My first success after moving to Switzerland: I sold a piece to New York magazine about the fate of Basel's Richard Serra sculpture on the city's Theaterplatz. The statue, with its 42- foot-long curved steel walls, had become a favored canvas for the city's graffiti artists. Serra refused comment. 'He's not going to talk to you about that,' scowled his wife Clara. 'Why not write about his art?' Note the photo credit, perhaps my only one in 15 years as a journalist.
