Richard Long (b. 1945). Red Stone Circle, 1995. Circle of 62 red stones. 96 inches (243.8 cm) diameter. THE COLLECTION...

Description

Richard Long (b. 1945)
Red Stone Circle, 1995
Circle of 62 red stones
96 inches (243.8 cm) diameter

THE COLLECTION OF ROBERT J. DODDS, III

PROVENANCE:
Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London;
Laura Carpenter Fine Art, Santa Fe;
James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe;
Acquired by present owner from the above, 2015.

EXHIBITED:
Laura Carpenter Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, "Richard Long: New Work," March 11-April 22, 1995.

NOTE:
This lot is accompanied by a 1995 certificate from the artist showing the installation procedure.

As a student in 1967, British artist Richard Long took a picture of a line he had created in the grass, calling it A Line Made by Walking. It would prove to be a defining work in a deeply influential genre defined as much by arrangements of objects as by actions taken in landscapes far away from any observer, a body of work that exists at the intersection of performance art and conceptual art. Nicholas Serota, then director of the Tate, wrote on the occasion of a 2009 exhibition there that the piece "changed our notion of sculpture and gave new meaning to an activity as old as man himself. Nothing in the history of art quite prepared us for the originality of his action." While changing art history, Long has sometimes suffered misadventures; he was once kidnapped for two days while on a walk in Turkey, he says, and briefly stalked by a gangster in Italy while on his legendary promenades; he broke his leg while walking in the Cairngorms mountains in Scotland.
Besides his walks, Long is well known for works like Red Stone Circle, 1995. He has created circles in many materials and at many sites: he has formed these shapes on the earth from stones, from leaves, and from soil, at locations from his own back garden to remote locales in the Andes, the Sahara, and Mongolia. On gallery and museum walls, he has drawn them in mud. "I can make a circle of words, I can make a circle of stones, I can make a circle of mud with my hands on a wall, I can walk in a circle for one hundred miles," he said in 1988. "It is a completely adaptable image and form and system."
Discussing the making of works like Red Stone Circle, the artist told Sculpture magazine's Ina Cole that "It's like rock and roll; I feel a primitive energy when I'm making a huge mudwork or a circle of stones. It's primal, physical, a celebration." In turn, the artist has been celebrated extensively: he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and won the Turner Prize in 1989, and has been honored with solo shows at the world's greatest museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Tate Gallery, London.


More information about Richard Long. See also: Long, Richard Artist.



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