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Thursday, August 06, 2020

LAND ART

I have enjoyed the land art of Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt and Christo and works that cross genres like Richard Serra's profoundly effecting 'Spin Out' in The Netherlands. I love this piece covering as it does some 25 acres. It is by the Greek artist Danae Stratou, and called 'Desert Breath' (1997) a collaborative, monumental land art installation (Egyptian desert).

Over the more than 10 years working at MOMAO and then approaching the same at Blackwell's Art and Poster shop, I had the aleatory opportunity to meet two of Britain's perhaps most famous land artists in Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. Both experiences less than happy and I got to be able to gauge the artists who were truly of significance and import by their attitudes to the staff and those who played the 'Don't You Know Who I Am' prima donna trip to the truly wonderful great artists self confident in their stature who showed care and concern for us lower mortals (John Piper, R.B. Kitaj, Gillian Ayres, David Hockney, David Mach, Jennifer Durrant, Susan Hiller, Stephen Farthing, Joel Fisher, Duane Michals, Arthur Tress etc to name but a few) the list is endless and fortunately the former are in the minority but it seemed telling that a stiff unfriendly attitude should come from two artists sharing a genre no matter how loosely.

Richard Long - a line made by walking

Richard Long is perhaps one of the best known and the Bristol based photographic land artist had a show at MOMAO in 1979 and as he was setting up to lay out a lorry load of Welsh slate we'd had to go and get, into an oblong and a circle. I asked him would it be alright to photograph him installing the works in the upper gallery. I was met with a blunt "No!" the only artist in all my time there to refuse such a request and a somewhat pretentious and overly precious attitude to the work in my opinion largely consisting of work that any self respecting art technician could have layed out in a loose geometric shape for him. But no, perhaps the muse of the shaman had to descend and any irritations were not to be tolerated caused by us lesser mortals wishing to interrupt the mysticism of the muse, the creative flow if you will, I guess. He did allow someone else to photograph a workshop there that I was more than comfortable to avoid . . . . . .

Richard long works at MOMAO 1979

The only other person who rubbed me up the wrong way was the fellow land artist, the poor man's Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, who was the only person to turn up at Blackwell's with his 'agent' in an expensive silk suit and they were distinctly frosty to any welcoming warmth from yours truly at a book signing in my shop and there was an uncomfortable discussion not least about how much this might cost (it was the publishers suggestion that he come and I was fully prepared to say 'not paying a penny thanks') fortunately I suggested the two publicity departments could sort that out and I made it clear I would have nothing to do with such mundane, crass matters as paying whatever the going rate was for him touting his endlessly repetitive tiresome coffee table picture books.

Still an awfully derivative artist of interest only to Daily Mirror readers and not really a fine artist in my opinion. A deeply unpleasant experience and the only visit by an artist at my shop that included Gilbert & George, David Mach, Richard Wentworth, to photographers like Elliot Erwitt, Eve Arnold, Robert Doisneau all of whom were a delight and felt like friends after a short time (such that Gilbert & George came twice and called me 'Mr Andy'!) Still it is an odd coincidence and guess I need to forgive them the fact that their work is highly unmarketable and so rarefied as to be unerringly unpopular. Bit of a one note samba both . . . . . . . .

from Andy Goldsworthy’s Rain Shadow series.

“they show the human presence without the intrusion of a personality” as indeed does all his work, no discernible personality at all.