A new instillation of the fragile work of the landscape artist Richard Long

STONES - Words - Wind -Trees — Places — Thoughts" — Richard Longs's characteristically terse summary of his latest exhibi-tion also sums up, in its minimal way, most of the work he has pro-duced in his 20 years as an artist. Long is not given to garrulity, ver-bally or visually. While the new figurative artists have been laugh-ing, screaming or writhing in the gallery, Long has continued to walk the straight and narrow line dictated by the consistency of his artistic concerns since the mid-Sixties. The work in his new show is as cool, sparse and sober as ever — here is an artist, one feels, who would always pass an artistic breathalyser test.      

Long's new installation at D'Offay's is dominated — or rather, pervaded — by Marble Fields, a large floor piece made of white marble chippings. It looks less like conventional sculpture than like a well-manicured gravel path: The piece consists of two oblong areas of scattered marble debris, running the length of the gallery and separated by a six-inch-wide strip of empty floor. The sculpture' shape imposes on the visitor, who is forced to tread gingerly around its edges. One cannot help feeling that large par-ties of schoolchildren will not be welcome.

But Long courts the effects of fragility and transience in his work. Whether he is throwing mud, or flattening a line of grass blades by repeated walking, or drawing in snow and photographing the results before they disappear, Long always in-sists on the frailty of his art.

1986 has been tang's year. In New York the Guggenheim Mu-seum is currently staging a major retrospective of his work; over here, Thames & Hudson have just published R.H. Fuchs' weighty, and beautifully illustrated survey...

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