Richard Long

Midsummer Circles, 1993

Delabole slate
Diameter: 208 in. (528.3 cm)

Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX

Like Serra, Richard Long responded to the limitations of Minimalism by conceiving sculptures to be experienced by a viewer in motion. Midsummer Circles is one of a large number of works Long produced for indoor gallery installation, unlike earlier stone sculptures that were placed in natural settings. Simple in configuration, these works are consistently composed of a single material indigenous to a particular area traversed by the artist on one of his many documented “walks” through the countryside of Great Britain and various remote locations. Brought indoors and arranged in simple geometric formations—most often lines, circles, or spirals—they suggest ancient ritual sites, like Stonehenge, and humanity’s mystical communion with nature. Ultimately, the viewer’s experience of walking around the stones of Midsummer Circles is meant to evoke similar thoughts, emotions, and sensations as the experi­ence of the artist on his walk through nature. Consideration of this experience is enhanced by the unexpected place­ment of the stones indoors.

Richard Serra has explained how he and other members of his generation responded to the limitations of Minimalism:

The Minimalist object did not deal with process or orienta­tion to space. Minimalism either dealt with the logic of the grid, which always puts a person at an equal distance from the surface, or disposed the work on the floor to be read as a painting from above.... Also, with the exception of [Dan] Flavin, Minimalist work did not challenge the notion of Gestalt—on the contrary it confirmed it. My generation, the Post-Minimalist generation, saw that as a limitation. Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse, Richard Long, and [Robert] Smithson all opened up the field in various ways.

Exhibition:

January 28 - April 23, 2017

In conjunction with the exhibition Richard Serra: Prints the Nasher Sculpture Center’s curators have chosen works from the Nasher Collection that provide context for better understanding Serra’s work. The sculptures span decades, from the experiments of Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and Henri Matisse in the first years of the twentieth century to works by Serra’s near-contemporaries Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, and Richard Long.