Richard Long

Richard Long, in Artist Rooms

at Tate Modern.

It had been a while since I saw any of Richard Long's work so I was pleased to see this very small exhibition in one of the Artist's Rooms at Tate Modern during our last visit there.

One of the main proponents of Land Art, Long has been making art by walking since the late 1960s. Through the simple creative act of moving through the landscape, Long extends the possibilities of sculpture to explore ideas of place, time and distance. His walks, and the sculptures made along the way - water poured on a rock, a path trodden in the earth, the rearrangement of scattered stones and sticks - are recorded through photographs, maps and text works.

Long has made work on all seven continents, walking in some of the remotest landscapes on earth. Rooted in his deep affinity with nature, his radical approach to art and the language of sculpture has made him a vital influence on a generation of artists.

'My work really is just about being a human living on this planet and using nature as its source... I enjoy the simple pleasures of wellbeing, independence, opportunism, freedom, dreaming and happenstance; of passing through the land and sometimes stopping to leave (memorable)  traces along the way'.

For this post, I have concentrated on the indoor sculptures which develop these same ideas, made from natural materials like stoness,  bit of wood, or tidal mud applied with his hands or feet. 'I am interested in universals: stones, water, mud, hands, days, symmetry, gravity'.

Norfolk Flint Circle, 1990, (flint)

'A circle outdoors is part of the place it is in, sometimes as far as the eyes can see, while indoors the circle and materials demand more attention.

looking closer

Waterfall Line, 2000, remade 2025, (cornish china clay on emulsion)

'The mud works are another aspect of the physicality of my work, like the walking. I always have a precise idea of the overall form of the work, which is balanced by the spontaneity of the execution. The speed of my hand is important because that's waht makes the splashes, which show the wateriness of the mud, and water is the main subject and content of these works, they show its nature. I make the top half of the image, and nature - gravity - makes the other half'.

Red Late Circle, 1988, (slate)

'I like the fact that every stone is different, one from another, in the same way all fingerprints, or snowflakes, or places are unique, so no two circles can be alike'.

looking closer

South Bank Circle, 1991, (Delabole slate)

looking closer

Sahara Circle, 1988, (digital print on paper mounted onto aluminium)

A Line in the Himalayas, 1975, printed 2004, (digital print on paper mounted onto aluminium)

'I like the idea that my A Line in the Himalayas... made on the Khumbu Glacier below the Everest icefall, the sculpture would be on the move, slowly disintegrating and disappearing down the moraine, as soon as I had made it. It is not my intention to make monumental or permanent works on a walk'.

To see more of Richard Long's art in this blog you can go:

here for Seven Days Walking on Mount Olympus

here for Uncommon Ground

and here for the Athens Slate Line

Lunch at the Saxon Mill

The Saxon Mill, a former watermill at Guys's Cliffe dates back to the 12th century. It is now a restaurant and bar. We had a lovely lunch here.

Behind the mill there is a footbridge and weir, and this is the view from the bridge.

 The other side of the bridge.

River walk

We went to Stratford on Sunday. We wanted to walk as well as go to the outdoor market but we did not have much time so we just did the town river walk. We usually walk much further, along the railway track, past the race course, but this walk was relatively short.

 We parked by the recreation ground, and started walking across the green

and soon reached the river, the theatre across the water.

Two white geese and their six babies...

They are my favourite water birds, so seeing their babies was a real pleasure

They soon got fed up with all these people gawping and moved off

There was also a boat race going on

with a lot of music, shouting and counting

which was all coming from here, the start of the race.

We moved on, crossed the bridge to the other side

had a wander around the market and bought some homemade soda bread

the race was still going on

The theatre cafe was very busy

Took the path that runs along the river

We could see the racing boats through the trees

it's a lovely, shaded path

in the church grounds

view from the bridge

and we were back on the other side of the river

the water lillies are about to flower

the first weir

the second weir

this is my favorite part of the walk

the trees are so grand and imposing

we had come full circle and were back to where we started from - the babies and their parents.

Vincent Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, Part 1

'I am now going to be an arbitrary colourist ... Behind the head - instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite'.

Vincent Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, Part 1, at the National Gallery, London.

This exhibition consists of works that Van Gogh created in the course of two years whilst he lived in Arles and Saint-Remy-de Provence. It was a very productive period of his life where he created some extraordinary and innovative work. Some of these works are among his most famous and beloved creations whilst others are less familiar. What emerges from looking at these works is an intellectual artist of lucid intention, deliberation and great ambition.

Van Gogh varied his approach to style and use of colour to explore wide-ranging emotional and poetic possibilities, often with a literary or artistic source in mind. In aiming to convey meaning rather than accurately record nature, Van Gogh took a free hand in adjusting or recomposing what he observed to achieve his desired effects.

The Lover (portrait of Lieutenant Millet), 1988

The Poet's Garden, (Public Garden in Arles), 1988

The Poet (Portrait of Eugene Boch), 1988

The deep blue sky behind the figure, intended to express a man 'who dreams great dreams', is part of the symbolism of the work.

The Garden: Poetic Interpretations

The Public Garden, Arles, 1988

Entrance to the Public Garden in Arles, 1888, (oil on canvas)

Undergrowth, 1899

Path in the Park, Arles, 1988, (oil on canvas)

The Garden of the Asylum at Saint-Remy, 1889, (oil on canvas)

This is one of the first works Van Gogh painted after arriving at the hospital at Saint-Remy. During his first weeks, he was not allowed beyond the hospital garden but he found delight in its overgrown and intimate corners, which he associsted with 'nests of greenery for lovers'.

The Garden of the Asylum with Sawn-off Tree, 1889

and a drawing of the above (chalk, brush, diluted oil paint and pencil on paper)

Hospital at Saint-Remy, 1889, (oil on canvas)

Van Gogh chose a vertical format to give full height to the massive pine trees that dwarfed the male wing of the hospital building. The reddish soil, highly stylised tree trunks and interlocking branches overhead produce a vibrant but oppressive environment within which Van Gogh arranges a number of figures, including perhaps himself, just left of centre. The women are an invention; female patients were not allowed in this part of the grounds.

Trees in the Garden of the Asylum, 1889

Two curving tree trunks, cropped at the top and bottom of the picture, frame a view towards one of the terraced lawns at the edge of the hospital gardens. Van Gogh greatly admired and collected Japanese woodblock prints, in which such dramatic compositional devices were common. This work's graphic quality is counterbalanced by his choise to paint a densely worked sky.

Roses, 1889, (oil on canvas)

Iris, 1890, (oil on cardboard, later thinned and mounted on canvas)

Van Gogh isolated this single plant, just coming into full bloom, almost as if he were painting a portrait. He used cardboard as a suport as he was running short of canvas at the time.

Weeping Tree, 1889, (reed pen and black-brown ink, with black chalk on off-white wove paper)

'Today I've made one of those drawings which becsame very dark and quite melancholic for springtime' Van Gogh wrote to his brother in May 1889. 

The Yellow House: An Artist's Home:

Initially Van Gogh only used the Yellow House, which he rented in early May 1888, as a studio because it needed both renovation and furniture. By September he moved in and had bold plans to turn the modest house into an 'artist's home' and a 'communal studio of the South'  in which his artist friends from Paris could join him to work. He devised a decoration for the house that included his  major paintings. This then evolved into carefully conceived ideas about how to present his art to the public. The works in this section were part of his ambitions and are also some of his most well-known.

Van Gogh's Chair, 1888

Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888

The Sower, 1888

The Yellow House (The Street), 1888

The Bedroom, 1889

Self-Portrait, 1889

The Alyscamps, 1888

More posts of Van Gogh's work: 

Van Gogh in the Van Gogh Museum  in 2014,  Amsterdam

Van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum - 2  in 2014,  Amsterdam

Van Gogh - after Millet in 2014,  Amsterdam

Van Gogh and Britain in 2019, Tate Britain

Kiefer/Van Gogh  in 2015, the RA

Kiefer/Van Gogh - the drawings  in 2025, the RA

Three Van Gogh paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum  in 2025, Madrid