Page 48 - Studio International - March 1969

London Source (Cat. no. 32) 1967

Steel and aluminium painted green
commentary 6 ft 1 in x 10 ft x I 1 ft 9 in.
Coll. S. M. Caro
2
Sculpture VIII (Cat. no. 36) 1966
ANTHONY CARO RETROSPECTIVE polished steel 27 x 13 x 20 in.
Coll. S. M. Caro
EXHIBITION AT THE HAYWARD
Photo: Guy Martin
GALLERY UNTIL 9 MARCH

Art has been for Anthony Caro a means of
change in many areas, none clearly demar-
cated from another; but above all it has been
a means of asserting the truth that a man can
change himself and can move towards what
he wishes to be. By taking responsibility for
his actions, being responsive in the ways he
acts, the artist can realize himself: the con-
sequences of his actions—in this case sculpture
—will reveal him. The difference between
Caro's art before and after his trip to America
in 1959 can be expressed in terms of a lesson
which was made explicit in American painting
some ten years before that date: fix your end and
your means are no longer free; get your means
right and your end will be worth reaching. I
suspect that the leap into abstraction which
Caro made early in 1960 was prompted by
the realization that he had been working
toward fixed ends, and by a consequent firm
decision (taken under circumstances which
have become part of art history) to seek
radically different means, for their own sake.
At least they would block the path he was
following if they did not immediately open David Smith. Even in these two works of the
another. early sixties, and far more emphatically in
The pursuit of fixed ends in sculpture at any recent work, the mood of the whole is
time is bound up with certain kinds of process established in terms of physical relationship as
and certain kinds of form. In a sculpture by made explicit at points of contact, rather than
Moore there is the feeling, even in his carved through any experience of overall shape. The
works, of forms yielding to pressures which feeling that Caro's sculptures since 1962 are
mould them within predetermined outlines. open and unconfined in form is largely due to
While Moore shapes a form he is constantly their linear quality, but it would perhaps be
relating to other things, to bones, stones or more useful to reverse the observation: Caro's
bodies, which have prescribed sculptural out- preference for linear sculpture derives from a
lines. Metaphor is the prison of form. dislike of forms which are prescribed and
By composing blind, as it were, and by bounded and, by inference, of experience
employing a method of addition which is in which is already defined and related.
theory infinitely extendable, Caro put him- Much of the excitement of 24 hours is due to
self into a process which could free him from the fusion of incident in the forms selected
metaphor. His first abstract sculpture, 24 hours (the six boltheads on the surface of the circle,
[Cat. no. 4], is alive with the excitement of or the line which divides the trapezoid form)
new possibilities, among them the possibility with the consequences of sculptural process
of sculpture being merely itself, an indepen- (the jagged edges, welds and joints) into a
dent thing with a real relationship to ourselves whole in which found element and sculptural
instead of a 'special' relationship. The sculptor intention become inseperable. This ability to
does not mould form to embody his meaning; tended to work in comparatively enclosed assimilate elements by identifying them with
he identifies with forms selected and relation- spaces, composing as it were from the inside a mood, an idea or an intention suggests an
ships created in the unselfconscious activity of out, a means of liberation partly learned from easy and open relationship between the world
making, and recognizes in them meanings American contemporaries (cf. Olitski—`paint- of sensations and the world of things.
which have become his own. What the artist ing is made from the inside out'). In works Unselfconsciousness is vital to Caro's working
can assert depends upon how he can act, how like Month of May [9] or Hopscotch [7] the pro- process. In order to preserve it at moments
honestly and how freely. cess of making, so far as we can reconstruct when some reconsideration is necessary or
Good design is irreconcileable with the free it, suggests a physical entanglement with some innovation prompted he will often
composition of art. In order to avoid design- separate elements that would preclude the identify his new idea with an element, in the
ing—imposing a fixed end upon a process kind of pictorial juxtaposing at arms length world of things, which already embodies it,
which needs to be kept open—Caro has that occasionally undermines the work of and work through that, through the physical