Richard Long

00:00:00 Richard Long: Well, something I've done all my life. Especially the works in the landscape, I make them. Maybe I'm just in that place for half an hour. Then I just move on, put the camera back in the rucksack and start walking. Never to go to that place again. There are so many different ways to make art in the world.

00:00:17 Mels Evers: In de tuin van het Rijksmuseum kun je deze zomer langs zes sculpturen van de Britse kunstenaar Richard Long wandelen. In het museum zijn ook nog twee werken van hem te zien. Werken van gras en van steen en waarbij wandelen een belangrijk onderdeel is. Mijn naam is Mels Evers. Ik ben conservator 20ste-eeuwse kunst bij het Rijksmuseum. En dit is in het Rijksmuseum: de podcast waarin we bijzondere verhalen vertellen over voorwerpen en hun makers met in deze bonusaflevering de kunstwerken van Richard Long. Ik praat hierover met Richard Long zelf en dat uitzonderlijk want vaak gaat het in deze podcast over het werk van makers die er niet meer zijn en historische objecten. Wil je weten hoe de werken er uit zien? Ga dan naar Rijksmuseum.nl/podcast.

00:01:06 Mels Evers: Richard Long is one of the best-known British artists working today. He was shortlisted for the prestigious British Turner Prize four times and won this award in 1989. He continues to live and work in Bristol, the city in which he was born. Long studied at Saint Martin's School of Art before going to create works using various media, including sculpture, photography, and text. His work is collected by museums and collections internationally, but also continues to exist in nature where Long worked. Long's work has broadened the idea of sculpture to be part of performance art and conceptual art. His work typically is made of earth, rock, mud, stone, and other nature-based materials, but also includes text and photography.

00:01:52 Richard Long: It's called snake in the water as I was walking for 20 days on the high Veldt in South Africa some years ago, I actually saw a monster python in very shallow water. It's quite a shock to see it because it was enormous. Water has been one of the major materials of my art and life since the mid-60s

00:02:17 Mels Evers: Can you say a little bit more about the placements of the stones in that we can see in the Rijksmuseum?

00:02:22 Richard Long: First of all, there was a consignment of stones for the big circle in and I thought I would just use the same stones. Then it turned out that there were some white stones mixed in. Then we realized that we needed more white stones so you could see them underwater. We made a few changes, I added some more white stones to the brownstones,

00:02:41 Mels Evers: And the shape that we can see of the stones.

00:02:43 Richard Long: Just a snake-like image.

00:02:45 Mels Evers: Can you maybe say a little bit more about the difference between you working in a cultural institution or a museum in this case, and working in nature?

00:02:54 Richard Long: I work in all different ways. I've made many works in wilderness places all around the world. That's where I make my sculptures, but I also work in the art world. I've made lines in the Himalayas. I've made circles in the Andes. I've made circles in the Sahara, and now I'm making works in the Rijksmuseum. Seems completely normal and logical to me. It's not either all public and private, isolated and very public, they're all equal and complementary. I might make a beautiful work in the landscape and one passer-by might see it, or some local tribesmen or local farmer would see it and he would just see it as a circle of stones perhaps, and not recognize it as a work of art. Maybe a man-made image that is maybe mysterious to him or not. Somebody else might see it and maybe know a little bit about me and the way I make circles in the world. That's another way that the work can be received in the world. Another way is major museums and cultural places where thousands of people know the context of my work.

00:04:07 Mels Evers: What I quite like about the exhibition is how it's turning out is that in the garden, we also, of course, have people that actually just wander by or come across it as they look through the gates.

00:04:17 Richard Long: Yes, they would be in nature or on the mountainside, that's great. This exhibition has given me the opportunity for the first time to make works actually in the grass with the sort of handmade mowing contraption which I'd never used before. That was quite good fun to learn how to use that.

00:04:42 Mels Evers: I remember before you arrived there was a lot of talk behind the scenes about the height of the grass and if it would be high enough for you to work with. What did you think of that?

00:04:50 Richard Long: It turned out that the grass was perfect. Then I realized that because we're such good gardeners in the museum, if it grows too fast and too long, then they can trim it. They have trimmed it as well.

00:05:04 Mels Evers: Actually, that hints at something I wanted to ask you about is when you're done with an installation at a museum like you are almost now at the Rijksmuseum, you will move away, and work on your next project. The next things are already lined up. How is it for you to do that, to step away and leave something behind an artwork that?

00:05:22 Richard Long: That's something I've done all my life, especially the work in the landscape, I make them. Maybe I'm just in that place for half an hour, then I just move on, put the camera back in the rucksack and start walking, never to go back to that place again. Again, so many different ways to make art in the world, and the grass works presumably here. When the show ends, I'll just get mown over, which is fine.

00:05:48 Mels Evers: At some point during the installation you mentioned a quote, and I don't know who it was by or what exactly it was, but I remember it as an artist makes the artwork and when the artist steps away, it becomes culture.

00:06:01 Richard Long: That's what Carl Andre once said. He said Art is what we do. That was him speaking as an artist and culture is what has done to us. That's probably a fact of life, so in the Rijksmuseum, I've become a culture, become art history. The ambition is to be original. To put new work in the world. Make art in ways that have not quite been done before. It sort of goes back to the early days of sort of being interested in the idea of making something from nothing, which is what making a footpath is really. Then working in the grass is very close to making something from nothing, which intrigues me.

00:06:42 Mels Evers: I was just going to ask you about something that really intrigues me. You as a young artist and I'm sure you have to talk about this often so we don't have to go into a lot of detail. I just wanted to say that how you talk now and about making something out of nothing requires confidence, of course, and I imagine I don't know how you were as a 20-year-old, but deciding to want to work on the roof and have that solitude and space outside. I just wondered if there's anything more that you can say about how that went if that was a very easy thing.

00:07:12 Richard Long: I always had confidence because I was always an artist from a very young kid. I was always the school artist or so art was my language. Sometimes that's the only thing I can do and it's the only thing I'm good at.

00:07:30 Mels Evers: Do you sometimes dream about your works?

00:07:34 Richard Long: No, but one of the works in this show here is Sea of Dreams. The works in this show have different types of titles, and I just wanted an imaginative title. I like the idea that it was a big garden space that people could look at from the steps so they could look down on it. In my mind, it was quite close to the way that people look at the famous rock garden in Rijks in Kyoto, so that's one part of the story. Then you asked about dreams, so when I'm on my wilderness walks, I sleep in a tent. I had the most amazing dream in my life when I'm in my tent, up a mountain or in a desert. It's like being at the cinema all night. I think that part of who we are is the part of when we're asleep is also very important.

00:08:28 Mels Evers: There's also, for me, looking at these works now in the museum, a kind of extreme clarity and focus, which I also connect to solitude and being away from the noise.

00:08:41 Richard Long: Yes, a kind of purity. That's partly and I've thought that out. I've been to the empty parts of the world and most of the world is still empty contrary to what many people think because most people live in cities.

00:08:55 Mels Evers: How about black, white, blue, or purple circle could you say anything about the position of the work in the atrium in the museum?

00:09:03 Richard Long: It's a prime location. I couldn't have a better place with a beautiful floor.

00:09:09 Mels Evers: Yes, but also the exact position and I remember that you placed it slightly off-center.

00:09:14 Richard Long: Yes, it's to do just feel. I also like the idea that it slopes down a bit. The viewing angle is slightly different from a horizontal.

00:09:26 Mels Evers: Specifically, there are so many ways to look at it. Right, Because you've got the stairs.

00:09:29 Richard Long: Yes. You have to consider people walking in from all different angles, hundreds of people every day. Obviously Circulation wise, the circle is very practical.

00:09:40 Mels Evers: Can you say something taking one step back, how and when you decided on which works you were going to include in this exhibition. Did it organically develop?

00:09:49 Richard Long: I think this whole exhibition really started with Taco Dibbits. He got a bit tired of all these exhibitions of monumental sculptures that went up in the air, and he thought of me as a quintessential artist that worked literally on the ground. I thought that was a great idea, and I've always worked on the ground. As you know I've been working in the grass since 1965. It was wonderful to have the opportunity and the huge organization behind a museum to present works in the grass. I suppose another thing to say about those types of sculptures is that each time it's made, it's in a slightly different pattern and all the stones are in a different place. Nevertheless, I make us a certificate for each of those types of works, and if somebody follows the right procedure, it sort of becomes the same work. It's the same work every time, even though it's not like a sculpture but literally the same.

00:10:53 Mels Evers: I was wondering if there's anything more you can say about you and your relationship with the Netherlands. Maybe we can start with Amsterdam, where you've, of course, spent more time previously.

00:11:05 Richard Long: All right. I can say yes. My first show was with Conrad Fisher in '68, and one of his collectors was somebody called Martin Visser, who was a famous Dutch furniture designer. He was one of the first people to buy my work.

00:11:20 Mels Evers: What about Amsterdam as a cultural space?

00:11:23 Richard Long: Yes. Also simultaneously, there was a beautiful little gallery called Art Project, and they did these lovely little bulletins which are sort of like pages, a cheap printed paper that was folded up and posted to people. In fact, the Reflections and Little Pigeon River, which was my first bulletin also with the [inaudible 00:11:42- 00:11:43] from Johnny Cash, I Walk the Line. A lot of my early art history was in Amsterdam because of art and project. Then I think a few years later I actually had a show in the Stadlec museum, where I did one of my muddy footprint walking pieces on the floor.

00:12:00 Mels Evers: Is your included in their collection and many other Dutch museums as well?

00:12:05 Richard Long: Yes. Then also a few years later, I had a show at [inaudible 00:12:07- 00:12:08] museum.

00:12:09 Mels Evers: And you're meeting another Dutch friend tomorrow with Jan Dibbets.

00:12:12 Richard Long: Yes. Again, I have a very long history with Jan because he was a guest student for a time at Saint Martin's when I was there, and he noticed this young chap from Bristol doing all this work out in fields in the landscape, and he thought it was interesting and he was a bit older than us. In fact, he was very exotic because he was the only student amongst us that was married, so that made him very unique and he knew a bit about the art world. He was invited to be in a group show in 1967, and I think it was Paul Mount's gallery in Cologne. He said, you should invite this young English artist to be in the show. I was in Ireland from a country post office, I just pasted these sticks to this exhibition and told them where to put them around the edge of the gallery. Conrad Fisher at that time, was an artist and he was in that show and on the strength of seeing that one sculpture of mine out of the blue, he said, I saw a work of yours last year and I've got a little gallery now coming to a show.

00:13:20 Richard Long: A month after leaving Saint Martins, I showed up in Dusseldorf with a little suitcase full of sticks, and the rest is history. I thought what I was doing was interesting, but what really surprised me was that someone actually bought it, that was a big surprise. I came back on the boat with like 200 Pounds in my back pocket, and I've been a professional artist ever since.

00:13:49 Mels Evers: To conclude it, Richard, I wanted to ask you about what will remain of this show in the future, and of course, we talked about some of the works, like the work in the pond that will just stay there.

00:14:01 Richard Long: Yes, so an important legacy of the show is the catalog. A record of the show and then of course, the River of Stones will go on and live another day somewhere else, so that won't disappear.

00:14:23 Mels Evers: Dit was de bonusaflevering van de podcast in het Rijksmuseum. De tentoonstelling is gratis te zien tot en met 29 oktober 2023. Van dichtbij als het museum open is en anders vanaf de straat.