Papers of River Muds

As well as sculptures, photographs and text works, Richard Long has always made artists’ books, employing the same simple materials, often taken from nature, but in a different format. For example, he used mud from rivers to create his book Papers of River Mud. During the production process, Long mixed paper pulp with mud from twelve major world rivers, including the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Chitravathri and also the English river Avon, which runs through Bristol, Long’s native city. This approach resulted in varieties of paper with very different colors, textures and tactility, from rough and coarse to smooth as velvet. The rivers each have their own section in the book, with the name of the river printed on the first page in red screen-printed capital letters. The book contains no other words. The work was bound by hand, with a production run consisting of only 88 copies. The following quote from Long indicates the importance of artists’ books for many conceptual artists: “Books put the ideas and images of my work into the public domain in an interesting, accessible and cheap way. For me, all the different forms of my work are useful and complementary.”