Color Aid, 1970-71
16mm color film transferred to video.
With sound, 36 min.
The Circulating Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

The monumental sculptures for which Serra is best known show no evidence of his early beginnings as a painter, or of his close involvement with the colorist Josef Albers while studying at Yale University in the early 1960s. This film takes as its protagonist the 220 unique sheets that come in a box of Color-aid paper, the standard tool used in Albers’ colour courses. A belated response to Albers' meticulous attention to chromatic relations, the film – with its aggressive soundtrack of amplified swipes – simply presents to the camera each consecutive sheet of stacked paper.