Stones Clouds Miles

Introduction Cl arr ie Walli s

Richard Long’s art is grounded in his direct engagement with the landscape. Born in Bristol in 1945 he first came to prominence in the late 1960s and is part of an international generation of artists who extended the possibilities of sculpture beyond traditional materials and methods. This anthology brings together a selection of texts about his work, as well as statements by the artist, which chart Long’s impressive career and are key to an understanding of a body of work that encompasses sculpture, language, mudworks and printed matter.

Collectively, they reflect on how the art is rooted in Long’s love of nature and the revolutionary implications of using walking as a medium. As the articles in this volume confirm, what is striking is both the early stage at which Long established the formal parameters within which his work would develop, making art directly connected with the landscape, and the unwavering continuity of his approach. This new form of art was not only located in the landscape but was made from landscape itself.

The texts gathered together here are arranged chronologically to enable an appraisal of the different ways in which Long’s art has been received over the last 40 years. Interspersed between the texts is a selection of photographs of key exhibitions. Remarkably, the idea-based approach of Long’s mature work is already well established in his student work at St Martin’s School of Art where he studied from 1966 to 1968. In his last term, the German gallerist Konrad Fischer wrote to Long inviting him to have an exhibition at his gallery in September 1968,1 and at Fischer’s suggestion, Long took the train to Amalfi in Italy and participated in III Rassegna di arti figurative: Arte Povera + azioni povere, (RA3: Third Amalfi Exhibition: Arte Povera + azioni povere). This was an annual event, which in 1968 consisted of an exhibition in the old Arsenale and three days of actions and collective works by artists and writers including Ger van Elk, whose commentary of the event is included here (pp.16–17).

In retrospect, the works made in Amalfi form a microcosm of the radical new approaches to materials and forms being explored by a number of European and American artists, including Richard Long.

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They were intent on exploring new ideas about sculpture. By the early 1970s critics would describe these approaches in different ways such as ‘process-orientated’, ‘anti-form’, ‘earthworks’, ‘Conceptual’ and ‘post-Minimal’. Long’s presence in exhibitions such as Op Losse Schroeven, situaties en cryptostructuren and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations-Information) (both 1969) highlight the rapidity with which his work achieved international recognition. John Perreault’s review of Long’s exhibition at the John Gibson Gallery, New York, 1969 (p.17) together with Elizabeth Baker’s review of his show at the Dwan Gallery, New York in 1970 (p.26) give an insight into how Long’s practice was discussed at the time in relation to these new categories of work. Likewise, Paul Wember’s catalogue essay for Long’s first institutional exhibition at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld in 1969 (where he realised three works on the lawn), offers an early attempt to position his work alongside other international artists who took art beyond the studio (pp.19–21).

From the beginning of his career, Long developed two distinct but complementary aspects of making: the outdoor sculptures and walks, and the sculpture installations, photo, map and textworks. Photography was always important to him, as it was a practical way of showing people what he had made in the landscape. As Andrew Wilson’s text notes, Long soon became interested in the different ways he could put work into the world: a photograph, a postcard, a sculpture, a text, or an artist’s book were all possibilities, and all could be given equal status (pp.225–233). Long’s first textwork, which treats language in a neutral way, was created for the exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form. After completing a walk in the Alps near Bern his work for the exhibition that followed consisted of a printed poster pasted to the wall, which read: ‘Richard Long, March 19–22, 1969, A Walking Tour in the Berner Oberland.’ 2 In Ian Tromp’s text he considers the use of poetry and language in Long’s work that began with this work in 1969 and has continued to be a crucial element in Long’s work since (pp.188–201). In 1970, at the Dwan Gallery in New York, Long walked a spiral on the floor with muddy boots, a work that he thought of as a two-dimensional sculpture. Later he realised that he could use the same material in a liquid state and apply it directly onto the wall with his hands.

Long’s use of the natural environment meant that in early reviews, particularly by critics from the United States, he was often associated

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Introduction Cl arr ie Walli s

Richard Long’s art is grounded in his direct engagement with the landscape. Born in Bristol in 1945 he first came to prominence in the late 1960s and is part of an international generation of artists who extended the possibilities of sculpture beyond traditional materials and methods. This anthology brings together a selection of texts about his work, as well as statements by the artist, which chart Long’s impressive career and are key to an understanding of a body of work that encompasses sculpture, language, mudworks and printed matter.

Collectively, they reflect on how the art is rooted in Long’s love of nature and the revolutionary implications of using walking as a medium. As the articles in this volume confirm, what is striking is both the early stage at which Long established the formal parameters within which his work would develop, making art directly connected with the landscape, and the unwavering continuity of his approach. This new form of art was not only located in the landscape but was made from landscape itself.

The texts gathered together here are arranged chronologically to enable an appraisal of the different ways in which Long’s art has been received over the last 40 years. Interspersed between the texts is a selection of photographs of key exhibitions. Remarkably, the idea-based approach of Long’s mature work is already well established in his student work at St Martin’s School of Art where he studied from 1966 to 1968. In his last term, the German gallerist Konrad Fischer wrote to Long inviting him to have an exhibition at his gallery in September 1968,1 and at Fischer’s suggestion, Long took the train to Amalfi in Italy and participated in III Rassegna di arti figurative: Arte Povera + azioni povere, (RA3: Third Amalfi Exhibition: Arte Povera + azioni povere). This was an annual event, which in 1968 consisted of an exhibition in the old Arsenale and three days of actions and collective works by artists and writers including Ger van Elk, whose commentary of the event is included here (pp.16–17).

In retrospect, the works made in Amalfi form a microcosm of the radical new approaches to materials and forms being explored by a number of European and American artists, including Richard Long.

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101_2017_1_LongReader_001-187.indd 10-11

They were intent on exploring new ideas about sculpture. By the early 1970s critics would describe these approaches in different ways such as ‘process-orientated’, ‘anti-form’, ‘earthworks’, ‘Conceptual’ and ‘post-Minimal’. Long’s presence in exhibitions such as Op Losse Schroeven, situaties en cryptostructuren and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations-Information) (both 1969) highlight the rapidity with which his work achieved international recognition. John Perreault’s review of Long’s exhibition at the John Gibson Gallery, New York, 1969 (p.17) together with Elizabeth Baker’s review of his show at the Dwan Gallery, New York in 1970 (p.26) give an insight into how Long’s practice was discussed at the time in relation to these new categories of work. Likewise, Paul Wember’s catalogue essay for Long’s first institutional exhibition at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld in 1969 (where he realised three works on the lawn), offers an early attempt to position his work alongside other international artists who took art beyond the studio (pp.19–21).

From the beginning of his career, Long developed two distinct but complementary aspects of making: the outdoor sculptures and walks, and the sculpture installations, photo, map and textworks. Photography was always important to him, as it was a practical way of showing people what he had made in the landscape. As Andrew Wilson’s text notes, Long soon became interested in the different ways he could put work into the world: a photograph, a postcard, a sculpture, a text, or an artist’s book were all possibilities, and all could be given equal status (pp.225–233). Long’s first textwork, which treats language in a neutral way, was created for the exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form. After completing a walk in the Alps near Bern his work for the exhibition that followed consisted of a printed poster pasted to the wall, which read: ‘Richard Long, March 19–22, 1969, A Walking Tour in the Berner Oberland.’ 2 In Ian Tromp’s text he considers the use of poetry and language in Long’s work that began with this work in 1969 and has continued to be a crucial element in Long’s work since (pp.188–201). In 1970, at the Dwan Gallery in New York, Long walked a spiral on the floor with muddy boots, a work that he thought of as a two-dimensional sculpture. Later he realised that he could use the same material in a liquid state and apply it directly onto the wall with his hands.

Long’s use of the natural environment meant that in early reviews, particularly by critics from the United States, he was often associated

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4 Skulpturen Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 16 July – 30 August 1970 All works untitled

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4 Skulpturen Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 16 July – 30 August 1970 All works untitled

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Elizabeth Baker

Richard Long at Dwan Gallery New York, 3 – 29 October 1970

[The] young English artist, Richard Long, has evolved an unusually complex and personal mode among the international contingent of earthworkers. In his new show were two characteristically understated, lyrical and multi-referential pieces, both closely related to his more familiar landscape-sited works. One was a pale grey clay track of Long’s footprints, wound up into a spiral nicely filling the confines of the room. The track was walked over several times, the footprints casually but quite neatly superposed. The track refers to a real outdoor situation: Silbury Hill, a prehistoric mound, the largest man-made hill in England. It has been partly excavated but nothing has been found – its purpose and origins are unknown. Long has included a local legend about the hill on his exhibition announcement. (The devil intended to set the hill down on a town; the town’s most virtuoso liar tricked the devil into dropping it in an open space instead.) Long’s walked spiral is the exact length of a path from the bottom to the top of Silbury Hill. The concept of duration, of distance, of walking, of traces of the artist’s presence in a specific locale are all important factors in Long’s thinking. The peculiar balance between an arbitrary visual form and a perhaps whimsical but completely specific ‘subject’ or place, the modest physicality and moderate scale, all contribute to the personal quality of what Long does. Many of his pieces, in fact, seem ‘English’ – subtly picturesque, even pastoral. Spectators may walk at will over the clay foot-track – while the clay is tenacious, the piece is ultimately ephemeral. The other work in the show is off-limits for wandering, intended just to be seen, and will continue to exist: it comprises concentric circles laid out on the floor – thin contours formed of wooden sticks. The circles are a variant of a recurrent formal motif which he has insinuated into numerous landscape situations (grass, woods, hillside, beach pebbles, etc.). The placement flat on the carpet is as straightforward as, say, a Carl Andre floor piece, but the sensibility is more fragile and the piece far more dematerialised than Andre even at his most linear.

A S C U L P T U R E L E F T BY T H E T I D E CORN WALL 1970

Art News, vol.69, no.7, November 1970, p.22.

A S O M E R S E T B E AC H E N GLAN D 1968

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Elizabeth Baker

Richard Long at Dwan Gallery New York, 3 – 29 October 1970

[The] young English artist, Richard Long, has evolved an unusually complex and personal mode among the international contingent of earthworkers. In his new show were two characteristically understated, lyrical and multi-referential pieces, both closely related to his more familiar landscape-sited works. One was a pale grey clay track of Long’s footprints, wound up into a spiral nicely filling the confines of the room. The track was walked over several times, the footprints casually but quite neatly superposed. The track refers to a real outdoor situation: Silbury Hill, a prehistoric mound, the largest man-made hill in England. It has been partly excavated but nothing has been found – its purpose and origins are unknown. Long has included a local legend about the hill on his exhibition announcement. (The devil intended to set the hill down on a town; the town’s most virtuoso liar tricked the devil into dropping it in an open space instead.) Long’s walked spiral is the exact length of a path from the bottom to the top of Silbury Hill. The concept of duration, of distance, of walking, of traces of the artist’s presence in a specific locale are all important factors in Long’s thinking. The peculiar balance between an arbitrary visual form and a perhaps whimsical but completely specific ‘subject’ or place, the modest physicality and moderate scale, all contribute to the personal quality of what Long does. Many of his pieces, in fact, seem ‘English’ – subtly picturesque, even pastoral. Spectators may walk at will over the clay foot-track – while the clay is tenacious, the piece is ultimately ephemeral. The other work in the show is off-limits for wandering, intended just to be seen, and will continue to exist: it comprises concentric circles laid out on the floor – thin contours formed of wooden sticks. The circles are a variant of a recurrent formal motif which he has insinuated into numerous landscape situations (grass, woods, hillside, beach pebbles, etc.). The placement flat on the carpet is as straightforward as, say, a Carl Andre floor piece, but the sensibility is more fragile and the piece far more dematerialised than Andre even at his most linear.

A S C U L P T U R E L E F T BY T H E T I D E CORN WALL 1970

Art News, vol.69, no.7, November 1970, p.22.

A S O M E R S E T B E AC H E N GLAN D 1968

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Richard Long, Mexico 1979

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Richard Long, Mexico 1979

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WA L K I N G A L I N E I N P E R U 19 72

Simon Field

Touching the Earth Lisson Gallery, London, 23 January – 24 February 1973

They inscribe a human meaning upon the hostile wastes of nature, in a graphic record of a forgotten but once important ritual. They are an architecture of two-dimensional space, consecrated to human actions rather than to shelter, and recording a correspondence between the earth and the universe…

They are an architecture of diagram and relation, with the substance reduced to a minimum.

George Kubler on the Nazca Lines, The Shape of Time, 1962

The redesigned Lisson Gallery has two spaces, separated by a single doorway. In Richard Long’s recent show the one was occupied entirely by a sculpture of stones, the other by nine photographic and map pieces, the majority of them made on a recent trip to Bolivia and Peru; of the remainder, two were of Dartmoor walks, the third of the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. The nine pieces, like Long’s previous work, were photographs of places, usually where he had traced one of his ‘sculptures’: walked a line, a cross or made a circle of stones. As in the past, there was no explanatory material, just a simple evocative caption: Two Sacred Places (1972) or the briefest information: A Walk of Four Hours and Four Circles (1972).

One is left entirely alone to gauge Long’s concerns, left with images and a presence that are extremely poetic, expressive of particular places, scale and time. The peculiar strength of Long’s work is that behind this immediate poetry is a resonance that carries far beyond the gallery in which we stand, each work implies and involves all his others and furthermore, in this show, take their strength from and interlock with an even larger network of ‘earthworks’ from another time and another place.

Walking a Line in Peru (1972) is on the surface a simple piece. The photograph is taken from one side of a wide valley. Into the depth of the image and across the floor of the valley goes a thin walked line that disappears into the foothills in the distance. As in many of Long’s photographs, scale is there but it’s elusive, one can’t judge how long

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WA L K I N G A L I N E I N P E R U 19 72

Simon Field

Touching the Earth Lisson Gallery, London, 23 January – 24 February 1973

They inscribe a human meaning upon the hostile wastes of nature, in a graphic record of a forgotten but once important ritual. They are an architecture of two-dimensional space, consecrated to human actions rather than to shelter, and recording a correspondence between the earth and the universe…

They are an architecture of diagram and relation, with the substance reduced to a minimum.

George Kubler on the Nazca Lines, The Shape of Time, 1962

The redesigned Lisson Gallery has two spaces, separated by a single doorway. In Richard Long’s recent show the one was occupied entirely by a sculpture of stones, the other by nine photographic and map pieces, the majority of them made on a recent trip to Bolivia and Peru; of the remainder, two were of Dartmoor walks, the third of the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. The nine pieces, like Long’s previous work, were photographs of places, usually where he had traced one of his ‘sculptures’: walked a line, a cross or made a circle of stones. As in the past, there was no explanatory material, just a simple evocative caption: Two Sacred Places (1972) or the briefest information: A Walk of Four Hours and Four Circles (1972).

One is left entirely alone to gauge Long’s concerns, left with images and a presence that are extremely poetic, expressive of particular places, scale and time. The peculiar strength of Long’s work is that behind this immediate poetry is a resonance that carries far beyond the gallery in which we stand, each work implies and involves all his others and furthermore, in this show, take their strength from and interlock with an even larger network of ‘earthworks’ from another time and another place.

Walking a Line in Peru (1972) is on the surface a simple piece. The photograph is taken from one side of a wide valley. Into the depth of the image and across the floor of the valley goes a thin walked line that disappears into the foothills in the distance. As in many of Long’s photographs, scale is there but it’s elusive, one can’t judge how long

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Venice Biennale XXXVII British Pavilion, 18 July – 10 October 1976 A Line of 682 Stones 1976

Richard Long in Venice 1976

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Venice Biennale XXXVII British Pavilion, 18 July – 10 October 1976 A Line of 682 Stones 1976

Richard Long in Venice 1976

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Saskia Bos

Richard Long, Art & Project Amsterdam, 23 January – 20 February 1982

In his recent work, Richard Long unexpectedly appears as a kind of painter. On the white walls of the gallery are huge monochrome circles, two in brownish grey and one in a warmer reddish-brown; within the circles the white wall is left visible at intervals, thus implying not only a flat ornament but also structure and depth. Long painted with his hands, dipping his fingers in mud and clay with which he then covered the walls in a tense, rhythmic motion. Because of the supple and continuous movement of his fingers, the paintings have an overall structure that is both dynamic and controlled. On the one hand, their patterns remind one of intricate latticework; on the other, they recall the organic feeling of old landscape etchings.

The connections with Long’s past work – especially with the book in which he used mud from the River Avon on the pages, enabling the viewer to ‘read’ the river – are obvious. River Avon Mud Circle (1982) and Red Clay Circle (1982) also relate to the circles of driftwood that Long has made for many years. What distinguishes them from these earlier sculptures is the suppleness and sensuousness of the new medium, which enable Long to convey different moods and sensations. Making an abstract image of nature out of nature’s own materials, Long evokes the rhythms of flowing water and of moving earth in a river by using mud from the river itself.

In this impressive show, in which Long made his largest mud circles so far (previous works were presented in London and Lyons), he created a complement to his landscape photography. Both strongly evoke nature, but in quite different ways. It is always fascinating to see an artist find new formulations while remaining true to his central concerns; this is the more welcome in a period when eclecticism seems to be the only avenue for most ‘new’ painters.

Artforum, vol.20, no.10, June 1982, p.95.

A C I RC L E I N A L A S K A B E R I N G S T R A I T D R I F T WO O D O N T H E A RC T I C C I RC L E 70

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Saskia Bos

Richard Long, Art & Project Amsterdam, 23 January – 20 February 1982

In his recent work, Richard Long unexpectedly appears as a kind of painter. On the white walls of the gallery are huge monochrome circles, two in brownish grey and one in a warmer reddish-brown; within the circles the white wall is left visible at intervals, thus implying not only a flat ornament but also structure and depth. Long painted with his hands, dipping his fingers in mud and clay with which he then covered the walls in a tense, rhythmic motion. Because of the supple and continuous movement of his fingers, the paintings have an overall structure that is both dynamic and controlled. On the one hand, their patterns remind one of intricate latticework; on the other, they recall the organic feeling of old landscape etchings.

The connections with Long’s past work – especially with the book in which he used mud from the River Avon on the pages, enabling the viewer to ‘read’ the river – are obvious. River Avon Mud Circle (1982) and Red Clay Circle (1982) also relate to the circles of driftwood that Long has made for many years. What distinguishes them from these earlier sculptures is the suppleness and sensuousness of the new medium, which enable Long to convey different moods and sensations. Making an abstract image of nature out of nature’s own materials, Long evokes the rhythms of flowing water and of moving earth in a river by using mud from the river itself.

In this impressive show, in which Long made his largest mud circles so far (previous works were presented in London and Lyons), he created a complement to his landscape photography. Both strongly evoke nature, but in quite different ways. It is always fascinating to see an artist find new formulations while remaining true to his central concerns; this is the more welcome in a period when eclecticism seems to be the only avenue for most ‘new’ painters.

Artforum, vol.20, no.10, June 1982, p.95.

A C I RC L E I N A L A S K A B E R I N G S T R A I T D R I F T WO O D O N T H E A RC T I C C I RC L E 70

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Richard Long Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, 28 January – 20 April 1986 Madrid Circle 1986 | Segovia Slate Circles 1986

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Richard Long Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, 28 January – 20 April 1986 Madrid Circle 1986 | Segovia Slate Circles 1986

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Richard Long, Alaska 1972

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Richard Long, Alaska 1972

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