Magazine: mensvogue.com

It's hard to imagine wanting to be indoors anywhere in Paris right now, but the Grand Palais is an exception, now that it's unveiled Richard Serra's massive new work, "Promenade." The second annual commission of the Monumenta program, an initiative by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication to bring international work to the Art Nouveau iron-and-glass landmark exhibition space, "Promenade" is a series of five massive steel plates arranged on the axis of the building's nave. (Don't worry, fashion editors: Serra's masterpiece will only remain until June 15; Karl Lagerfeld will return with his next Chanel collection, as usual, during fashion week.) Each of Serra's 17-by-4-meter planes, placed to take up almost the entire span of the hall, rests at an ever-so-slight angle. Despite the fact that five 73-ton slabs of steel can't actually move, walking around and through them creates a series of optical illusions that make them seem as if they just might keep leaning.

Serra has lately focused more on horizontal and curvilinear shapes -- most notably in "Matter of Time," recently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the phenomenal "Torqued Ellipse" series--so working with a sequence of verticals in an interior space already as rigidly symmetrical as the Grand Palais was "an enormous risk and a challenge," he said. It paid off: the effect of "Promenade" is utterly arresting -- which is no small feat under the webbed glass dome that usually eclipses the art it shields. Serra is rigorously site-specific in his designs, and "one can't really predict scale in a context until the object actually arrives in the context," he said. "It wasn't until the fifth plate went in that I could take a deep breath. I can say now that this piece is as fulfilling to me as anything I've ever done."

"Promenade" and Richard Serra will be celebrated while the work is on site, with a series of colloquia and events that include screenings (Serra's own films, documentaries about him and works by Chantal Akerman), concerts (Serra pal Philip Glass will perform a solo piano concert on June 7), and dance workshops. (Could Serra ever imagine his work inspiring, say, an afternoon of interpretive movement for kids aged two to seven? "You can never predict how your work will be received," he said, though he does think that kids bring the least amount of baggage to art.)

In addition, his 1983 sculpture, "Clara Clara," named for his wife, has just been re-installed at the Tuileries, where it was originally shown after the ground at the Georges Pompidou museum proved to be too unstable to hold it. And, most movingly for the artist, this week also marked his induction as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. It's not his first medal, "though I think it's my most prestigious," he said. "I'll wear this one," he added, before taking the podium and having the green-striped ribbon tied around his neck.

"This country made me a sculptor," he told the assembled audience with tears in his eyes, recalling his first introduction to the work of Giacometti and Brancusi in Paris when he was still a painter in 1964. Well, France clearly returns the love. "France needs Richard Serra," said Christine Albanel, the Minister of Culture and Communication, as she looked out over Promenade from the upper gallery as the assembled guests guzzled champagne. "Look at this piece! Just look at it!"

Yes, why don't you? And be quick about it. You've only got another five weeks. After that, the future resting place of "Promenade" is unknown. --ALEXANDRA MARSHALL