Tribune

Richard Long: Heaven and Earth
Tate Britain, London

“Taking a line for a walk” was how, memorably, Paul Klee described his drawing, adopting an approach that allowed his imagination free reign. By contrast, Richard Long makes art by taking himself for carefully planned solitary walks, usually in remote and sometimes distant lands, whether in Britain, Canada, Mongolia or Bolivia. Long’s work can be seen as “land art”, a movement concerned with how artists respond to the way landscape influences and affects our lives, part of the romantic tradition in which humankind and nature are perceived to be in some complex symbiotic relationship.

Today there is little landscape that has not been shaped or affected by human activity, whether from farming or industry, or by environmental change. All of which makes the idea of communing with nature – which lies at the heart of Long’s work – demand great leaps of the imagination from the viewer.

This major survey, covering four decades, includes the three main areas of Long’s work – the walks, the stone sculptures and the wall paintings. Each walk takes the form of an illustrated account, whether through a field, across counties or even countries. These are documented with black-and-white photographs (later colour images seem intrusively self-concerned) recording traces created by Long, whether of a path trodden in a field or a pile of stones signalling his presence. Spare, minimal text, almost mystical in its intensity, gives brief details of his impressions at the time.

The central magnificent gallery, lit by natural light, houses six “stone sculptures” made up of carefully selected rocks laid on the floor, brought from faraway places, though the caption gives no information of why or how they were collected. Norfolk Flint Circle is an eight-metre sculpture consisting of a single layer of flint stones nestling close together to create a miniature landscape of whites and greys, the rounded flints recalling the shape of the human body. Another sculpture brings together huge, roughly-hewn lumps of different coloured rocks, too large to carry from distant places, a much less sympathetic assembly but one that alludes to monumental forces.

Some of the most effective works are created on the gallery walls using mud gathered from riverbanks, the Avon is a favourite supply and is close to Long’s native Bristol home. Some mud is grey, other a rich terracotta. The mud is literally daubed onto the wall by Long using only his hands in vast repeating patterns, seemingly random but with a regular and controlled rhythm. After the cerebral “walks”, these have an element of passion, a physical and emotional relationship with earth that is both grounded and grounding.

In exploring the “relationship between time, distance, geography, measurement and movement”, Long’s “dialogue with nature” touches on broad philosophical issues that tempt us to question perceptions about nature and art. While the images and landscape Long conjures up, often with a minimal amount of information, are evocative of time and place, the bringing into the gallery of pieces of landscape raises uneasy easy questions about the environment and the respect we have for it. Long creates a certain fresh air beauty, but it seems as much a concern with self as it does with nature.

Emmanuel Cooper

Richard Long: Heaven and Earth continues until September 6. The exhibition is accompanied by a well-illustrated catalogue and essays on the artist’s work.