For me, weight is a value, not because it is more irresistible than lightness, but simply because I know more about weight than lightness, and therefore I have more to say about it....When each thing is truly in balance, it becomes weightless.
Richard Serra
John M. Hall was an architectural photographer for publications including New York Times Magazine, Elle Decor and Architectural Digest; he saw his work as "telling the story" of what architects built and his process was to "go from the overall to the the details," with a keen eye for the subtleties of line, form, light and shadow. Hall lived with art and design that reflected his refined sensibilities: simple, livable furniture by Eames, Knoll and Aalto, the clean lines and smooth surfaces of 1930s streamlined moderne lamps, china and glassware and minimalist works on paper by Robert Mangold and Richard Serra. Tucked into a small Manhattan apartment, Hall's collection shows the ease with which iconic 20th century designs were meant to be lived with.
Hall grew up in North Carolina and studied architecture at North Carolina State University; he was also a ballet dancer and moved to New York in the mid-1970s to study at the American Ballet Theater School. In 1977, Hall relocated to Paris and worked as a model. It was during this time that he developed an interest in black and white photography.
Thank God I missed post-modernism. I guess I'm just a classicist at heart.
—John M. Hall
His structural, classical style was informed by photographers such as André Kertész and Walker Evans. Hall returned to New York in 1981 and began his career as an architectural photographer, with a particular interest in private gardens, Greek Revival and Biedermeier. He approached capturing these spaces as making "something that is more than just a document, [but] something that is visually exciting."
The same is true of Hall's personal collection, with its attention to and exuberance for designs that are "clean and clear and simple as possible," while also still captivating. After Hall's passing in 2019, significant contributions from his collection were gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery and his alma mater's Gregg Museum of Art and Design; the present selection of works celebrates Hall's sophisticated and gracious eye for design.
I'm not a design historian. I'm attracted to objects because I find them interesting and, yes, beautiful. And that's where this 20th-century sensibility started for me. There's just something so right about it.
John M. Hall
An interview with Hall from the 1980s shows him on location photographing a home and sharing his philosophies on design, architecture and photography.
Richard Serra 1938–2024
Richard Serra was born in San Francisco in 1938 and studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara from 1957 to 1961, where he received a BA in English literature, before moving across the country to complete his BFA and MFA in painting at Yale University from 1961 to 1964. While at Yale, Serra worked with Josef Albers on his book The Interaction of Color (1963) and received prestigious fellowships which allowed him to spend a few years working in Europe and northern Africa. The young artist was given his first solo exhibition in 1966 at Galleria La Salita, Rome. He moved back to the United States later that year, settling in New York among a circle of friends that included Carl Andre, Walter De Maria, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Smithson.
By the late 1960s, Serra began making innovative sculptures using materials like rubber, lead, and steel, a path that led him to become one of the most important sculptors of the late 20th century. Rather than focusing on the metaphorical or allegorical qualities of sculpture, Serra focused on the literal, employing the very weight and nature of his chosen materials to create three-dimensional experiences. His works are to be walked around, to, and in. Philosopher John Rajchman writes of his creations: “Into our movements in space Serra’s works induce trajectories that cannot be centered in the usual relations of subjectivity and objectivity, inside and outside—that try to defeat space’s habitual coordinates (up, down, right, left, high, low), unmooring us from our usual sense of orientation, of ‘being there.’”
Serra has been honored with solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany (1978); the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (1984); the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany (1985); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1986). He received the Wilhelm Lehmbruck prize for sculpture in Duisburg in 1991 and, just one year later, a retrospective at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In 1993, Serra was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His notable prizes and awards include a J. Paul Getty Medal (2018) awarded in honor of extraordinary contributions to the practice, understanding, and support of the arts; the Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, Republic of France (2015); Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, Spain (2008); Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Federal Republic of Germany (2002); Leone d’Oro for lifetime achievement, Venice Biennale, Italy (2001); Praemium Imperiale, Japan Art Association (1994); Carnegie Prize (1985); a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974); and a Fulbright Grant (1965).
Serra continued to exhibit in both group and solo shows and to produce large-scale steel structures for sites throughout the world well into the 21st century. From 1997 to 1998 his Torqued Ellipses (1997) were exhibited at and acquired by the Dia Center for the Arts, New York. In 2005 eight major works by Serra were installed permanently at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and in 2007 the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a major retrospective of his work.
Auction Results Richard Serra
