''The Hedgehog and the Fox'' is a late

Minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

sculpture of

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, Urban area, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material q ...

, installed between Peyton and Fine halls and the football stadium at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 2000. It was commissioned for the university by Princeton graduate Peter Joseph in honour of his children some years before his death in 1998.

The sculpture and its meaning

The sculpture consists of three serpentine sheets of steel standing 94 feet long and 15 feet high, each comprising two identical conical/elliptical sections, inverted relative to each other overall. The steel plates are 2 inches thick and the piece, as often in Serra's work, adapts itself to its environment. It is closely related to other outdoor installations such as the double ribbons of ''Sidewinder'' (1999), on the lawn adjacent to the curving drives at

Leonard Riggio Leonard S. Riggio (born February 28, 1941)
''

Bridgehampton, New York Bridgehampton is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) on the South Fork of Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 1,756 at the 2010 census. Bridgehampton is in the town of Southampton, on Long Island. Shortly after ...

, and the single ribbon following the contour line of “Contour 290” (Glenstone, 2004). An earlier example is the larger but structurally similar ''Snake'' (1996) at the

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Sp ...

and the ''Double Torqued Ellipse'' of 1997. However, although the ribbon sculptures relate to Serra's ''Torqued Ellipse'' series of this period, their openness also contrasts with the small private spaces carved out of the large public sites where the sculptures of that series are installed. The title of ''The Hedgehog and the Fox'' refers to an essay of that name by

Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...

, where he quotes a line from the Greek poet

Archilochus Archilochus (; grc-gre, Ἀρχίλοχος ''Arkhilokhos''; c. 680 – c. 645 BC) was a Greek lyric poet of the Archaic period from the island of Paros. He is celebrated for his versatile and innovative use of poetic meters, and is the ...

: "The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one great thing." Serra has explained that "It points to how scholars either become free thinkers and invent or become subjugated to the dictates of history. This is the classical problem posed to every student." Harold Foster, a professor in Princeton's art and archaeology department, has further commented upon it that "There are those who follow one principle in all they do — the hedgehogs — and those who look to different approaches at the same time — the foxes. The suggestion is that students might negotiate a balance between these two ways." Viewers are therefore invited to engage with the sculpture by walking through its twisting structure and so enact that intellectual journey. Serra further emphasised his thinking in the interview he gave before delivering a lecture on his work at Princeton as Belknap Visitor in the Humanities in 2001. "The experience of the subject is the piece itself. Without the interaction, there is no piece." That statement fits within the wider intention behind Serra's work. In a lecture given at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

in 1990, he declared that his sculptures are meant to "become part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organization of the site". He further underlined this in his speech at the dedication of "The Fox and the Hedgehog" at Princeton. "It seems to be that one of the basic functions of art is to enable us to acknowledge thought and perception in ways that other things do not. To engage thought does not mean that the thought is contained solely within the work itself, it also means that the thought is contained within the dialogue that the work engenders in relation to its place." Serra Fox2

In the case of ''The Hedgehog and the Fox'', the steel sheets are hosed down in order to enhance the reddish-brown rust on the steel ribbons and suggest the colour of the fox. The fluid sinuosity of their movement adapts itself to the curves of the football stadium in the background, so as to create a visual continuum. Fortuitously, the upper edges of the sheets are now echoed by the gables and edges of the nearby Lewis Science Library, completed later in 2008, producing the prickly effect of a hedgehog curled up in defence. For all its seeming abstraction, the sculpture has a personal significance for Serra himself. His interest in steel as an art medium began when he was a young man working in Californian steel mills to finance his education. Another powerful influence was the San Francisco shipyard where his father worked as a pipe-fitter. Serra has said that "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory which has become a reoccurring dream."Seidner, David, BOMB Magazine
Winter, 1993
/ref> As in the proletarian workspace of the shipyard, his creations are shifted from the pedestal and allow an interaction between the work and the viewer. His reading of the line by Archilochus therefore reverses the moral order of the original fable of

The Hedgehog and the Fox ''The Hedgehog and the Fox'' is an essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin that was published as a book in 1953. It was one of his most popular essays with the general public. However, Berlin said, "I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual gam ...

. The hedgehog, insisting on a patrician exclusive culture, is intellectually dead; the fox's adaptability (demonstrated by this sculpture's relationship to its environment) is the correct strategy for intellectual progress.

References

External links

Princeton University Art Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hedgehog and the Fox Outdoor sculptures in New Jersey Princeton University buildings 1999 sculptures Steel sculptures in New Jersey Sculptures by Richard Serra Princeton University Art Museum