Andy Goldsworthy, the English artist whose 2,278-foot-long dry stone wall snakes through the Storm King sculpture park in upstate New York, is getting rave reviews for his solo show at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, which coincides with the city's international festival.
"The artist has risen to the occasion exactly as you might expect," wrote Laura Cumming in The Observer. She singles out his staircase installation, "A carpet of sheep fleeces, stitched together with thorns... their scent redolent of a damp winter’s tramp."
“This is the Clarkson’s Farm of art retrospectives, plunging today’s urbanites into the raw sadness and beauty, the violence and slow natural cycles of the British countryside,” wrote Jonathan Jones in the Guardian, in his five-star review.
While Waldemar Januszczak wrote: “Like all great landscape artists—and he’s certainly one of those —he’s bringing the outdoors indoors.” Taking aim at the UK national museums that have overlooked Goldsworthy, the art critic of The Times of London added that achievement over the past five decades “deserves far greater recognition than it has hitherto received”.
“Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years” is on view at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until November 2.