Page 19 - Studio International - January 1966

Forge The colour then is chosen as a way of putting Caro Well, I like very much what you've said there. If
a certain stamp on what you see is the meaning of the somebody said 'open-ended' to me, that would be a
sculpture. I mean, for example, what I have in mind is compliment. I hadn't thought of that word at all, but
that big thing that was in the Gulbenkian exhibition at certainly it's what I want. The more closed it is the
the Tate—wasn't it called 'Pompadour' ? This big more totemic, the less to do with openness, the less
composition of very thin sheets and strips, very fragile, to do with extension, the less really to do with the
and very precariously balanced in a funny way—was onlooker. This is part of the difficulty, that one needs
pale pink, wasn't it? entity. It's like you're an entity and I'm an entity sitting
Caro Yes. The reason why it was called 'Pompadour' here together, but as soon as we start sitting round the
was that the trade name of that colour was 'Rose table there's something, some sort of relationship, and
Pompadour'. It seems to me, I've just thought of it this I think this is basically one of the things that I'm trying
minute, that for me the colour is rather like titling the to cope with. n
sculpture, not much more than that. Whereas I think
it could be a great deal more than that. But at the
This interview was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme
moment it isn't such an important interest to me. during Anthony Caro's recent London exhibition.
Forge The colour seems to impinge again on this
quality that I find in your work anyway, but which may
be nothing to do with your intentions : on what I
called the pictorial effect of your sculpture. I wonder if
you could go on a bit more about the kind of relation-
ships in space that you want to explore. I mean, it's a very
striking aspect of your sculpture, isn't it, that it's
always as it were open-ended ? That a piece of steel
points at you and comes right out across the carpet or
across the floor almost without demarcating any limit
between you and the centre of the work?