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From: Rodney Ward Category: Art Date: 30 November 2008 Time: 06:00 PM Review: What I disliked the most about the Richard Serra docu-self-love-amentary was when the continuity slaves got a bit bored whilst filming an enormous shard of Richards Egomania in the south of France, there was Serra wearing a light blue shirt over a classic white tee, aviator shades and BBcap, he's not his usual burdened tortured self so you think, this could be interesting but then he chats to an off screen laaadeee, he wants to draw her portrait ( Oh cripes, I forgive him, without seeing the Lay Dee sorta), Then, I mean the guy is not a figurative artist by his own admission, then he "draws" this crude felt tip "cliche", "Its like my mother" she adds (off screen), Serra is looking like a skewered sheep at a barbeque, even behind the unusually accessorized face, he's full of doubts about this obviously staged confessional, after winkling out another exchange about the womans mother, Serra adds that his mother committed suicide, the off screen woman is sorry, Serra asks rhetorically how she thinks he feels. Messy and not really required would be my response. Serra's work which I had viewed as a bit heroic for our less than heroic times was at least imbued with a spiritual grandeur, sort of everyman, that at least refused to pose as the Gormley style demographic art for those only with invites. There is this notion with public art on this scale, an environmental catastrophe is clanging down around us and you want to be an individual as well as a megalith? The individual pervades through the thick iron sheets of Serras ship building father, the leisure cap and shades confessionals just don't do that stuff justice.