Richard Long (1945)
United Kingdom
Biography :
"After his studies at the St Martin School of Arts in London, Richard Long chose to make the entire earth his place of creation and exhibition, to work on the scale of the landscape and at the rhythm of walking. Despite the character ephemeral of the vast majority of his works – in situ, subject to reconquest by their environment and climatic degradation – his work has been shown in numerous institutions around the world (Tate Gallery and Tate Britain, London, Hamburger Bahnof in Berlin , etc.) and during major international meetings (documenta de Cassel in 1972, Venice Biennale in 1976). Most often, he presents archives (photographs, maps), relics of raw materials found during his walks or even texts (tautological or poetic statements), such as Richard Long March 19-22 1969, A Walking Tour in the Berner Oberland [Richard Long March 19-22 1969, Visite pedestrian de l'Oberland bernois] printed on paper and installed on the wall during the historical exhibition When Attitudes Become Form in 1969.
A manifesto of his entire work, A Line Made by Walking from 1967 shows the trace on the ground of the artist's successive comings and goings along an imaginary line in the middle of a field. “The notion of originality is important to me, in the sense that, despite many walking traditions – the landscape surveyor, the walking poet, the pilgrim – it is always possible to walk along different paths[1]”.
The photographs, in which the human presence is suggested off-camera, then become the unique trace of the walk or of the sculptures created along the way (A Line in Sahara, 1988).
Having become one of the major figures of Land Art, the artist nevertheless denies being too assimilated to this particularly American movement, to the extent that he considers his works more as personal and light sculptures than as “monuments”.
Claiming to be primarily a sculptor, Richard Long evolves in a quantifiable space, whether in terms of duration or inscriptions left on site (A Line of 33 Stones, A Walk of 33 Days of 33 days], 1998). By using materials that he collects from nature, and without dissociating himself from his atypical way of treating the landscape, the artist thus gives his work a guiding “line” and manages to establish a link between nature and culture.
[1] Quoted in the article by Sean O'Hagan, “One Step Beyond”, The Observer, May 10, 2011." (Source, website, Institute of Contemporary Art of Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes)