"If It Ain't Broke - Break It"

       We had our graduation here at Williams College yesterday and all the ceremonies went well.  The threatened rain never materialized and all the graduates were duly recognized.  The invited speaker was sculptor Richard Serra, the man who is famous for his giant manipulations of sheets of rolled steel.  I went to his retrospective at the MoMA last year and was quite impressed.  I had seen pictures of his big steel works before, but I had never had the chance to get close to them, to walk through them, to take them in physically. If "awesome" were not so overused, it would be a good description.

     Serra's commencement speech was memorable - the more I think about it, the more I like it.  I'm sure I will remember it.  Most striking was the line I have take for the title of this post?: "If it ain't broke - break it."  This was his main theme, of sorts.  He exhorted the graduates to follow their own instincts and desires and obsessions wherever they might lead; to not allow conventions and social expectations and the advice of others to distract them from their own personal life's paths. 

     The style of the presentation matched his intention.  He did not embed his ideas in personal anecdote.  Indeed, he warded the assembled multitude away from metaphor.  He stood as a beacon of pure abstraction, just like his sculptures.  I'm sure many did not like the speech all that much because it did not have the nice, story-telling quality of so many graduation day presentations.  And I am also sure that Serra was aware that many would not like it.  But he did not let that stop him; he did not allow the ideal of the "graduation speech" to get in the was of what he wanted to say.  The abstraction of his words matched the passion of his message: follow your heart; don't listen to others who tell you that you can't or shouldn't do what you can see and feel you must do.   If the "rules" are telling you that you can't (and by this he means social and cultural expectations, not literally the law), break them.  I don't have a text here before me, but the local paper offered this excerpt:

"Rules are overrated," he said. "And it's the job of each generation to break them. That's your most important mandate: If it's not broken, break it."

     Refreshing advice for a twenty-year old.   And a sentiment that obviously emerges from his own experience.  I can imagine how many people over the years scoffed at what he was trying to do and told him that his work was not "real" art.  But he didn't listen.  He made it anyway.  And, today, it stands as testament to his obstinacy (which he also encouraged) and presence in the world.

       And then I start reflecting on ancient Chinese thought.  Most obviously, Serra is profoundly un-Confucian, perhaps even anti-Confucian.  The encouragement to defy convention and pursue personal aspirations, even at the cost of violating family and social bonds, appears to be a rejection of the deep inter-personalism of Confucian Humanity (ren).   But maybe that's what it takes to be a creative artist.  At some point, you have to walk away from others, find your own vision and do your work.  I don't know.  I haven't embraced the creative process to that degree.

       But if he is obviously not Confucian, is he Taoist?  My first sense was, "no he's not."  His advice seemed too selfish, too self-absorbed.  And that would violate the sentiment expressed in this portion of Tao Te Ching 24:

Keep up self-reflection
and you'll never be enlightened. 
Keep up self-definition
and you'll never be apparent. 
Keep up self-promotion
and you'll never be proverbial. 
Keep up self-esteem
and you'll never be perennial.

       Perhaps Serra would not disagree with these ideas in theory, since the end point of self-negation here is the discovery of a truer self.  Maybe in practical terms, however, battling for financial support and studio space and exhibition opportunities in the modern art world, it is hard to really give up self-definition and the like.  Because that is what Serra was talking about: finding and defining and following the self.

      On the other hand, Serra's powerful rejection of social convention as a limit on the full expression of unique individual qualities does have a Taoist resonance to it.  Makes me think of Chuang Tzu:

Sounding the ten thousand things differently, so each becomes itself according to itself alone - who could make such music?

     I think this is the kind of creative liberation that Serra is talking about.  But, at the end of the day, he's not really much of a Taoist.  Too much active self-making; not enough abnegational discovery (if we can put it that way....).

     But good speech.....