Page 17 - Studio International - January 1966

Caro Well, yes, but it's impossible; so you have to get
Rouge Madres 1965
Aluminium sculpture painted Red 128 x 161 1/2 x 121 in. Kasmin Gallery
round it another way. I think part of the trouble—part
of the disadvantage of sculpture, and also part of the
advantage of it is the fact that it's heavy and real ; I
don't want to make sculpture which has an unreality.
I want to make sculpture which is very corporeal, but
denies its corporeality. I don't want to make sculpture
which is a 'trick', is like a conjuror's trick. Do you know
what I mean? For example, there are certain materials,
glass, for example, or a looking-glass, which you don't
really know whether it's there or not. It is to do with
illusion. Well, if you use that sort of thing you can
certainly deny the reality of the corporeal—but I
wouldn't want to do it that way. I would want to get
the same effect perhaps with something that you could
kick your shins against.
Forge This brings us to an interesting point. I've often
wondered how important the imagery of girders and
these pre-existing elements that you use in your sculp-
ture, really is. Do you use a bit of angle-iron because
it's the most convenient form to hand, or is there some
other intention beyond that?
Caro No. Definitely there isn't any reference to
industrial uses and so on. I would really rather make my
sculpture out of 'stuff'—out of something really
anonymous, just sheets maybe which you cut a
bit off. Angle-iron and rolled-steel joists and all that,
I think, are irrelevant. they are a thing I'd like to ger
away from in the end, if I could. They'll bit by bit
creep away out of the sculpture. The only thing is that
certain things like those heavy joists from which I think
I've taken most of the bridge connotations, do have a
weight about them, they do have the effect of being
able to punctuate, they are a bit like a blob of colour
in a Monet painting or something like this. They don't
exactly anchor but they hold somehow. Much of the
sculpture that I'm doing is about extent, and even
might get to be about fluidity or something of this sort,
and I think one has to hold it from becoming just
amorphous.
Forge It's a masculine, tough shape, isn't it, a section
of girder? Not in its symbolic sense I mean, but it just
has a kind of rugged, solid look about it.
Caro Yes. It's very much there. Even a long strip of
steel, which is heavy and real, does seem to be part of
something, whereas the short piece of girder seems to
be itself.
Forge But there's no element here of wanting to
bring in anything from the outside. You said you'd
eliminated references to bridges or whatever, you're
not making, as it were, quotes from the outside world in
using these things?
Caro No. And this really answers the question we
were talking about before. I have been trying, I think,
all the time to eliminate references, to make truly
abstract sculpture. It is using these things like notes in
music. But the note must not remind you too much of
the world of things, or of parts of noses or breasts or
ears or anything—perhaps it's impossible to make a
sculpture out of clay at this moment, at the moment it's
too difficult for me anyway—there are too many
reminders in it. And I think therefore one tries really to
get a material with not too much art history in it.
Although I think steel's got plenty of art history now,
unfortunately. But I would be very happy to use another
Material