Richard Long (artist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Detail of Riverlines installed in the lobby of the Hearst Tower (New York City) (2006)
 This article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider modifying the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. (discuss). (April 2013)

Richard Long CBE (born 2 June 1945) is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984. He was nominated in 1984, 1987, 1988 and he then won the award in 1989 for White Water Line.[1] He currently lives and works in Bristol.[2]

Contents

Early life and education [edit]

Born in Bristol, England; Long studied at the University of the West of England's College of Art during the years of 1962-5, then to St Martin’s School of Art and Design, London during 1966-68.[3] At St Martin's, he studied under Anthony Caro and Phillip King, and he became closely associated with fellow student Hamish Fulton.[2] Within a year after he graduated from St Martin’s, the artist became closely associated with the emergence of Land Art; he also participated in the first international manifestations of both Arte Povera, in Amalfi, Italy in 1968, and Earth Art, at Cornell University, New York in 1969.[4]

Work [edit]

South Bank Circle by Richard Long, Tate Liverpool, England. (1991)

Long made his international reputation during the 1970s, but already with sculptures made as the result of epic walks, these take him through rural and remote areas in Britain, or as far afield as the plains of Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia.[5] He walks at different times for different reasons. At times, these are predetermined courses and concepts; yet equally, the idea of the walk may assert itself in an arbitrary circumstance.[4] Guided by a great respect for nature and by the formal structure of basic shapes, Long never makes significant alterations to the landscapes he passes through. Instead he marks the ground or adjusts the natural features of a place by up-ending stones for example, or making simple traces. He usually works in the landscape but sometimes uses natural materials in the gallery. Different modes of presentation, sometimes combined, were used to bring his experience of nature back into the museum or gallery. From 1981, Long also alluded to the terms of painting by applying mud in a very liquid state by hand to a wall in similar configurations, establishing a dialogue between the primal gesture of the hand-print and the formal elegance of its display. He stressed that the meaning of his work lay in the visibility of his actions rather than in the representation of a particular landscape.[5] Nearly forty years on, his work continues the dialectic between working freely and ephemerally wherever in the wide world, and bringing it back into the public domain of art spaces and books in the form of sculptures of raw materials such as stones, mud and water and photographic and text works.[4] In 2012 the artist was on view at the exhibition "Ends of the Earth: Land Art bis 1974" with the conceptual and rarely shown work entitled A Walking Line in the Berner Oberland.[6]

A Line Made by Walking (1967) [edit]

Small White Pebble Circles Date, Tate Modern, London (1987)

Richard Long, then 22 years old and a student at Saint Martin's School of Art in London, walked back and forth along a straight line in the grass in the English countryside, leaving a track that he then photographed in black and white.[7] The work, taken as the milestone in contemporary art, balances on the fine line between the performance (action) and the sculpture (object).[8]

Nature has always been a subject of art, from the first cave paintings to twentieth-century landscape photography. I wanted to use the landscape as an artist in new ways. First I started making work outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this led to the idea of making a sculpture by walking. This was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going ‘nowhere’. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art. Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking – as art – provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.
—Richard Long[9]

Forms [edit]

The consistent employment of archetypal shapes, mostly circle, line, cross and spiral, is immediately noticeable in the artist's body of work. Much as the appearance could evoke ancient monumental connotation, the force of Long's oeuvre lies in its conceptual simplicity. The work is just as it is staged. Nonetheless, Long does not withdraw himself from believing his actions of connecting simple geometric structures such as circles with organic elements, may reach across cultural and generational boundaries:

"I think circles have belonged in some way or other to all people at all times. They are universal and timeless, like the image of a human hand. For me, that is part of their emotional power, although there is nothing symbolic or mystical in my work." —Richard Long[10]

Stone, driftwood and mud [edit]

Long works with indigenous materials, such as stone, wood and mud, collected from his numerous walks around the world. Stone is one of the earliest material used by man to fashion tools; and one of his preferred materials. Delabole Slate Circle, a solid circle made on the floor with slate from the Delabole quarry in Cornwall, was constructed by slate roughly cut to retain as much of its natural character as possible. The circular arrangement is an imposed order, but the flatness of each piece is characteristic of slate, representing a natural order.[11] River Avon Driftwood (1976) seemed to hold chance and order in equal sway, as in much of Long's work. It is made up of bits of driftwood which he gathered from the banks of the River Avon below Leigh Woods, near the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol. These are used randomly, and spaced approximately but within the precise form of an anti-clockwise spiral. Objects which arrived at a given point by chance, through the flow of the river, are organized into a logical, and ancient, pattern.[12]

From 1981 he also alluded to the terms of painting by applying mud in a very liquid state by hand to a wall in similar configurations. Long applies the mud with his hands — throwing it, drawing with his fingers or using the imprint of his palms. While he may allow people to watch him place stones, he paints in private. The mud circles, the most impermanent parts of his shows -when the exhibitions are over, the circles are painted over — hold everything together.[13] Mud has represented the ground he stepped through his walks and the realization of these "murals" establishes a dialogue between the primal gesture of the hand-print and the formal elegance of its display. He stressed that the meaning of his work lay in the visibility of his actions rather than in the representation of a particular landscape.[14]

Bringing together the unevenly shaped raw materials in the geometric structure, Long's works illustrate a recurrent theme, the relationship between man and nature, as he has explained, "You could say that my work is a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world, and that is really the kind of subject of my work."

Nature vs. gallery [edit]

MacDuff Circle (2002), by Richard Long in the grounds of the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh (National Galleries of Scotland).

Long usually works in the landscape but sometimes uses natural materials in the gallery. The scale of his sculptures is determined by his response to each particular place or landscape locality. In 2000, for the first time, he also presented discrete, modest-sized works that hang on the wall like paintings. They are portable and permanent, a deviation from his typical practice of enacting temporary installations on site.[15]

The outdoor and indoor works are complementary, although I would have to say that nature, the landscape, the walking, is at the heart of my work and informs the indoor works. But the art world is usually received 'indoors' and I do have a desire to present real work in public time and space, as opposed to photos, maps and texts, which are by definition 'second hand' works. A sculpture feeds the senses at a place, whereas a photograph or text work (from another place) feeds the imagination. For me, these different forms of my work represent freedom and richness – it's not possible to say 'everything' in one way.
I like the fact that every stone is different, one from another, in the same way all fingerprints, or snowflakes (or places) are unique, so no two circles can be alike. In the landscape works, the stones are of the place and remain there. With an indoor sculpture there is a different working rationale. The work is usually first made to fit its first venue in terms of scale, but it is not site-specific; the work is autonomous in that it can be re-made in another space and place. When this happens, there is a specific written procedure to follow. The selection of the stones is usually random; also individual stones will be in different places within the work each time. Nevertheless, it is the 'same' work whenever it is re-made.
—Richard Long[5]

At Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the Marquess of Cholmondeley commissioned a folly to the east of the house. Long's land art consists of a circle of Cornish slate at the end of a path mown through the grass.[16]

A permanent installation is on view in the main lobby of Hearst Tower (New York City) entitled Riverlines. Completed during the summer of 2006 and the biggest wall work he had ever made - about 35 x 50 feet (11 x 15 meters).[17]

Another permanent installation, Planet Circle (1991), can be seen in Museum De Pont in Tilburg, The Netherlands, or in the Hallen für Neue Kunst Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

Solo exhibitions [edit]

 This article contains a list of works that does not follow the Manual of Style for lists of works (often, though not always, due to being in reverse-chronological order) and may need cleanup. (April 2013)
This article contains embedded lists that may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Where appropriate, incorporate items into the main body of the article. (April 2013)

Books [edit]

  • 2012 South America. Zédélé éditions, Brest, France. First edition: 1972, Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf.

Group exhibitions [edit]

Selected honours and awards [edit]

  • 1976 Represented Britain in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
  • 1989 Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London, UK
  • 1990 Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, French Ministry of Culture, Paris, France
  • 2001 Elected to the Royal Academy of Arts
  • 2005 California Residency Award, For-Site Foundation, USA

Long was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to art.[21][22]

Art market [edit]

Long's Whitechapel Slate Circle (1981) brought a record price price for the artist in 1989 when it sold for $209,000 at Sotheby's in New York. At another auction in 1992, the piece was estimated far more modestly at $120,000 to $160,000, but bidding never exceeded $110,000;[23] instead, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. purchased it in 1994 through dealer Anthony d'Offay.

Long is represented by the James Cohan Gallery, located in New York City. He has in the past also shown with Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, and Haunch of Venison, London.

See also [edit]

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ Turner Prize History - Richard Long
  2. ^ a b Richard Long Guggenheim Collection.
  3. ^ Richard Long Official Website http://www.richardlong.org/
  4. ^ a b c Haunch of Venison http://www.haunchofvenison.com/en/index.php#page=home.artists.richard_long
  5. ^ a b c Tate Collection: Richard Long, Tate Britain, UK http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1525&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio
  6. ^ "A Walking Tour in the Land of Conceptual Art", Observatoire du Land Art, 26 May 2012
  7. ^ Sean O'Hagan, "One Step Beyond", The Observer, 10 May 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/may/10/art-richard-long
  8. ^ The Collection: Richard Long, Museum De Pont, Netherlands http://www.depont.nl/en/collection/the-collection/kunstenaar/long/info/
  9. ^ Richard Long: Heaven and Earth, Tate Gallery, UK http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/richardlong/explore.shtm
  10. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=-1&workid=21117&searchid=9812&roomid=2875&tabview=text&texttype=10
  11. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=21781
  12. ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=8980&searchid=9604
  13. ^ Michael Brenson (12 September 1986), Art: At The Guggenheim, Works By Richard Long New York Times.
  14. ^ (http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1525&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio
  15. ^ Leah Ollmann (February 4, 2000), Richard Long Makes His Mark in a New Way, With Works of Permanence Los Angeles Times.
  16. ^ Donald, Caroline. "The new garden at Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk," The Times (London), 11 May 2008.
  17. ^ Richard Long newsletter No. 50 - 7 September 2006.
  18. ^ Roberta Smith (February 6, 2000), ART IN REVIEW; Richard Long New York Times.
  19. ^ Suzanne Muchnic (February 6, 2000), Romanticism Can Go Take a Hike Los Angeles Times.
  20. ^ Michael Brenson (September 12, 1986), Art: At The Guggenheim, Works By Richard Long New York Times.
  21. ^ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 60367. p. 8. 29 December 2012.
  22. ^ "Bristol artist Richard Long among Queen's New Year Honours". BBC. December 29, 2012. Retrieved December 29, 2012. 
  23. ^ Carol Vogel (18 November 1992), A Night to Buy Low at Sotheby's New York Times.

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard Long (artist)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Long_(artist)&oldid=551429565"