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Richard Long
Conceptual Framework: Artwork
Cornish Slate Line (1990)
SIZE: 12,540 X 230 cm
In 1990, Richard Long presented an installation of three works at the Tate
Gallery in London. Cornish Slate Line (1990), Norfolk Flint
Circle (1990) and White Water Line (1990) use natural materials
found commonly in Britain. They were specifically designed for the Tate’s
Duveen Galleries, which are chambers of honeyed sandstone that act as the
museum’s central axis.
On entering the first gallery, the audience sees vista of Cornish Slate
Line running the length of the space. It is weighty and solid, stretching
like the roadway of an ancient people, tempting one to walk upon it, to
follow its mystery. Upon the rotunda floor is Norfolk Flint Circle,
made from sad bonelike forms that bring a primeval past into the gallery.
The slate and flint pieces are not tampered with, their individual forms
determined instead by the haphazard extraction processes of the quarry.
The third piece White Water Line, made from china clay and water,
is poured and splashed upon the floor like a snake or entrails, yet always
staying within a rectangular confine.
Cornish Slate Line is a site-specific installation, designed to
fit into a room in the Tate Art Museum in London. This gallery room is large
and rectangular with bare, stone walls, Neo-Classical architectural features
and, at one end, a mezzanine viewing gallery. The installation comprises
pieces of slate collected randomly by Long on a journey through the Cornish
countryside. He has placed them in a straight-edged pathway which extends
from one doorway up the length of the gallery to the opposite doorway. At
first glance the pieces of slate appear to be placed casually, but with
contemplation it becomes clear that, within the boundaries of this pathway,
they are actually systematically arranged and placed. The installation consists
of natural elements which poetically evoke the spirit of the place from
which they were gathered.
Conceptual Framework: Artist
Richard Long is a prominent, British contemporary artist who is often described
as a conceptual artist because the concepts which underpin his artworks
are more important to him than the physical reality of the artworks. Richard
Long was born June 2, 1945 in Bristol, England. He studied at West of England
College of Art, Bristol, between 1962 and 1965. By 1964 Long was already
making Earthworks and experimenting with the idea of impermanence, a theme
that would inform his work throughout his career. Long’s use of walking
as an art form was introduced as early as 1967. From 1966 to 1968, he studied
at the St. Martin’s School of Art, London, under Anthony Caro and
Phillip King.
Artmaking Practice: Ideas
Nature has always been recorded by artists, from pre-historic cave paintings
to 20th century landscape photography. Long wanted to make nature the subject
of his 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”.
The artist uses a conceptual approach. The concept which underpins the artwork
is more important than the artwork itself. In the case of Cornish Slate
Line the line of slate represents the idea of the artist’s walk
over the land. This accounts for the fact that, although the artwork is
about the land it is certainly not a traditional landscape; it has no images
of the land or trees, mountains, sky etc. Instead it has elements from the
landscape e.g. pieces of slate, arranged systematically as a memory of Long’s
pathway on his journey through the landscape.
Artmaking Practice: Actions
To create his outdoor art, Richard Long walks hundreds of miles for days,
even weeks at a time, through uncultivated areas of land: the countryside
of England, Ireland, and Scotland; the mountains of Nepal and Japan; the
plains of Africa, Mexico, the deserts of Australia and Bolivia.
He documents these journeys with captioned large-scale photographs, maps,
and lists of descriptive terms, which are exhibited as individual works.
Long records his walks through nature by temporarily marking the land in
some way. The artist often uses geometric forms to make his human mark upon
the landscape visible: He has made circles of stone or has trodden down
grasses so that his path along a straight line may be seen. Because the
marks are temporary, Long documents the results through photographs.
Long often removes elements from a particular environment he has encountered
in his travels and creates a memory of that place by using these materials
in the form of an installation in a gallery setting. This is how “Cornish
Slate Line” was constructed.
This work illustrates how Long’s use of geometry imposes an order
upon the chaos of naturally occurring form—yet the random shapes are
untamed, allowing the materials to speak for themselves. Long’s physical
engagement with his work is critical to his artmaking; in essence , he is
re-creating his experiences with the land on his own human, physical scale,
which is minute in comparison with the scale of the landscape. He says that
his art is “really just an ordering or a ritualising of my life...the
possibility to do something pure and focused and simple in a chaotic world”.
Frames: Postmodern
Cornwall Slate Line is a Postmodern artwork.
Long is an artist who questions mainstream values and beliefs, especially
about art. Many of his artworks take the form of installations so that he
experiments with new modes of art and new modes of communication through
his art. With his nature-based artworks, Long interrogates the purposes
of art in a contemporary, media-driven world. He also questions the values
of art by using materials which are not traditionally associated with artmaking.
Because of the ephemeral nature of some of his artworks he also challenges
the notion that artworks must be permanent and precious.
Conceptual Framework: Audience
The audience is involved physically in their interaction with Cornish
Slate Line. Long asks his audience to walk beside his pathway, to recreate
his journey: within the pieces of slate are embedded many fossils, the remains
of plants and creatures from the primeval earth and, as the audience walks
beside the slate pathway they can observe them.
These actions by the audience introduce the element of time:
• the time the artist took to walk through the landscape,
• the time the audience must take to observe the installation,
• references to the vast, distant spans of time past, suggested by
the traces of long-extinct plants and creatures.
He asks his audience to climb the stairway to the mezzanine and look down
on his pathway as if they were using an aerial map to find their way through
the landscape.
This is a contemporary artwork, yet it was placed in a gallery which is
19th C. and in it’s style, alludes to the distant Classical past of
Ancient Greece and Rome. This Classical world is characterised by fixed,
unchanging values, conformity, tradition, conservatism, the establishment.
The audience becomes aware that the artist is communicating his ideas about
nature when seeing his postmodern installation within this Classical setting.
www.richardlong.org
www.speronewestwater.com