Perceptive critics noted early on that Serra’s sculpture only made sense in relation to its time and place and gave meaning only to those specific conditions against which it unfolded. Serra insisted on as much himself. We might apply such a phenomenological approach, or better yet, a deambulatory one (as the very eminent art historian Yve-Alain Bois proposed when both of their careers were still in their youth, in 1983), to the work as a whole: a “picturesque stroll” through the landsc...
