Page 55 - Studio International - September 1967

everything that would otherwise look separate and three vertical elements no more than four feet high, everything else moves, and takes its own part in
frontal move and fuse. the two pieces strike the heroic, grand-manner note the challenge to the force of gravity.
The play of light against heavy is interwoven, even more resonantly than the best of Caro's large Applied colour is another of the means to weight-
fugally, with the play of open against closed, and English sculptures do. I say more resonantly, lessness in Caro's art, as Michael Fried, again,
of irregular against regular. Or at least this is so in because less expectedly, less in terms of the points out. It acts—especially in the high-keyed
most of the steel sculpture that Caro did at home historic connotations of the grand manner. (Though off-shades that Caro favours—to deprive metal
in England. Five of the seven pieces he made in Caro's roots in English art tradition—roots that go surfaces of their tactile connotations and render
this country during 1963-4 (while teaching at back literally to Perpendicular Gothic—become them more 'optical'. I grant the essential impor-
Bennington College) show a marked change of more evident the longer one looks. A grand, tance to Caro's art of colour in this role, but this is
manner in which lightness and regularity override sublime manner has been a peculiarly English not to say that I, for one, find his colour satis-
nearly everything else. Relationships become al- aspiration since the eighteenth century. Henry factory. I know of no piece of his, not even an un-
most altogether rectangular and boxlike, and there Moore and Francis Bacon are possessed by it in successful one, that does not transcend its colour, or
is a plain, emphasized symmetry. This forthright their separate ways just as much as Haydon, John whose specific colour or combination of colours
symmetry has a startling effect insofar as it suggests Martin and even Turner were in theirs. Without does not detract from the quality of the whole
a syntactic massiveness, so to speak, that takes over maintaining necessarily that he is a better artist (especially when there is more than one colour).
the work of the literal massiveness of heavy steel in than Turner, I would venture to say that Caro In every case I have the impression that the colour
Caro's English-made sculpture. Caro's American comes closer to a genuine grand manner—genuine is aesthetically (as well as literally) provisional—
pieces are for the most part smaller and made of because original and un-synthetic—than any that it can be changed at will without decisively
much lighter and thinner steel, but the foursquare English artist before him.) affecting quality.
squatness that is imposed on them by their Michael Fried speaks aptly of Caro's 'achieved Here, as almost everywhere else in Western
rectangular symmetry makes them look less fragile weightlessness'. It is a kind of weightlessness that sculpture, colour remains truly the 'secondary'
than one would expect. The spectacular inner and belongs, distinctively, to the new tradition of non- property that philosophers used to think colour in
outer play of Caro's English-made sculpture is monolithic sculpture which has sprung from the general was...
missing, but the effect is almost as new intrinsically. Cubist collage. Part of Caro's originality of style It ought to be unnecessary to say that Caro's
Nothing of the preceding applies to Caro's two consists in denying weight by lowering as well as by originality is more than a question of stylistic or
last American-made works Titan and Bennington, raising the things in his sculpture that signify it. formal ingenuity. Were it that it would amount to
which he finished before his return to London in The pre-war Giacometti had a glimpse of this no more than novelty, and taste would not, in the
June of 1964. These are perhaps more purely, possibility, but only a glimpse, even though he event, find itself so challenged by it. Caro's art is
more limpidly, masterpieces than anything he has made several masterpieces from it. Caro works the original because it changes and expands taste in
done before. In them that search for a low centre possibility out. By opening and extending a ground- order to make room for itself. And it is able to do
of gravity which is one of the most constant hugging sculpture laterally, and inflecting it verti- this only because it is the product of a necessity;
features of his originality finds a perfect fulfillment. cally in a way that accents the lateral movement, only because it is compelled by a vision that is
Groundflung, wide-open enclosures (in 'L' and the plane of the ground is made to seem to move unable to make itself known except by changing
`T' form respectively) that are relieved by two or too; it ceases being the base or foil against which art. El

Far left: Month of May 1963
steel and aluminium, orange, green, and red painted.
127 x 130 x 131 in.
Left: foreground, Slow movement 1965
steel, blue painted, 50¾ x 106x 60 in.
background, Yellow Swing 1965
Right: foreground, Yellow Swing 1965
steel, yellow painted, 40 x 40 x 161 in.
background, Prima Luce1966
steel, yellow painted, 81 x 140 x 47¼ in.