The Art of Walking

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When discussing walking, we cannot overlook how this practice has influenced our culture over the years, particularly in recent decades: beyond being a reference point for pilgrims and wanderers, a journey of personal growth and a source of physical and mental wellbeing, it has also become a creative stimulus for artists and writers.

Artistic movements and examples of art through walking

Already in the early 1900s, for instance, the Dada movement employed the figure of the flâneur (one who strolls through city streets) as inspiration to launch, in front of the Church of Saint Julien le Pauvre, a series of urban expeditions through the mundane locations of Paris, those that "had no reason to exist", with the aim of celebrating the value of the journey in its simplicity.

Subsequently, Surrealism began to explore the relationship between space and the psyche, using the city's unknown zones as a means to investigate and unveil the unconscious map of the mind. From the 1960s onwards, artistic movements shifted their focus to the body, and walking became a fundamental element of research and discovery.

The slow and continuous movement that characterises foot travel, combined with privileged contact with nature and landscape, inspired and gave rise to various forms of art united by a passion for humanity and our relationship with ourselves, the environment we inhabit, others, and imagination.

The act of walking becomes simultaneously exercise, tool and artistic production through images, sounds, videos or maps, drawings, found objects, letters, diaries, descriptions, as demonstrated by Walking Art, Land Art and interactive installations.

The most renowned artists who created art through walking

Among the most famous artists, we can mention Richard Long, who in his sculptures and photographs represents his journeys through unexplored places on the Planet, where there is no human presence nor historical trace, and untouched nature is the sole protagonist.

He draws inspiration from water, earth, stone and wood in Australia, the Himalayas and the Bolivian Andes to leave traces, marks, footprints or create circles, labyrinths and lines of rocks and stones, as if they were sacred rituals of devotion. His intention is to describe the action of walking through infinite space and freedom, in symbiosis with natural elements.

Hamish Fulton, on the other hand, places greater emphasis on the spiritual and emotional aspect, reworking and recounting the journey in order to inspire the public to experience similar adventures. He himself defines walking as a meditative act essential to artistic practice, so much so that he increasingly considers and experiences it as a true pilgrimage.

In his works he captures images, signs, notes and drawings from his solitary journeys across deserts and mountain ranges, in which an obsession with numbers recurs—days and nights, steps and directions: a kind of experiential guide to be shared.

One of the most striking performances in the art of walking is undoubtedly that of Marina Abramović and Ulay, who in 1998 used walking to test their physical, mental and emotional limits: the two artists, united romantically, walked towards each other for 3,800 kilometres along the Great Wall of China with the intention of marrying at the moment they met; however, when the journey ended, this did not happen and the couple separated.

A personal and artistic experience that remains today a striking example of the transformation that occurs during a walking journey, so profound that it changes one's way of being, seeing and living life.

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