Page 67 - Studio International - June 1968

Facing page, top left, César (left) and Pierre
Restany; top right and centre, the polyurethane is
poured and sets; this page, below and right, the
sculpture is triumphantly cut and, in some cases,
signed ; bottom right, end of the party.

communications system. We expect from our departure from his former work. In fact, it was an reacts, basically and organically, as a sculptor. The
Second Industrial Revolution the birth of a new illustration of his new feeling, the discovery of a Compressions are the result of the sculptor's ever-
poetic language, a key for a modern pursuit of modern sense of nature. Cesar's immediate reac- lasting search for a more and more complete
happiness. Cesar locates himself at the critical tion towards his sociological and technological masterhood of the junk iron material. The giant
meeting-point between the technical raw material environment led him to a definition of a quanti- three-dimensional cast of the thumb expresses the
and its possible articulation into a metamorphic tative mechanical language of self-expression. In so inner narcissism of the artist and his sensual im-
language. This discovery has changed his life and doing he was fundamentally acting as the first pact. The recent Expansions illustrate Cesar's
definitely re-oriented his career. real primitive of our technical industrialized fascination at the pure beauty of a simple techno-
Cesar had a classical background, a classical world. In 1965, he opened the second chapter of logical form. The expanded instant sculptures are
formation and a classical career. Till 1960 he was his 'quantitative' language with the enlargement the immediate product of a chemical reaction.
considered as one of the most influential masters of (in a giant two-metres-high size) of the cast of his They could not have been designed or cast. They
sculpture in metal. Everything started anew for own thumb. Two years later, in 1967, experi- correspond to their own organic achievement.
him in 1960, when he exhibited at the Salon de mental study of plastic castings led him to the dis- They are beautiful just simply because they are.
Mai in Paris his Compressions, three cubic-shaped, covery of the expanding properties of a plastic Such an event taking place at the Tate in 1968
one-ton pieces of junk iron (compressed cars). This resin, polyurethane. may seem controversial; it is, like a cry of hope,
`scandalous' gesture was regarded as a polemic Cesar, magician of modern technology, still the opening of a new way into a pioneer's world.