Time - Hardcover

Goldsworthy, Andy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810944820 ISBN 13: 9780810944824

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000

Synopsis

The book is structured around six locations where Goldsworthy has worked over recent years - the semi-desert of Santa Fe, the verdant landscape of New York State in which Cornell University is set, Nova Scotia, forest and coastal areas in Holland, a geological reserve in the south of France and, of course, the area around his home in south-west Scotland. Rich insights into his working methods are provided by the artist's diaries which deliberately document the failures as well as the successes and vividly evoke the ways in which he familiarises himself with a new locale and begins to 'touch' it.
An erudite and fully illustrated chronology compiled by Dr. Terry Friedman provides an overall account of Goldsworthy's career to date, showing, among other things, how particular forms often take many years to become fully developed.
With a selection of more than 500 illustrations, Time is destined to become the definitive reference source on Goldsworthy's sculpture.

About this title

Review

In his first major publication for four years (excepting the smaller, project-led Arch and Wall), Andy Goldsworthy examines the complementary dimension in his work to the sheer physicality of Stone and Wood. The recent work included here is at once new and recognisable: an illustrated chronology by curator and long-time admirer Terry Friedman reveals themes that he has revisited and variegated over 25 years, and to which time has lent an increasingly influential angle, while remaining rooted in the British landscape. The creation of a work a day connects up his life in a continuous artistic narrative, while his earthy materials often draw on centuries of artisan heritage, while embracing seasonal change. The issue of power is fundamental to his working: there is a sense in which he plays God with the potential of his resources, and for the observer, some of the magic lies in the split moment when one sees his instilled order without mental recourse to his hand. The effect can be strikingly epiphanic. At the other end of the spectrum, his communion with the elements puts him at their mercy, subjugating to their will, and investing his creations with an unpredictability fundamental to his intention. Snow melts, ice collapses, clay cracks, wind blows; he is "nurturing" rather than "forcing" a form into being.

The photographic records are sublime, and vital to his ephemerality, whether in Montreal, Digne, Nova Scotia, Holland, New Mexico or Cornell. The accompanying text, a continuing dialogue for Goldsworthy, explores still further his familiar conceits, though diary excerpts give evidence of the toil behind the beauty, and bring out the unpredictability of his work, from which he unflaggingly draws inspiration, whether on a beach, in a river, in a wood, or in a gallery. One is left with an intuitively organic sense of continuity, of which this absorbing and lavish volume is itself a record of regenerative temporality: "What I have made so far gives me a strong sense of the work yet to come." --David Vincent

About the Author

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY's books include Abrams' Stone, Wood, Arch, Wall, Hand to Earth, Passage, Enclosure, and Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature. His work is regularly exhibited in Britain, France, Japan, and the United States. This new book comes in the same year that his first permanent installation in an American museum, at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, has its official unveiling. Goldsworthy lives with his family in Scotland. TERRY FRIEDMAN is an architectural historian who curated the first major retrospective of Goldsworthy's work.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810944820
• ISBN 13: 9780810944824
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 202