walk the line

richard long lonely hearts
loner rambler 
likes mud
WLTM fellow introverts for cross-country walks and rock hunting

each bio i read about Long talks about him being kicked out of art school
not just any art school
the one i'm studying at at the moment
i suppose the point being is that 'in spite' of that he became famous and successful, ie it was a very good thing that happened

2 things of note here, why speak of a 'supposed' failure unless it's to big yourself up and stick 2 fingers up to an institute from your home town. Do we still need to know this? Why is it still part of his narrative

2. Long's current piece, boyhood line, is on the downs. Durdham downs, an expanse of grassland owned by the merchant venturers ( a possible shady secret type society if we are to believe cynical conspiracy theorists from Massive attack. Or is it just having beef over it mainly being a man's club of red trouser wearers). Anyway I digress. The downs, is cut in pieces by roads linking wealthy parts of bristol to each other. If this was Longs upbringing it does make me wonder about successful artists. 

He is of his time. Long and Andy Goldsworthy, outside making serious art out of nature long before cynical Saatchi got his mitts on the BYA and the landscape of Britains 9(capitalist) art scene changed forever.

What was the man walking away, to or from. Heavily eyebrowed, intensely staring out of portraits of him at the arnolfini show. This is a man to be taken seriously. He might be a middle class Bristolian, but goddamit he's got gravitas and punk to him. He just chucked out of art school the little bleeder and makes art from mud. And stones. This artist is all man. Like the stonehengers before him, he is a pagan stone mover. If art is about context. His stone moving and walking is art. We call cave art, art, because it's visually recognisable and figurative. It may well just be a visual shopping list for a bunch of illiterate cave people, daydreaming about their next ideal feast. But we label it art. It's the context. We assume, holed up for the winter, fed up of bopping their female kin over the head with clubs and giving them a proper seeing to neolithic style, that they then got bored and needed a more cultured and creative outlook for their developing frontal lobes and energy. So of course they drew. We all know that drawing and painting are proper art. Using wood fired charcoal, ochre and probably spit. 

Fast forward a couple of millenia, and there's a bloke from BRistol, traipsing round the planet recording it all and then selling photos of it in books.

My annoying trains of thoughts when I was walking round are sadly like an amateur gallery botherer. Yes, but why? I get the pleasing duality of mud on black wall versus mud on white wall. I'm intrigued to know if he's even taller than his photos suggest and he didn't need a step ladder to reach the ceiling. I wonder about the sloppiness of the mud and the vessel he held it in. Not really the lofty thoughts of an art critic. There was something like nail marks down a blackboard, a slight slow meditative form to the strokes applied that seems like a controlled frenzy of a madman. Or just an obsessive. My doctor mind wonders about his wanders and note taking. A bit on the spectrum? But aren't we all
Recording details, miles walked, objects seen, thrush blood. All verifying the deeds and walks done. So it's not up for questioning. An impressive walk from Bristol to London bridge in 39 hours. Again, tall man, long legs, quick walker. This obsessive need to leave a mark. I was here, I matter, I did it really. It made me sad. If a woman had done this, I think it would be dismissed as contrived,conceited and light weight. I think Long looks too intense and scary to have his credibility called into questions. But the female vagabond artist? What was she doing all that time. On her own? Did no-one want to marry her? Why's she making such a spectacle of herself? With mud, can' she go to Glastonbury and be a hippy there. Nancy Holt, did similar trips, but on a slightly more altruistic and secretive mission, left objects for friends at places and recorded the locations.

All these conflicting ideas. How does he afford to do this? The downs. The guy grew up near the downs. Must be middle class. That explains it. Anthony Caro, Henry Moore, all growing up in penury.
Just like someone convinced to go to medical school and growing up a stones throw from the downs. Privileged and playing around with art. It's a disgrace. That's me I'm talking about now. Not Long, I have no real idea about his background. Although it's a familiar story throughout art history (and I reference these people for whom the only possible similarity will be our backgrounds, not our successes) but Tapies, Miro, Redon, all academic/professional families. This is why I'm bemused at the criticism levelled at Tracy Emin and Damian Hirst and friends, the little jumpstarts made it when they shouldn'thave done. They're not establishment. How awful for the british bourgeosie to be challenged by people they would never rub shoulders with otherwise. I think of this each time I see another oil painting in turdy colours at the RWA in an open exhibition. This is what the fight is against. People lauding the skills of people that can copy nature as proper genuine artists. This is still happening now, ie contemporarily. 

God I'm waffling. I think my reaction to work like Long's like that of the recent exhibition of Randall-Page's (ooh, double-barrelled, there's a surprise) at the RWA, was an irritation at the simplicity of it. Because that's what I'm doing and obsessed with. Where on earth does that leave the rest of us, if the 'successes' are keeping it simple. I turn that on it's head though as, despite the insistent critical middle class narrow minded art naive numpty in my head still screams the loudest, the other more, er..authentic one whispers, pleased, it's ok, this is what it's about. If other people label as art/not art. it doesn't matter. It's all context and it's about experience. Not skill. And how good is that. To stick to your guns over decades and keep making the work and journeys that please you. That make sense of things. To record them and show them on walls. To mark out a line with your feet, and use those marks to show how you've marked your time on this planet. I was here. This is what I did. I'm tall I'm intimidating looking, but goddamit, I'll do what I please because I can stay true to myself. I'm rebel like that. I won't live how you tell me, I won't not break the rules. Even if it means I get chucked out of art school. Said Richard Long. Maybe. Or never