WALKING AS ART SUBJECT AND ART OBJECT

 

As a person walks through the world he or she inevitably sees other people walking through the world, and it seems that lots of people have decided this is a suitable subject for art.

 

More often than you might imagine, you see sculptures of people walking through the world.  This is Brancusi’s Walking Man:

 

You would have to say that Brancusi walked the walk as well as made the art.  In 1903 and 1904 he walked from Bucharest to Paris – Peter made a film about it, Walking To Paris.

 

Of course there are walking women too, though not as many as we might like, including this one by Giacometti, Walking Woman1:

 

You’re unlikely to be walking along and suddenly come upon a work by Brancusi or Giacometti – for that you probably need to be in an art gallery or sculpture park - but I realized that in my walking, without actively looking for them, I’ve come across quite a few sculptures of walkers.

 

Not so long ago, walking in Holland Park I came across this by Sean Henry, titled Walking Man. The statue is painted bronze but the path he’s walking on is genuine concrete:

 

And I was reminded of the Walking Manin Sheffield by George Fullard, which I know fairly well, being a deracinated Sheffielder.  It’s positioned outside what is now called the Winter Garden. I feel that most Sheffield walkers aren’t quite as lean as that statue – but let’s call it artistic license.

 

Naturally there are some interesting ironies in all this.  The viewer is walking but even though the statue shows somebody walking they’re perfectly still, frozen in a moment.  And sometimes of course the human walker stops to admire the stopped walking statue. As in this statue by George Segal, titled Walking Man which is at the (wait for it) Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

And then it clicked that Sean Henry, the artist who made the walking man in Holland Park was also responsible for this Walking Woman in Colchester, who’s a favourite of mine.  

 

Apparently there are different versions of Sean Henry’s woman, placed in different locations, often in snowy climes. Frankly she doesn’t really look quite dressed for it.­

 

And then there’s this fellow by Toni Matelli, titled Sleepwalker,who was in Regent’s Park for Frieze Sculpture 2023, who doesn’t seem to be dressed for anything at all.

 

 

BARDIC WALKING

 Need I say that, being of sound mind, I haven’t read Prince Harry’s Spare, but an article in the New Yorker by Parul Sehgal about the nature of narrative quotes a passage from the book that runs, ‘I considered all of the previous challenging walks of my life – the North Pole, the Army exercises, following Mummy’s coffin to the grave – and while the memories were painful, they also provided continuity, structure, a kind of narrative spine that I’d never suspected.  Life was one long walk.’  Yeah, metaphors are hard.

 

Elsewhere, at Phillips in London, Damien Hirst has a new exhibition titled Where the Land Meets the Sea, yeah, titles are hard too, but maybe it’s an allusion to Clare Leighton:

 

The Hirst exhibition consists of Coast Paintings, Sea Paintings, and Seascapes,and in the exhibition notes Hirst says, ‘Where the Land Meets the Sea is an exploration inspired by the seaside in gray British winters; I grew up in Leeds in West Yorkshire and often holidayed in Scarborough, Filey, Whitby, where Count Dracula landed, Robin Hood’s Bay, and Skegness. I have always spent a lot of time walking and thinking on the beach and watching the sea, witnessing the powerful action of the crashing waves in winter. It gives me a feeling of unimportance and vastness and inevitability, that this whole world and everything in it will eventually wear out to nothing.’

I’m not sure I ever pictured Hirst walking on the beach, walking into the Groucho Club sure,

 but there’s no argument about the general principle, and as a Yorkshire lad from Sheffield I’ve had similar holiday experiences walking in two of those places:  Filey and Skegness, though not the others.  

 

This is me and my mum on the beach at Lytham St Annes – I think she thought Blackpool was a bit common. The land is very definitely meeting the sea, and admittedly neither of us is walking, but we definitely walked to get there.

 

And then having recently been in Swansea, where Dylan Thomas is ubiquitous, 

 

I got back and dug out one of his poems titled ‘Poem In October’ which contains the lines

 

‘And I rose in a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days’

 

Sounds a bit like a day at the seaside.  And later in the same poem: 

‘And I saw in the turning, so clearly, a child's forgotten mornings
When he walked with his mother through the parables of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels.’

 

Now obviously I’m not saying that only artists and poets should be allowed to write about walking but maybe princes and/or their ghost writers should hold back.

 

 

 

 

ART LOVERS WALKING

 

People go the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for a variety reasons, and looking at art seems to 

be just one of them. Many people seem to be there to have a picnic or look at the sheep, 

and a surprising number seem to be there just for a walk.  I saw small armies of people 

trudging dourly across the landscape, and yes their eye may have been caught by the 

occasional work of art – a Damien Hirst is hard to ignore - but a long joyless walk seemed to 

be their real reason for being there.

I realize that I’ve been going to the YSP for rather a long time, since it was known as plain old Bretton Hall.  Over the years the amount of land has expanded – it’s now over 500 acres - and although the amount of art has increased too, it seems to me that the land to art ratio is weighted very much in favour of the land, so that if you want to see any art at all you have to do a fair amount of walking.  Of course, if you’re a walker, you may well think this is a good thing.

 

If the walkers find a Damien Hirst hard to ignore, they definitely don’t react the same way to an Andy Goldsworthy.  

The piece above is called Shadow Stone Fold which I looked at, admired, and indeed walked around inside.  Nobody else was doing this, I think because the piece looked very much like an actual sheepfold and visitors didn’t recognize it as art.  They possibly thought I was some crazed eccentric.

Across the water and up the hill there was more art by Goldsworthy, three works collectively called Hanging Trees.  These definitely looked like art, but not many art lovers or walkers got up to them.

 

And even higher up the hill, in a bit of woodland, there was another Goldsworthy titled Outclosure.  But the day was hot and the hill was steep and I have to admit it defeated me.  Next time.

 

         There was also a temporary Robert Indiana exhibition which was mostly in a gallery, but some was outdoors so there were still some opportunites for walking.  

 

And showing in the exhibition was Warhol’s Eat (starring Indiana).  That was wonderful and didn’t even involve any walking.  Or in fact any sculpture.