People overlook famous American artist Richard Serra's 'East-West/West-East' art as it stands in a desolate section of the Brouq nature reserve in Qatar's northwestern desert. The Four steel plates, each 14 metres high, span a one-kilometer stretch of the desert.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
To get to Richard Serra’s East-West/West-East, you drive west out of Doha, hit the Gulf shore near the village of Zekreet, and then turn right into nothingness.
“Slide right,” says the automated Waze voice. Sliding is not a problem, but going right would mean heading directly into a ditch.
The guide books tell you to come out here in a vehicle “with some clearance.” We’re in a four-door Kia compact. You can feel every rut, rock and squidgy patch of sand, and there is nothing but those things.
The road isn’t a road. There’s no road. It’s a series of interconnecting tracks left by the 4x4s of workers installing a nearby pipeline.
We stop at a couple of guys in reflective vests hunkered down in the shade of a pile of material. Our driver, Shakir, talks to them in Hindi. They point us one way.
After we get lost, we flag down a pickup truck, which seems miles away. They come toodling right over. More pipeline workers, Egyptians.
The pair pile out so that everyone can shake hands before any conversation can commence. Shakir talks to them in Arabic. They offer to lead us to the correct path. Without them, we’d be out there feeding lizards as you read this. Assuming lizards can survive here. What lives on this endless doomscape?
“Are there bugs?” says Nathan, the photographer.
“Oh, definitely,” says Shakir. “And cats.”
“Cats?!” says Nathan, head swivelling.
“Desert cats. Very dangerous.”
You know what’s actually dangerous? Driving in the desert in a compact car.
Beside me in the back seat, our colleague, Neil, digs his hands into the upholstery as the car begins to go sideways over a rise. You know how you can sometimes hear a person holding their breath? I can hear that now.
“You know Shakir, if you’re not comfortable driving in …”
“Oh, no, no, I’m very comfortable,” Shakir says. The chassis shudders and moans as if it’s being pulled apart one rivet at a time.
Who would put a piece of art by arguably the world’s greatest living sculptor in a place that you cannot access without a location finder, a very serious vehicle and a lot of spare time? The Qataris.
The World Cup is a trifle when compared to their fixation for contemporary art. To get the main media centre, one drives by a massive series of Damien Hirst sculptures. They graphically detail the stages of development of a fetus. Why? Because they’re outside a hospital.
In Canada, if people had enough money to put a Damien Hirst outside a hospital, they’d use it to build another hospital.
At the media centre, which usually houses conventions, there is a hulking edition of Louise Bourgeois’s Maman in the lobby.
There’s one outside the National Gallery in Ottawa, too. You probably know it.
Here, they’ve tucked it between a McCafé and a souvenir stand, where it serves as an Instagram prop for rubes. Whenever you are given instructions to get to a news conference, they will include something like “turn right at the spider lobby.”
Getting to the sculpture is itself an experience. Driver Shakir Khan drives on a dirt desert road.
A vandalism sign is shown warning people not to damage the installation in a desolate section of Qatar's Brouq nature reserve.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Qatar’s royal family spends shocking amounts on art. Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the ruler’s sister, is the world’s most powerful buyer. She oversees an annual art budget said to be in the region of US$1-billion.
The Serra is one of Qatar’s jewels – the spot for it was suggested by the Emir – but seeing it requires commitment. There is no address. All that’s provided is a GPS co-ordinate.
Because you are Canadian, you assume it will be found at the end of a lonely desert road. The end of that road is only the beginning.
East-West/West-East comprises four enormous steel plates, each over 14 metres tall, sheltered on either side by low ridges. You can see two of the plates as you approach from the west, which fools you into thinking you are nearly there. But that’s the point at which you must decide how badly you want to be close to them. That’s the admission price.
Serra’s pieces are usually found in practical places such as museums and airports.
This is absolutely impractical. It takes us 40 minutes to traverse four kilometres. Serra has suggested that people might walk to the piece, which strikes me as bonkers. Right up until the car is lurching over another hidden boulder, at which point walking seems like a good suggestion wasted.
The effect of crawling fearfully toward these enormous obelisks across the desolation is to produce a sense of awe that is close to religious. The sculpture in the Brouq nature reserve spans a kilometre.
There is something heavy and mythic about their placement, as though you have stumbled into an alien landing site. Which I guess you have. These things don’t belong here and neither do we. But here we both are.
Through an intermediary, I’ve asked Qatar’s head of public art, Abdulrahman Al-Ishaq, how best to approach the piece.
“For the first visit, I recommend approaching the artwork by foot from the East at least 30 minutes before sunset on that day,” Al-Ishaq writes.
Great idea. I’m sure the light is stunning at that time. But then we’d have to drive back in total darkness and, well, die.
Once you have finally arrived, there is the elation of having survived. Then the awe hits you again when you approach them. How did they possibly do this?
I’m not much for the idea of ‘experiencing’ art. When I think of the masterworks, what I am remembering is some German tourist elbowing me out of the way so that he can take a photograph of The Starry Night from two feet away. What I’m experiencing is annoyance.
But you experience the hell out of this. You stand beside one of the plates, which are turning from grey to a deep umber over time, and feel very small in a very big world. It is a surprisingly comforting feeling. These will be here long after I am gone, changing at a pace measured geologically. I saw them once. I touched them. I was there.
While we’re taking our pictures, a high-end Mercedes truck comes bounding in from the other direction. It’s being piloted by an Irish contractor who’s been living in Qatar working on World Cup stadiums. He’s brought his girlfriend to see this.
“I can’t believe you came here in a car,” he says.
He does us a solid and suggests an easier way out than the one we took in. We go back to the car and take a group photo with Shakir. He’s been staring up at the plates for a while, taking photos of them on his phone.
“What is this?” he says at one point.
“Art.”
“Ah. Art,” says Shakir contemplatively, and takes another long look. “I am happy to see this.”