Page 28 - Studio International - June 1972

`architecture' of the object. Sculpture was onwards. I am thinking of steel, glass, a new and powerful meaning in sculpture.
released into a new territory, to whose nature plastics, sawn and cut wood, concrete and so Moreover the size-ratio of the new
neither the history of sculpture nor the on. These materials were now to be used not in sculpture to the spectator invited him to
history of architecture seemed to give any terms of their decorative quality on a small identify its forms and spaces, its overall
clues. Moreover the impulse to move into scale, but in terms of their simultaneously character and internal directions, with his own
this area had largely come from American structural and expressive properties on a scale use of space, and in particular with the way in
abstract expressionist painting, which stressed that related to the human spectator. The size, which space is modulated and directed inside
the physical experience of the size, flatness, proportion, and the straightforwardly structural buildings by their components, by walls,
handling—the actuality—of the picture, but and unconcealed way in which the materials ceilings, floors, doors, windows, stairs, and so
was wholly anti-architectural in any of the could be handled, together with the fact that on. In the new sculpture elements which had
ways I have discussed. the materials themselves were 'architectural' previously the character of a closed and
One way in which this physical immediacy pointed to a quite new way in which sculpture removed ideal geometry, elements of plane and
could be carried back into sculpture was in the could be architectural—that is to say, in terms line in particular orientation and direction,
use of materials whose presence and meaning of a free use of architectural components, used were recharged with a new but still abstract
took on quite a different character when used for their abstract qualities, steel beams for power deriving from their architectural
in large, floor-based sculpture, rather than in their self-evident strength and rigidity, glass for association. Thus a horizontal plane on its
the small sculptures in which they had its clarity, hardness and transparency, and so edge will read as 'wall' or 'fence', an open
frequently appeared, usually in terms of a on. Released from their intended rectangle as 'door' or 'window', transition
declaration of 'modernity', from Cubism architectural function, these materials took on between levels as 'stairs' or 'ramp', each
evoking the spectator's body-experience of the
habitation of buildings, of passing through,
around, across, along, up and down architectural
spaces physically or visually. Because there
was no suggestion, before the idea was
exploited and vulgarized, of actually entering,
climbing on or into this kind of sculpture, the
work could retain an ambiguity of distance, a
complexity of illusion in its physical detachment
from the spectator, while inviting him to
experience a structure in which the physical
and visual factors were overlaid and
interwoven. In effect, the 'architectural'
experience of the sculpture, that is the way in
which it could be experienced with the
spectator's whole body by analogy with his
experience of traversing and using space,
replaced the specifically 'tactile', the
experience, real or imagined, of the spectator's
hands, in previous sculpture. Perspective
became available, if not essential, as an
articulating and inventive tool for sculpture,
and thus the rediscovery of the order of
space perspective had once opened up for
painting.
In fact most of the sculpture that was made
in the 6os, in this country and elsewhere,
although it was ground-based, if it was
(Above)
Series B No. z 1969 architectural was architectural in the old sense,
14x 96 x 156 in. in the internal architecture of the contained
Wood and concrete object, rather than in the affective
Photo courtesy Kasmin Gallery
architecture, the kind of articulation of
(Left) space I have been describing. Or sculpture
Shutter B 197o started to physically compete with, to rival
75 x 8o in.
Wood architecture, either in sheer size—the creation
Photo courtesy Kasmin Gallery of gigantic and otiose monuments, or in the
construction of architectural interiors,
environmental sculpture, so-called, or in the
tasteful modification of existent interior spaces.
These directions seem to me dead ends, tending
to reproduce in contemporary terms the most
abject servility of sculpture to architecture of
previous periods of history.
In my own sculpture from 196o until about
three years ago, I now feel I was still largely
conditioned by the enclosed object aesthetic.
The pieces illustrated may give some idea of
what I mean by this. The sculptures,
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