Richard Serra Reflects on Dealer Richard Bellamy's Radical Support for Artists in 1960s New York

Richard Serra recalls his early encounters with the New York art scene through dealer Richard Bellamy, who ran the Green Gallery from 1960 to 1965. Serra first visited the gallery as a Yale student in 1962, seeing Claes Oldenburg's work, which he found empowering for its use of gravity and scale. Bellamy, described by Serra as "the most radical dealer on the scene," was not a businessman but a constant witness who supported artists without merchandising their work. He showed diverse artists like Oldenburg, Robert Morris, Donald Judd, and James Rosenquist, and later curated a breakthrough show for Serra with Walter de Maria and others at Noah Goldowsky. Bellamy's approach was personal and vulnerable; he would visit studios, get stoned with artists, and offer casual advice. After the Green Gallery closed, he helped artists move to dealers like Leo Castelli and Sidney Janis, who commercialized their work. Serra notes Bellamy's broad taste, from Surrealist painter Milet Andreyevich to minimalist figures, defying categorization as solely Abstract Expressionist. Bellamy's background included being a DJ fired for reading T.S. Eliot on air, working at the post office, and having a Chinese mother during WWII, which may have influenced his reticence. He died on March 1, 1998. The dialogue, conducted by Erik La Prade, was published by artcritical in 2016 alongside Judith E. Stein's biography of Bellamy.