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Richard Serra is a sculptor known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement. One of his significant early works was a text drawing of a list of verbs.  Serra’s Verb List  serves as a kind of manifesto for his work. The work is a list of the infinitives of 84 verbs (e.g. to roll, to crease, to fold, etc.) and 24 possible contexts (of gravity, of entropy, of nature, etc.). Serra described the list as a series of “actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process,” and employed it as a kind of guide for his subsequent practice in multiple media.

Here is the text of the list of verbs that Richard Serra included in his Verb List.

to roll

to crease

to fold

to store

to bend

to shorten

to twist

to dapple

to crumple

to shave

to tear

to chip

to split

to cut

to sever

to drop

to remove

to simplify

to differ

to disarrange

to open

to mix

to splash

to knot

to spill

to droop

to flow

 to curve

to lift

to inlay

to impress

to fire

to flood

to smear

to rotate

to swirl

to support

to hook

to suspend

to spread

to hang

to collect

of tension

of gravity

of entropy

of nature

of grouping

of layering

of felting

to grasp

to tighten

to bundle

to heap

to gather

 to scatter

to arrange

to repair

to discard

to pair

to distribute

to surfeit

to compliment

to enclose

to surround

to encircle

to hole

to cover

to wrap

to dig

to tie

to bind

to weave

to join

to match

to laminate

to bond

to hinge

to mark

to expand

to dilute

to light

 to modulate

to distill

of waves

of electromagnetic

of inertia

of ionization

of polarization

of refraction

of tides

of reflection

of equilibrium

of symmetry

of friction

to stretch

to bounce

to erase

to spray

to systematize

to refer

to force

of mapping

of location

of context

of time

of cabonization

to continue

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What verbs and contexts can you add to your own list, that would be applicable to our ongoing projects and work in this class? For our next project Body as Extension choose or write at least one verb and/or context that you can use to inform your project.

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