Stoned again

I was reading  my local paper, the Union Tribune, this morning when I came upon Ann Jarmusch's article on the new installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Richard Long's Baja California Circle, 1989.

‘BAJA CALIFORNIA CIRCLE’

Richard Long’s work comes from ‘walking in landscapes’

By Ann Jarmusch Special to THE U-T
Originally published December 2, 2012 at 12:01 a.m., updated November 30, 2012 at 3:31 p.m.
Internationally acclaimed artist Richard Long created “Baja California Circle” after crossing the border during his two-week residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
The granite stones from Mexico that he arranged in a large circle on a gallery floor are emblematic of “his real medium, which is walking,” explained Jill Dawsey, the museum’s associate curator.
Because the work is temporary and improvisational and involves the body moving through space, “it’s a very different idea of a ‘masterpiece.’ ”
Born in England, Long travels the world on a Zen-like path, quietly gathering objects or leaving harmless evidence of his nature walks. His work is “about moving through a landscape,” and creating “an index, or trace, of the walk,” Dawsey said.
“Art made by walking in landscapes” is how the artist puts it.
“Then, when you encounter the simple circle (of stones) in the gallery, it is very powerful,” Dawsey said.
The viewer may take a contemplative walk around the circle and be subtly reminded of ancient stone works, such as Stonehenge or Roman roads. This relationship between inside and outside, timeless and modern, constitutes “a new idea of a landscape,” Dawsey said, one that transcends not only time, walls and actions, but also borders.

 Ann Jarmusch, formerly U-T San Diego’s architecture critic, writes about art, architecture and historic preservation.

I believe that this installation and the subsequent fawning by the esteemed critic perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong in contemporary art today. A huckster, or is it a zen master, drops a pile of rocks in a circle on the slick floor of a fatuous box crammed up against a truly lovely old architectural remnant of my hometown city's past, the Santa Fe Railroad Station. A multi dimensional artist, Long is not confined to granite, he is also known to have worked in both sticks and pebbles.

Rich patrons, whose lack of aesthetic discrimination is only trumped by their amplified and delicious sense of irony, can stand next to the igneous assemblagé and drink their gin while circumnavigating this conceptual monstrosity and then titter about the problem the tendinitis is giving their tennis forehand while failing to recognize that the emperor is in fact quite naked and that the in house gardener has just carted off half the project to fill the ravine out back that has narrowly washed away in the most welcome recent rain.

I must confess that I have not personally traversed this conceptual rockpile but would wager that I would be reminded of neither Stonehenge or the Acropolis. I think that the more pressing profundity would be the satori like  realization that just because a person has attained material comfort does not mean that they possess any sense of taste or style whatsoever, that a fool and his money are soon parted (sorry Elizabeth W. Russell Foundation Fund) and that the selling of art, at least in some circles, is much like the game at the local carney where you get to throw softballs at the punks and win any prize you want on the second shelf. Rigged and dependent on a steady stream of rubes.

You pay enough money and some newspaper critic or museum curator will surely blow enough smoke up your ass to convince you that you have an absolutely precious sense of style, befitting a person of your class and station, not to mention a surfeit of brilliance and wit. My lack of understanding as to the enormity not to mention intrinsic meaning of this pebbly undertaking obviously shows more evidence of my own sad lack of breeding. What's with the pile of rocks, daddy?

Richard Long, I salute you!