Page 29 - Studio International - January 1969

him the other day, and you could see how he expect him to go on making those kind of ANNESLEY : The construction is intuitive,
felt about the place : that this was really it, this choices. I think he does, and every time he therefore it becomes more like modelling,
was what art was about. He was proud to be at slips into knowing too much about what he's because with modelling you put on your lump
the Royal Academy School. And always for doing, so that he can't do it any more, he has to and then you look at it, and you put on your
ever afterwards if he wanted to do anything invent procedures to get himself out of that next lump, and you look at it again. That's
that was real, he had to trick those aspects of predicament. Like make a different kind of what I mean by modelling. Whereas construc-
himself which made him feel that the best sculpture; make small sculptures because tion seems to me you put up your pole, then
thing there was to do was the most academic. nobody was doing it. It meant a whole area you put up your next pole, and then you think
You know : 'You show me the model and I will where he wouldn't be too sophisticated and of all the things you can construct between.
make it better than anybody else.' And he had he'd have to start inventing in a very free way You've got a framework, and then you add.
to set up his own models, and the only way to again. He made Prairie because his sculptures It's different. I think that Tony models and
do that was to put himself into small studios in were getting maybe too cursive. He started to you, Bill, carve.
the dark and build by hanging stuff down from make them about volume. The other ones L O U W : I would like to go back to Greenberg's
the roof. He saw where he could trip himself seem to be about direction, plane and all the criteria. Greenberg has this idea of collage
up. We can see a lot of people who have tripped rest of it, and sure as hell Prairie is about moving out into three dimensions, and becom-
themselves up in just that way. He saw them direction and plane, but it also has this real ing far richer, and he also speaks of this as a
too, and he could see how they were all trip- expanding volume of literal air in there which constructive procedure.
ping over themselves to make the academic is visually larger and more expansive and TUCKER : I would say that David Smith con-
look not academic, instead of abandoning the lighter than the air round it in the gallery. structed because he operated in terms of a
academic altogether. Too frightening ! And Isn't that a new thing? recognized form of behaviour for his material
Henry Moore was academic for him, you TUCKER : Yes. For quite a long time I've had that he used. In other words he worked like a
know. Like all these chaps were clinging this idea of Tony as being very like Rodin in skilled welder, and fixed things like a welder
around Henry Moore, getting good and that I feel he's essentially a modeller, and he would fix them, one thing to another and all
famous and rich from doing it. He could have uses iron in what I wouldn't call a constructive the joints were really solid and the weight was
done that too. He chose not to. That deci- kind of way, but an anti-constructive way, in in the right place. But Tony is using metal like
sion was a very interesting choice; you would which he sticks iron as though it was paper. a really high-class, refined sort of clay. If you