Richard Long (artist)
Encyclopedia
Richard Long is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, photographer and painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, one of the best known British land art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...

ists. Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

 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.

Early life

Born in Bristol, England; Long studied at the University of the West of England
University of the West of England
The University of the West of England is a university based in the English city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, about five miles north of the city centre...

's College of Art during the years of 1962-5, then to St Martin’s School of Art and Design, London during 1966-68. 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.

Art Work

Long made his international reputation during the 1970s 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. 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. 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 he 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.
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.

A Line Made by Walking (1967)

Richard Long, then eighteen 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. The work, taken as the milestone in contemporary art, balances on the fine line between the performance (action) and the sculpture (object).

'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

Forms

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 doesn't 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

Stone, Driftwood and Mud

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. 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. 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. 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.

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 v.s. Gallery

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.

‘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

At Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall
Houghton Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. It was built for the de facto first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and it is a key building in the history of Palladian architecture in England...

 in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, the Marquess of Cholmondeley
David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley
David George Philip Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, KCVO, DL , was styled from birth Viscount Malpas until 1968, and subsequently Earl of Rocksavage until 1990...

 commissioned a folly
Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...

 to the east of the house. Long's land art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...

 consists of a circle of Cornish slate at the end of a path mown through the grass.

A permanent installation is on view in the main lobby of Hearst Tower (New York City)
Hearst Tower (New York City)
The Brilliant Hearst Tower is located at 300 West 57th Street, 959 8th Avenue, near Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York...

 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).

Another permanent installation, Planet Circle (1991), can be seen in museum De Pont in Tilburg, The Netherlands.

He is represented by the James Cohan Gallery
James Cohan Gallery
The James Cohan Gallery is one of the prominent contemporary art galleries based in New York. Since 2008, it has also had premises in Shanghai.- History :...

, located in New York City.

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2009 Richard Long: Heaven and Earth, Tate Gallery, UK
  • 2009 Richard Long Exhibition no 277, Haunch of Venison, Berlin, Germany
  • 2008 Richard Long, Galleria Lorcan O'Neil, Rome, Italy
  • 2008 Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice, France
  • 2007 Richard Long: Not Vital, Galerie Tschudi, Zuoz, Switzerland
  • 2007 Richard Long: Walking and Marking, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
  • 2006 Richard Long, Lismore Castle, Lismore, Ireland
  • 2006 Richard Long: The Path is the Place is the Line, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
  • 2005 Galleria Lorcan O'Neill, Rome, Italy
  • 2004 Richard Long: The Human Touch - O toque humano, Galeria Mário Sequeira, *2004 Braga Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
  • 2003 Galleria Lorcan O'Neill, Rome, Italy
  • 2003 Richard Long: Here and Now and Then, Haunch of Venison, London, UK
  • 2002 A Moving World, Tate St. Ives
  • 2002 James Cohan Gallery, New York
  • 2001 On Site: Richard Long, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, MI
  • 2000 Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK
  • 2000 Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain
  • 2000 James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY
  • 2000 The Public Art Fund, New York Projects, New York, NY
  • 1999 Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany
  • 1999 Bernier/Eliades, Athens, Greede
  • 1998 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bretton Hall, Yorkshire, Wakefield, UK
  • 1997 The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK
  • 1997 Benesse Museum of Contemporary Art, Naoshima, Japan
  • 1997 Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, UK
  • 1996 The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
  • 1996 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
  • 1995 Sala de Exposiciones de la Diputacion de Huesca, Spain
  • 1995 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1995 Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1994 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1994 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1994 São Paulo Biennale, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 1994 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia
  • 1994 ARC, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France
  • 1992 Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens, Germany
  • 1992 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1991 Tate Gallery Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
  • 1991 Stadtische Galerie im Stadelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany
  • 1991 Hayward Gallery, London, UK
  • 1991 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • 1990 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK
  • 1990 Tate Gallery, London, UK
  • 1990 Magasin 3 Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 1989 Kunstverein St Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
  • 1989 Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens, Greece
  • 1989 Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1989 Henry Moore Sculpture Trust Studio, Dean Clough, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • 1988 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 1988 Neue Galerie – Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen
  • 1988 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1987 Musee Rath, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 1987 Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, IL
  • 1987 Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens, Greece
  • 1986 Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, Spain
  • 1986 Gallery Crousel-Hussenot, Paris, France
  • 1986 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
  • 1985 Gallery Buchmann, Basel, Switzerland
  • 1985 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1985 Malmo Konsthall, Malmo
  • 1985 Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea
    Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea
    Padiglione d'arte contemporanea is a contemporary art museum in Milan, Italy. It is located in via Palestro, near Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli.- References :* - External links :*...

    , Milan, Italy
  • 1984 Coracle Press, London, UK
  • 1984 Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
  • 1984 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1984 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 1983 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK
  • 1983 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1983 Art Agency Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  • 1982 Art and Project Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 1982 Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1982 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
  • 1981 Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1981 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1981 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1981 CAPC, Musee d'Art Contemporain deBordeaux, Bordeaux, France
  • 1980 Karen and Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens, Greece
  • 1980 Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
  • 1979 Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, UK
  • 1979 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK
  • 1978 Art and Project Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 1978 Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1978 Austellungsraum Ulrich Ruckriem, Hamburg, Germany
  • 1977 Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK
  • 1977 Lisson Gallery, London, UK
  • 1977 Kunsthalle, Berne
  • 1977 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
  • 1976 Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery, Rome, Italy
  • 1976 British Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
  • 1976 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK
  • 1976 Sperone Westwater Fischer Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1975 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1974 John Weber Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1974 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • 1973 Lisson Gallery, London, UK
  • 1973 Wide White Space, Antwerp, Belgium
  • 1973 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1973 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 1972 The Museum of Modern Art Projects, New York, NY
  • 1972 Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, France
  • 1971 Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery, Torino, Italy
  • 1971 Art and Project Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 1971 Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK
  • 1971 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK
  • 1970 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1970 Stadtisches Museum, Monchengladbach
  • 1970 Dwan Gallery, New York
  • 1969 John Gibson Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1969 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany
  • 1969 Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld
  • 1969 Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, France
  • 1969 Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany

Group Exhibitions

  • 6 July - 30 August 2010 at Torre Abbey
    Torre Abbey
    Torre Abbey is a historic building and art gallery in Torquay, Devon, which lies in the South West of England. It was founded in 1196 as a monastery for Premonstratensian canons, and is now the best-preserved medieval monastery in Devon and Cornwall...

     with Damien Hirst
    Damien Hirst
    Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

     and Heather Jansch
    Heather Jansch
    Heather Jansch is a British sculptor notable for making life-sized sculptures of horses from driftwood. She has also used cork as a material in her creations. Jansch reported that she struggled in her youth in schools, but had a passion for drawing and horses.A reviewer in Britain's Daily Mail...

  • 12 June - 14 August 2010 at William Griffin Gallery
    William Griffin Gallery
    William Griffin Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Santa Monica, California.-History:The gallery was established in 1997 by William Griffin. In 2003 the gallery relocated from Venice to a space in Santa Monica . The gallery's new space is located at 2902 Nebraska Avenue, adjacent...

     with James Turrell
    James Turrell
    James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...

    , Teresita Fernandez, Karin Sanders, Peter Wegner
    Peter Wegner
    Peter Wegner is an American computer scientist who has made significant contributions to both the theory of object-oriented programming during 80's and to the relevance of Church-Turing thesis for empirical aspects of computer science during 90's and present. The seminal work for his previous...

    , Robert Therrien, and Maya Lin
    Maya Lin
    Maya Ying Lin is an American artist who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. She is the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Personal life:...

  • 7 September - 7 October 2006 1 + 1 = 2 with Roger Ackling at Von Lintel Gallery, New York Vonlintel.com

Select Honors And Awards

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

External links

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