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Richard Long

Richard Long

Richard Long

© Richard Long, courtesy: Lisson Gallery, foto: James Wainman, detail

On the occasion of the 'BANG! Festival of the Big Bang', M is presenting an exhibition by the British artist Richard Long (born 1945), one of the most unique voices in contemporary art. Very early on in his career, he went his own way. A path he has continued to follow to this today.

Richard Long

© Richard Long, courtesy: Lisson Gallery, foto: James Wainman, detail

When Richard Long was in his third year at the West of England College of Art, his parents were summoned by the management. They were told that their son was to be expelled from school, and that he was no longer allowed to have contact with his fellow students. Not even outside of class. According to them, young Richard was 'quite mad'.

 

It was not down to his attitude, he was a withdrawn, quiet boy, not a troublemaker. It was all because of the art projects he made. For example, he rolled a big snowball down a slope and then took a picture. Not of the snowball, but of the trail it had left.

 

At his second art school, the progressive Saint Martins College of Art in London, things were a little better. He experimented with what he loved doing: going for long walks, creating works of art with materials found along the way, and then capturing them in photographs. But he was not guided or encouraged. One of the teachers did take him aside once and said fatherly: 'I'm sure you'll find a job with the Forestry Department when you graduate.'

 

Long made his first known work in 1967, 'A Line Made by Walking'. He walked back and forth in a grassy field until a path had formed. He photographed that. By the time the film was developed, there was nothing left of the track in the grass. The only witness was the photograph. Nicholas Serota, former director of Tate wrote about this: With that work, which he made when he was 22, Long changed our conception of what a sculpture is. He gave new meaning to an activity as old as mankind itself. Nothing in the history of art could prepare us for the originality of what he did there.' A sculpture no longer had to be something tangible that you could put on a pedestal, so to speak. It could also take the form of a fleeting, disappearing trail in the landscape.

 

Long himself does not consider this transience to be the core of his work. In an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, he put it this way: When I make a work, I'm interested in realising a certain idea. Of course, some of my stone lines will just disappear. They end up overgrown, or sheep move the stones, or what do I know. That's fine, that's the way it is in nature. But it has nothing to do with why I made that work.'

Richard Long, 'Footpath Waterline', India, 2003

© Richard Long, 'Footpath Waterline', India, 2003, courtesy: Lisson Gallery, photography: Ken Adlard

Empty spot

Long calls himself 'a walking artist'. He prefers to wander through open landscapes, creating works along the way with the materials he finds on the spot. Sometimes they take no more than half an hour. 'My tendency is to make simple, personal things,' he explains. Sometimes he walks in circles or in a straight line to make an impression with his feet. Sometimes he makes simple patterns with stones, branches, pine needles..

 

'Each sculpture is an emotional response to that particular place at that particular time,' he says in an interview with Sculpture Magazine. 'It's a meeting between who I am, and the topography and beauty of the landscape. Every place in the world is different, so even if I make circles over and over again: every circle is different.'

 

Long is 76 now, and has taken thousands of walks. Sometimes they last a few hours, but often they last a few weeks or even months. He's been all over the world – even to Antarctica – but he particularly likes empty, open landscapes: deserts, mountains... According to Long, this is also the real face of our planet: 'The world is a vast, empty place.'

 

Long exhibits the photographs he takes of his works in museums worldwide. They are often the only way to see the work. Maybe because it's already gone, maybe because it's in a remote place, where anyone hardly ever comes.

 

Long also makes drawings, often with circles, lines or recurring patterns as subjects. His mud works are unique. He creates these works especially for exhibitions by applying mud to the walls with his hands. He usually uses mud from the River Avon, a tidal river that runs through his birth town of Bristol. 'The mud from the Avon is incredibly strong and viscous. The moon's gravitational pull created it over millions of years. It's my favourite mud because it comes from close to home. I like the sponginess.'

 

Another aspect of Long's art are the text works: short summaries of the walks he takes. 'I started doing that because they give me a new opportunity,' he told curator and art journalist Ben Tuffnell. 'Instead of taking pictures or making a sculpture, I can use words. Photos have a certain function: they capture a moment, they create an image. Words play a different role. You can use them to capture the whole idea behind a walk. They have a different function, sometimes even a more complete function.'

 

Turner Prize

Fifty-six years after being expelled from the West of England College of Art, Richard Long is considered one of the most important and influential artists of his time. He has received a CBE knighthood from the Queen of England and has won the prestigious Turner Prize. His work has been shown in leading museums and galleries around the world. He does not belong to any movement and has always been determined to go his own way. From 22 October, you can enjoy the exhibition that he and curator of M Eva Wittockx have created especially for 'BANG! Festival of the Big Bang' at M.

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

M Leuven, photo: Dirk Pauwels

Richard Long about his exhibition in M

You have built your exhibit around the theme of the Big Bang. Did you know the work of Lemaître, the founder of that theory?

"When I was a young artist, I read 'The ABC of Relativity' by Bertrand Russell. That opened up a world for me. I think Lemaître knew Einstein as a friend and colleague. When I was at Princeton making the monumental sculpture Slate Oasis, I visited Einstein's office there."

 

“Paul Dirac devised very elegant equations to describe quantum mechanics. To my great surprise, I recently discovered that he is from my home town of Bristol, and that we went to the same school there and was married in the church where we had our scouting trips. So many connections..."

 

The Big Bang theory holds that the universe is constantly evolving and that everything in it was once tightly connected. How does that tie in with your approach to space and time?

“Space and time have always been important subjects in my work, especially as a walking artist. Our world is also constantly changing, but on a smaller scale. All those different scales interest me: the geological time scale of mountains compared to the life of a butterfly. I have made sculptures in which I used stones as a metaphor for quantum particles In M you will be able to see Entropy Stones. An expansion work: a compact pile of stones, which I took over a long distance and spread out again one by one."

 

You are going to make a new mud work for the exhibition on the walls of the museum. Do you know what form that will take?

"I know I'm going to make two, a circle and a line and I already know how I'm going to make them: random, fast, with my right hand. I am interested in the power and beauty of the whole image, but also in the 'cosmic' variation of the details on a micro-scale: the splashes and the non-repeating patterns. A mud work shows the nature of water and gravity."

 

What do you hope visitors will experience at your exhibition?

"I hope that the visitors will love what they see. That they have a great experience of images and materials and ideas and places, near as well as far."

 

Many of your works become part of the landscape and change with the landscape. A passer-by might not even notice they are there. But the photographic works you make of them do not change. People come to the museum especially to see them. For you, is there a hierarchy in those two aspects of your art?

“I love the idea that I can put my art out into the world in many different ways. The sculptures and mud works feed the senses, the texts and photo works feed the imagination. There is no hierarchy. Some of my work is public – you'll find it in museums or books. Other parts are almost imperceptible, or very remote or non-permanent – in mountains or in the desert. All these forms are complementary. They reflect the variation in my art, some of the choices I've made, and the limitations and benefits I've experienced in my life."

 

Richard Long: 22.10.2021 - 20.03.2022

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