Page 39 - Studio International - January 1969

now on the staff. The sculpture department at sculptures shown recently at the Waddington
St Martin's has never accepted a status quo; deep Gallery. In order to arrive at the same degree of
commitment to the possibilities of sculpture lateral extension and openness of form, Scott,
and to the need for development has ensured King and Bolus have been obliged to use separ-
a constant questioning of ideas which are in ated elements in individual sculptures. Of
danger of hardening into attitudes. The aspect course there are many other things going on in
of Caro's and of the New Generation's sculp- the separated works of the latter three sculp-
ture which has been most vulnerable to ques- tors, but I am sure that the need to open up
tioning has been its object quality. Self-con- sculpture on the ground has been an impera-
tained sculpture requiring a neutral or at least tive for them. Split, Span and Nile, King's tran-
conducive setting ('You wouldn't play a string sitional works between the cones and the recent
quartet in a bandstand' — Caro7) is in danger Call, Span and Blue blaze, were concerned prin-
thing he does. Even the physical properties of of operating with maximum success only with- cipally with lateral extension. King, Scott and
matter are no longer inherent : they are assigned in a concept of art which is itself hermetic. Bolus seem to have used colour—never a prior
by the sculptor.' 5 Abstract sculptural decisions Concentration on 'quality' in the experience of consideration with Caro—both to claim more
carry the weight of personal moral decisions. art is all very well, but experience is never a space for their forms and, by means of sustained
(Phillip King has said that during the late constant, socially or personally. The need for chromatic relationships, to integrate those
fifties at St Martin's there was much discussion openness and flexibility in recent and contem- forms within the spaces they cover. Colour is
of the new morality of American painting.) porary sculpture has been felt both as a formal used to bridge the gaps, as in Blue blaze.'°
The hermetic abstract sculpture —a whole and as a broadly aesthetic priority. But the separation of forms in essentially her-
which is the sum of such decisions—reflects the Anthony Caro, the doyen of the New Gener- metic sculpture raises certain problems which
desire to create an order of a particular kind, ation, is far more at ease in the kind of con- cannot be solved merely by a skilful orches-
an existential hypothesis in a visual form. structed sculpture which he pioneered than tration of colour. It requires either a still more
'Sculpture is a proposition about the physical those who have followed him most closely. demanding exhibition situation (King's Call
world, about a finite order (completeness), and Within this area he remains as inventive and outside the British Pavillion at the 1968 Venice
by implication about our existence in the as potentially radical as sculptors ten years Biennale showed how bad separated chromatic
world. . . .'6 younger. While maintaining the physical con- sculpture can be made to look in the wrong
All six of the sculptors who showed in the New nexions between individual elements, he has setting), or else a drastic rethinking of the
Generation exhibition returned to teach at St managed to open up hermetic sculpture more whole question of the inter-relation between
Martin's (the department has largely had to radically by means of sustained illusion and sculpture and environment. Caro and the New
supply its own demand for teachers of abstract balance in works like Prairies than, for instance, Generation sculptors deserve real credit for
sculpture), and many of their ex-students are Witkin in Baalbec9 or Annesley in the circle their refusal to subordinate the demands of
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