim. These are Bilbao’s other Serras: two paintings made 600 years ago by the Catalan artist Pedro Serra (Pere Serra in Catalan), which are discussed in an article in The London Magazine that can be downloaded here.
Richard Serra, The Matter of Time (2005). Guggenheim, Bilbao. Installation of seven sculptures made from weatherproof steel.