Detail of Riverlines installed in the lobby of the Hearst Tower (New York City)

Richard Long (born 2 June 1945) is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists.

Long is the only artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize four times, and he is reputed to have refused the prize in 1984. He was nominated in 1984, 1987, 1988 and he then won the award in 1989 for White Water Line.^[1]

[edit] Biography

Long was born in Bristol, and studied art at the West of England College of Art from 1962 to 1965, then graduated from St Martin's School of Art in London in 1968.

[edit] Work

Several of his works were based around walks that he has made, and as well as land based natural sculpture, he uses the mediums of photography, text and maps of the landscape he has walked over.

In his work, often cited as a response to the environments he walked in, the landscape would be deliberately changed in some way, as in A Line Made by Walking (1967), and sometimes sculptures were made in the landscape from rocks or similar found materials and then photographed. Other pieces consist of photographs or maps of unaltered landscapes accompanied by texts detailing the location and time of the walk it indicates.

His piece Delabole Slate Circle, acquired from the Tate Modern in 1997, is a central piece in Bristol's main Museum and Art Gallery.

At Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the Marquess of Cholmondeley commissioned a folly to the east of the house. Long's land art is comprised of a circle of Cornish slate at the end of a path mown through the grass.^[2]

A permanent installation is on view in the main lobby of Hearst Tower (New York City) entitled Riverlines. Completed during the summer of 2006 and the biggest wall work he had ever made - about 35 x 50 feet (11 x 15 meters).^[3]

Another permanent installation, Planet Circle (1991), can be seen in museum De Pont in Tilburg, The Netherlands.

In 2009, a retrospective of Long’s work entitled "Heaven and Earth," appeared at the Tate Britain.^[4]

He is represented by the James Cohan Gallery, located in New York City.

[edit] Recent exhibits

• 3 June - 6 September 2009 Heaven and Earth at Tate Britain
• 7 September - 7 October 2006 1 + 1 = 2 with Roger Ackling at Von Lintel Gallery, New York Vonlintel.com
• 21 May - 1 October 2006 at Lismore Castle, Lismore (Ireland) from the Richard Long newsletter
• 21 January - 25 April 2006 The Path Is the Place Is the Line SFMoMA

[edit] See also

• Land art
• Environmental art
• Environmental sculpture

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Gayford, Martin. "In the studio: Richard Long," Daily Telegraph (London). April 4, 2006.
• Gooding, Mel and William Furlong. (2002). Artists, Land, Nature. New York: Abrams. 13-ISBN 978-0-810-94189-2/10-ISBN 0-810-94189-9
• Long Richard, Mirage, edition Phaidon, 1998, ISBN 0 7148 3779 2

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard Long (artist)

• Long, official website
• Long, James Cohan
• Long, Sculpture
• Long, Griffin
• Long, Haunch Of Venison
• Richard Long/Jivya Soma Mashe, "An encounter in India."
• Houghton Hall>Park, photo of land art installation