Page 24 - Studio International - October1973

'For some documentation about the different
structures used in Hamish Fulton's art, see his book
Hollow Lane, published in London by Situation
Publications, 1971. Dead Magpie, illustrated
here, is an example of his more complex syntactical
ordering of highly functional shots covering the site
of an incident, almost like a narrative.
2 10 Views of Brockmans Mount, a Naturally Formed
Hill near Hythe, Kent was published in 1973 as a
small booklet by the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum.
The work itself, ten photographs, went to the
collection of Adriaan van Ravesteyn and Geert van
Beyeren, Amsterdam. It is meant to be hung on a
wall, with the tops of the hill lying on one straight,
horizontal line. The tenth photograph of the series in
the booklet has been replaced, in the actual work, by
an old picture-postcard of Brockmans Mount.
'The concept of the Romantic, used in relation to
contemporary art, can all too easily function as a
judgment on quality, as with Gilbert & George,
whose supposed romantic nostalgia is often
considered as being part of their quality as artists. I
think that is wrong; if G & G are good, it must be for
quite different reasons. So, even when Hamish
Fulton or Richard Long (who apparently are close)
go for lonely trips through unadulterated regions
like Western Canada or the more remote parts of the
Scottish Highlands, it would be better to refrain
from using such epithets as 'romantic' at all.
'It is always difficult and slightly senseless to be
dogmatic about the basic properties and concerns of
an art, and state that 'measurement of distances'
belongs to sculpture, for evidently it belongs as much
to architecture. However, there are certain classical
notions to go by; and the earliest modern treatise on
sculpture, Alberti's De Statua, deals mainly with
measurement and with very little else.
would not claim that the sculptural functions as
aesthetic framework for all of Hamish Fulton's work
but certainly for a lot of it.
but in many other works Hamish 10 Views 6Not in
Fulton uses compositional schemes that bring to
mind geometric art — certainly foreign to the
mainstream of photographic aesthetics.

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