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[[caption]] Donald Judd, untitled, hot rolled steel, 33 3/4" h., 15' dia., 1971.

to the inside curve of the rising parapet wall.  A further extreme in the choice of site is taken by Weiner who, by negating every visual possibility, issued two statements in the catalog.

At the other extreme, Serr attempts an aggressive reconciliation of site and sculpture.  Serra's contribution to the Whitney Annual, it will be remembered, was located on East 183rd Street in the Bronx, about five miles from the Museum.  Evidently inspired by a similar piece he had made in Japan somewhat earlier, the Bronx work was about as exquisite a resolution of the issue of place as I know of in contemporary sculpture.  That issue is not nearly as relevant in Moe, the present work, but there are still two ways of seeing the 18,000-pound sculpture that Serra has installed on the main ground floor gallery of the Museum.  The first way allows the viewer to see the piece as three slabs of steel balanced one against the next, each unit resting on a notched piece of round bar stock.  Each steel slab is two inches thick and eight feet high and wide.  it is a classical sculpture in the round, deeply involved with problems of plane and volume, drawing and floor plan.  The piece manages to suggest the elegance of Caro as well as the forthrightness of David Smith.  But it sits truculently in rectangular no-man's-land, taped off for safety.  The second way of seeing the piece eclipses the first, as soon as the viewer realizes that Serra is involved with a kind of site terror.  One loses the notion of formal interaction, as good as it is, and rather concentrates on whether the piece will or will not go through the floor, and if so, when.  If the second way of seeing the piece seems unfair, it should be pointed out that the idea of site demolition grows out of a working knowledge of the propensities inherent within Serra's earlier lead antimony pieces.  The present work, Moe, grows directly out of them and is an exalted extension of the series in weight, height, breadth, scale, and material.

LeWitt's solution in terms of site is every painter's dream.  the peculiar experience of seeing large stretched paintings in the niches at the Guggenheim provides a shudder in any artist as he tries to extricate the painting from the architectural vise.  Five such niches are covered entirely by LeWitt's all-over color hatches.  LeWitt has dispatched canvas and stretcher.  Each wall is a near perfect foil for the artist's endeavors and, like the Judd piece, affirms the space at the same time.

Dan Flavin's contribution to the exhibition consists of bays of pink, green, pink, green, pink, green, pink, green and, finally, blue fluorescent light.  Flavin is consistently startling.  There is a species of apartment building in Los Angeles which is illuminated at night by washes of light, always colored and often of the same peculiar intensity that Flavin has used to wash Wright's tightly conceived exhibition spaces.  The moment one thinks Flavin has exhausted the possibilities of the fluorescent fixture as a medium of expression is the same moment he uses light in a new way.  In this case Flavin's light celebrates the Guggenheim Museum's architectural details by focusing light from the leading edges of the upright walls separating the niches and throwing it inward.

Of the two pieces planned by Bruce Nauman for the show, only one was installed to his satisfaction by the time of the opening.  Spanning an exhibition niche, at the art-

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Transcription Notes:
same as page 13 of this series