Tilted Arc by Richard Serra

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was a massive, curved wall of steel installed in Manhattan’s Federal Plaza, later removed following public protest. But for Heidegger, this sculpture was never about “liking” or “beauty.” It was a profound happening of Being, a reorganization of space itself—a temporal and spatial rupture in the daily world.

The work did not depict—it interrupted. As one walked past it, their movement bent, time slowed, perceptions shifted. Heidegger would say the Arc created a Lichtung—a clearing where dwelling was destabilized, forcing a re-thinking of space, presence, and proximity. It disclosed how space had been assumed as neutral, functional—but was in fact a condition of worldhood.

The earth—weathered steel, rusted, resistant—held its weight. It did not please; it withheld, it obstructed. The world—the bureaucratic routines of a federal plaza—collided with this silent mass. In that strife, truth happened: the truth that space is not passive, that presence can be oppressive, that Being resists domestication.

Its removal, too, was part of its ontology. Heidegger would not lament this as censorship, but read it as Being’s withdrawal. The arc set truth into motion, and in its banishment, revealed that the modern world cannot tolerate the discomfort of Being made visible.