Page 26 - Studio International - April 1974

MEMORIES OF PASSING
A NOTE ON RICHARD LONG

(Above right) Out at the sea the dawn wind some doubt whether the stones have been
From A Rolling Stone 1973 Wrinkles and slides. I am here touched by human hands at all. (This does not
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Or there, or elsewhere. matter either.) Contrary to the behaviour of
(Above) (T. S. Eliot, East Coker) classical sculpture, which claims a site
Untitled 1973
Geertjan Visser Collection, Antwerp absolutely for its own by confronting the space
Photo : Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Richard Long's recent work A Rolling Stone, around, the configurations of stones mix
Resting Places Along a Journey' consists of ten gently with the surrounding area. They are
photographs, each separately framed with wide there as discrete signs of passing (instead of
margins. The series (the order of which is monuments of staying, as conventional
fixed) is preceded by a 'title page' similarly sculptures) - a camp site left, never to return,
presented. The basic or most explicit proposition existing only in the traveller's memory.
of the work is : here I sat as I restlessly wandered But the last photograph is different. It
along.2 This proposition, however, is framed by presents a circle of rocks on a downward slope.
a cultural context of art, which adds to the A circular marking like this suggests, by virtue
semantic complexity of the work. of its closed form, either permanence or
Each photograph, taken on a journey, completion. The circle puts an end to the
presumably in Scotland (though that hardly indecision of passing through, it is the perfect
matters), is a close medium shot of a coda to the journey as articulated by the
configuration of stones either laid out on preceding, irregular, almost hasty markings - a
slopes or on wide, flat ground between distant final farewell.
mountains. With the exception of a regular The medium of Richard Long's art is
circle in the last photograph of the series, the travelling, which means either staying at one
grouping of the stones is highly irregular, as if place or going to another place. The formal
the result of idle play. In some cases the signs used by him for marking the moments of a
grouping seems so accidental that there can be journey can therefore be logically sub-divided
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