Page 26 - Studio International - January 1969

of the found metal.
Anthony Caro's work ANNESLEY : These are found objects just the
same as before but he's using them differently.
a symposium by four sculptors TUCKER: He found one element and he based
a whole suite of sculptures on it. The thing is
that the element is much more abstract.
David Annesley/Roelof Louw/Tim Scott/William Tucker ANNESLEY : Just seeing it there, it's going to
suggest that kind of sculpture. He's hardly
A retrospective exhibition of modified it, you just push it over and there it
Anthony Caro's work is at the Hayward Gallery
from January 24 to March 9. is and it's doing it already. And then he's
allowed what is happening to happen more.
Piece III 1966
steel painted red, 5 ⅝ x 8⅜ x 5⅛ in. And he's started to make it happen like that.
Kasmin Gallery
2 TUCKER : I don't like them. I think they lose
Slow Movement 1965 a great deal by not being so specific.
steel painted blue, 51 x 107 x 60 in.
Coll. Arts Council ANNESLEY : Well, they would be very much
3
Hopscotch 1962 more approved ofin mainstream terms because
aluminium, 98½ x 187 x 84 in. they're much more abstract, and they make
Coll. Mrs S. M. Caro
the ground almost like an abstract thing as
well. They activate the ground. You don't like
ANNESLEY : It was very interesting when ture which is right touching the ground is as that?
Tony started making those ground pieces, how important as that corner. And it's in the same TUCKER : I don't, no, because I think that the
he realized that it wasn't a matter of how much kind of stuff, so what are the active elements elements in, say, Slow Movement—actually I
you get something off the ground, it was a and what are the passive elements begin to suspect he's cut them out. Certainly the
matter of getting it off the ground that first bit. disappear. elements are much more characteristic, so
That was an amazing discovery. He started TUCKER: It's a question of spectator reaction. there's a strong tension between the parts.
using the ground with his bronzes. There were In one instance you look down at the sculp- ANNESLEY : There's something really new in
those great big heavy things and he had some ture, in the other at the sculpture. They are in this piece, and that's that these elements are
of them on pedestals, and then he started fact confrontation sculptures— they're your cut and made and not found, and he's making
sitting them around on the ground. He'd make own height or bigger than you, they stand the spaces between very clear. So that you
a big seated figure and just put it on the opposite you or you look through them. read that space to find what that element is he's
ground. He started to use the ground not as a ANNESLEY : Like people; they have legs and thinking about. In this one he's not just bring-
pedestal, but as an active element of the sculp- bodies and limbs and all the rest, or very clear ing in the ground, he's beginning to bring in
ture at Bennington. It didn't matter how far equivalents. They're more like human equiva- the space, as a positive active element. And
he got them off the ground. That first inch is lents. But the first ones seem to me to be that makes it importantly different from the
as important as the next six feet. The difference reclining figure type things; I see one part way the space still remained rather neutral in
between on and off the ground is what's im- very much as a kind of knee. It's not just one the other ones. The space is shaped here.
portant. And he didn't need to push up in sculpture, it's about five or six of those sculp- TUCKER : But he didn't make the sculpture
the air so much, right ? In those early ones you tures that are like the reclining figures of Henry like that, he didn't shape it, did he ?
do have things like legs, less important parts Moore, about the same scale; that's what we ANNESLEY : Even so he'd still be thinking
of the sculpture which are near the ground. said at the time. With bronzy colour like the about that angle, not just one shape as being
But in the later sculptures that bit of the sculp- patina has brightened up; yellow and green nice and adding another to it. Even if you put
and brown. And they looked ponderous. But the shape up first he'd think, 'Well, I want to
they were getting lighter, weren't they ? make it that angle.' He'd be thinking about
TUCKER : So that there's a progression from that angle. Not just about the shapes and
the heavy almost monumental reclining figure arranging them.
thing, to some things which are really much Louw : But I think that David Smith also
more like painting. I think that of those, Pom- articulated the spaces between the shapes. I
padour and Month of May and Hopscotch are very think that when Caro starts articulating the
much more light and open. spaces on the ground as shape, then he begins
ANNESLEY : I thought of them like painting to be able to control the directions in space,
at the time, especially Month of May. which is the important thing.
TUCKER : The Bennington ones seem to be ANNESLEY : But it's still more like painting,
much more like painting in that the ground is isn't it? But like three-dimensional painting
like a canvas, and these are like elements in a now. Because it's activating both the spaces
canvas, and they don't have any of the specific and the floor together. The whole environment
quality of the elements in, say, Hopscotch. of the sculpture has been activated in a very
ANNESLEY : That's why they were hard to see positive way.
when he first came back with the pictures from Louw : I think there's a big difference between
America, and everybody was a bit surprised. the early works, which are almost directional,
SCOTT : I wonder if that's because in America in one or other way, and his later works which
he didn't seem to have access to as many found become very multidirectional, so that he's
elements as at home. controlling a whole new kind of complexity.
ANNESLEY : No. I suppose in America he ANNESLEY : Those were the ones that Green-
talked to people who let him see that it was berg liked, weren't they, when they became
possible to do what he wanted to do. multidirectional? And you had to get to see
SCOTT : Well, the first Bennington ones seem how they worked from the plan. This kind of
to have this specific quality of not making use odd asymmetry that had to be worked out in