A stone is taken from a mountain and installed in a gallery. Art or vandalism?
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Version 0 of 1. Britain just got shorter – in the name of art. Scafell Pike in Cumbria is the highest peak in England, at 3,209 feet. Or at least, it was, until Oscar Santillan came along. In a new exhibition at a south London gallery, the artist has installed a modest bit of rock. Unfortunately, the rock also happens to have been taken off the top of Scafell Pike. The Ecuadorian-born artist has defended his work, called the Intruder, saying his actions are no different from taking a pebble off the beach – the stone in question is one inch across. Ian Stephens of Cumbria Tourism disagrees. He acknowledges that the Lake District has always inspired artists, “who have all taken a piece of this landscape away in the figurative sense”. But this is different, says Stephens: “We want the top of our mountain back.” We want the top of our mountain back I can see his point. But one might argue that, metaphysically, that Wordsworth hijacked our vision of the Lakes for ever with his “host of golden daffodils”. And artists have always stolen. The greatest artist-critic of the 19th century, John Ruskin, who lived at Brantwood on Coniston Water, felt no qualms about collecting samples of Lake District rocks for his aesthetic satisfaction. No one, thank heavens, is asking the contemporary curators of Ruskin’s house to return his minerals. In 2007, when publicising his novel On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan made the mistake of telling Andrew Marr, on Radio 4, that he had stashed a pocketful of pebbles from the novel’s location – the slender shingle spit that reaches out from the Dorset coast – and kept them on his desk as an aide memoire while writing his book. The resulting furore at his desecration forced McEwan to return his souvenirs, although he protested: “I’m not aware of having committed any crime.” And while Santillan may liken his work to pebble collecting, he might also be reminded that taking anything from a site of special scientific interest is forbidden. If everyone removed bucketfuls of shells, there’d soon be no beach left. This tale speaks to sublime and elemental provocations. Where does the land end and art start? Are we guilty of cultural and selective hypocrisy? Our museums are stuffed with bits of other countries (and not just the Parthenon marbles). Many rightful claims are made by indigenous people for the return of sacred artefacts, and even body parts, from imperial collections in the west. Perhaps there might come a time when rock samples might become subject to the same concerns. Our museums are stuffed with bits of other countries In his new book, Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane writes evocatively of the lost terms for our landscape – words whose disuse seems to embody our contemporary disconnection from nature. Perhaps Santillan’s art addresses this disconnection. Others would argue that it is tantamount to vandalism to “repurpose” chunks of hills as an aesthetic commentary on the wilderness – which is, of course, then lessened by that very act. Some land artists, such as Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, have been content to document or even “decorate” the land in a mostly ephemeral manner. Walking on Dartmoor with my family last week, we came across a granite rock that had been customised with bright red, green and yellow paint as a memorial to a walker who had loved the moor. The grossness of the reality sat ill with the genuineness of the intent. (As did the fact that our intrepid retriever, Tangle, then cocked his leg on it.) Related: Why barn owls and barflies don’t mix | Philip Hoare As Macfarlane’s book proves, we have always appropriated the land. He pays tribute to the poet and climber Nan Shepherd, who disliked the appropriating masculine urge to conquer her native Caingorms. In her book, The Living Mountain, written in the 1940s, she expressed her desire to just be in the landscape, rather than dominate it. Shepherd has a message for Santillan, too. “The mind cannot carry away all that it has to give,” she writes of her beloved peaks, “nor does it always believe possible what it has carried away.” Maybe that’s the way it should stay – the mountain in our heads. |