Page 28 - Studio International - January 1969

6 roughly and then kind of taking the world
Prairie 1967 steel painted yellow ochre, Yellow Swing 1965 painted steel,
38 x 228 x 126 in. Private collection, New York 40 x 40 x 161 in. Courtesy Tate Gallery away. Taking away the benches and props and
5 bits of string, until there it is again.
Sill 1965 steel painted green,
17 x 56 x 75 in. Coll. David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto TUCKER : He's very cunning. He has this
general appearance of doing everything off the
top of his head, but I think he knows what he's
doing to such an extent that it's very hard to
break down the distinction between spon-
taneous instinctive behaviour in his work, and
very high and aesthetic behaviour.
ANNESLEY : I don't accept that he's more cun-
ning than he makes out to be. Because I think
the cunning is actually intuitive. Of course he
knows what he's doing, he sure as hell knows
what not to do, but he, as it were, invents pro-
cedures for himself which keep the knowledge
at an intuitive level, so that it is into the dark
every time, to lighten it. In Sill he's lined up
these things and he's maybe had five or six
and he sort of likes four, and he puts that line
across it. And then he maybe could take the
line off again, or put another line, but he says,
`Yea, that's it.' And he stops there, because
he seems to know when to stop at the earliest
possible moment that he could stop, which is
rather amazing. Sculptures like Sill are so
economic and yet they're really doing it for
him. It's done that reality change sufficiently.
Why does one addition make it better, but
then seem as if that's enough ?
TUCKER : Because he knows what he's doing.
The point I was trying to make was that he's
a far more accomplished and sophisticated
artist than he gives the impression of being.
ANNESLEY: That's exactly why he has to
choose procedures which as it were trick him-
self; he has to put himself in the position where
all that sophistication and knowledge about
art and stuff doesn't get in the way, doesn't
get him into showing off and being clever and
emulating himself. It's great that he does that.
distances and so on. And that seems to be the levels or transferring from one level to another. That's why he was so concerned and bothered
perceptive requirement for looking at land- And it seemed to be beautifully economically about ways of avoiding falling into composing.
scape, not looking at a figure. Therefore it done. Caro denied it when I asked him about He got interested in Ken Noland and Jules
makes it more like landscape. It's still just as it but it seemed to me a very planned sort of Olitski because they were interested in non-
abstract, but relating more directly to nature sculpture, rather than spontaneously-made composition, that is, in non-goal-directed
than to the figure. and intuitive. activity where the process becomes your goal —
LOUW : It's hard to say, but in the earlier sculp- ANNESLEY : No, I thought the planning was how to achieve a process which gives you free-
ture the action's in it, the activity. You iden- an afterthought. I thought that it looked like dom, and to allow the sculpture itself to grow,
tify this in terms of your body, and all the time he'd put up a whole lot of these things across or happen, or develop, or evolve. This is where
you're sensing the mass in that. But in Prairie benches or something, and then he'd thought you want to talk about the implications of that
you're visually experiencing the movement `That's nice, having a whole lot of those on for everybody else working, because that seems
along surfaces and planes and lines. benches, establishing a horizontal plane with to be one of the more important indications of
ANNESLEY : I'm aware of the volume in poles instead of with a big sheet.' And then what's happening in art in the last ten
Prairie; I find Prairie has a very specific volume. he thought, 'But we could put the big sheet years.
But I'm not aware of the mass any longer. So somewhere else and establish another plane TUCKER : I think it depends very much on the
that what has happened is he's taken weight with the big sheet, and then finally we could particular artist and his particular back-
from mass and left us with a kind of volume. have something on the ground.' And finally ground. Tony has to behave in the kind of way
And it's not that it's light; it's weightless. I just fixing it. The working-out bit only comes he behaves because he could have been a
think Prairie is an achieved weightless state right at the end where he says, 'We'll shift that tremendously accomplished academic artist.
visually, and yet we know it's made of steel and a bit; we'll have to get rid of that; and finally ANNESLEY : That's right. He was at the Royal
heavy and it's there and its physicality is as I can hold it up. Then what I can do is have all Academy School. He strove to be the prize
real as any of the others. these poles that I had on the benches, just student at the Royal Academy, and that would
TUCKER : I liked that sculpture because it was there, and that big thing which I had stuck on seem a most important peak of his then artistic
very economical. Everything in it had equal the block of wood —I can take the block of wood career, and he had to get over that. He showed
importance. There weren't that many elements away and that will be just there.' So it's me a horse he made there. It was absolutely
in it, but everything was to do with establishing really done by intuitively setting it up very amazing. It was so good. I went back there with