Well, this may be more history than “art” per se, depends on your definitions.
But I was tickled by the event the British pulled off yesterday: In a “line of light,” a mass of volunteers placed torches, at 250-meter intervals, along the 84-mile-long Hadrian’s wall. It’ll be the first time the “ancient frontier” has been illuninated at once since Hadrian decreed that it be built in 122 A.D.
The first torch was lit at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend, North Tyneside, around 6 p.m. yesterday, and the lights proceeded west until the last beacon in the line was lit at Bowness-on-Solway, on Cumbria’s west coast, about an hour later, according to numerous news reports.
The Guardian called it “an 84-mile variation on Antony Gormley’s invitation to the people of the UK to occupy the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – a brief but spectacular moment of public art.”
That quote was published on Friday, when The Guardian summed up the story before the event, telling how
Thousands of would-be modern legionnaires used Facebook and Twitter to argue why they should be among those chosen to light the flares. Reasons included intimate details of trysts at particular spots, anniversaries and simple love of the dramatic landscape, especially where the wall marches along the escarpment of the Whin Sill.
Today’s Guardian has a fabulous slide show (here), including the picture above. Wish I’d seen it and I wish someone here would dream up an engaging equivalent.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Guardian