RICHARD LONG: POCKET GUIDE
by WILLIAM MALPASThe central fact and act of Richard Long's art is
walking. His work is founded on the art of walking, the act of walking,
the actuality of walking, and on walking as art, as act, as experience.
His walks become 'artwalks', artwalks which become artworks. ---For
Richard Long, (art)walking is (art)working. As he walks he works.
Art-walking and art-working become interchangeable. 'I have met with but
one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of
Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had a genius, so to speak, for
sauntering', wrote Henry Thoreau. ---Richard Long is a British land
artist and sculptor who works with and in the natural world, but also
with and within the highly sophisticated, artificial and humanmade world
of art and culture. 'I too wanted to make nature the subject of my work,
' Long explained of his early work, 'but in new ways. I started working
outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this evolved
into the idea of making a sculpture by walking'. ---This book also
considers topics such as contemporary and postwar art and sculpture;
Richard Long's contemporaries, including fellow British sculptors; and
land art. ---In the course of this book William Malpas references many
of Richard Long's contemporary British sculptors (Tony Cragg, Bill
Woodrow, David Nash, Barry Flanagan, Alison Wilding, Shirazeh Houshiary,
Richard Wentworth, Boyd Webb, Hamish Fulton, Stephen Cox, Philip King,
Anthony Caro, Tim Head, William Tucker, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley,
David Mach, Peter Randall-Page, Nicholas Pope and Gilbert & George).
---Further chapters include: one on women, feminist, body art and
performance sculptors, as a comparison with Richard Long's art, which
has a strong component of performance (even if it's nearly always
private). Also, a consideration of gendered sculpture and art. In the
chapter on Minimal, Conceptual, Process and other 1960s and post-1960s
art and artists, I'm interested in the artists (primarily European and
American) who have most in common with Richard Long's art: the great
Minimal and land artists, such as Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Carl
Andre, Sol LeWitt, Dennis Oppenheim, James Turrell and Robert Ryman, and
the important Conceptual artists, such as Hans Haacke, Bruce Nauman,
Yves Klein and Lawrence Weiner. ---AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a revised
edition of a book first published in 2007. I have updated the study with
information of more recent exhibitions and artworks of Richard Long. The
book has involved a good deal of research into Long's art over the
years, and I hope that readers will gain some new insights into this
inspiring artist's work. Fully illustrated, with a newly revised text.
Bibliography and notes. ISBN 971861713308. ---www.crmoon.com
