Donner Pass Circle

September 2005

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“Richard Long: The Path Is the Place Is the Line” is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through April 25.Richard Long takes nature walks during which he makes sculptures and photographs them. Each sculpture is modest--often just some stones found en route that he sets on end or arranges in a circle--and the photograph documents the existence of the work, which Long then leaves for the weather or other walkers to undo. Such transient, remote pieces are a contemporary art form, but also a reference to ancient monuments like Stonehenge. (Long is English.)

On his most recent California walk, the choice of Donner Pass as a site for a sculpture may have been intended, because of the allusion to cannibalism, as a comment on the way human beings are consuming their environment through overdevelopment. Or maybe not, because editorializing is not characteristic of Long.

He also makes sculptures by arranging stones and other natural materials in art galleries, and these installations are stunning. But the sculptures he does in nature itself are, as this photograph shows, unobtrusive. These pieces reflect a kind of humility before nature that is the essence of Long’s patient, lonely, far-flung labors.