Reading Richard Long

In the gaps when I am not working for my exams, I am making slow progress through the Richard Long book that Linda bought me last weekend. I have been immediately taken by the long distances he seems to manage each day on his "walks" - 30 miles seems to be the average. Would it make a difference to how one feels about his art if he travelled a shorter distance?

But I am still pondering on what to make of the art itself. Clearly it is about the meeting of man and nature in some sense, and by the temporary marking of that interaction by some sort of sign. Yet the works assimilate back into nature the moment they are finished - if it can really be said that they ever really seperated much. Some much of it is away from the viewer of the art - yet there is a sense in which the information provided does allow the viewer to imagine the circumstances in which the work was created (and even what it might have looked like)

Consider the work "Crossing Stones" from 1987 which "consists" of just the following statements

. . . . . . . . . . . . A stone from Aldeburgh Beach on the east coast carried to Aberystwyth Beach
. . . . . . . . . . . . on the west coast
. . . . . . . . . . . . A stone from Aberystwyth Beach on the west coast carried to Aldeburgh
. . . . . . . . . . . . Beach on the east coast
.. . . . . . . . .. . . A 626 mile walk in 20 days
. . . . . . . . . . . . . England Wales England

Or the work "The Same Thing at a Different Time at a Different Place" from 1997 that consists of just the statement:

.. . . . . . . . . . . A Stone brought down from somewhere on a past walk placed on the summit of
. . . . . . . . . . . .Snowdon for a time during a five day walk in North Wales and carried down to
. . . . . . . . . . . .be left somewhere on a future walk

Very perplexing art indeed!



Another example of Richard Long's art - "A Line in Scotland, Cul Mor 1981"