A critical analysis of the work of American sculptor Richard Serra, based on the cultural context in which it appeared and developed, such as the puritan heritage of protestant America and the beginnings of its philosophy. Empiricism, as the foundation of the American pragmatism, developed after the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is seen through a brief study of David Hume´s Treatise of Human Nature. From this historicphilosophical background it traces the main characteristics of American way of behaving, in order to disclose the possible relations with the work of Richard Serra. The dissertation is centered on the manner by which an objective mode of behavior is crucial to advanced capitalism, and its possible analogies with the modern art project that envisages an art world less submitted to hierarchies. Enterprise made successful through the process of bringing the painting to the picture plane.