Page 38 - Studio International - February 1973

taste. And above all else, it is this alliance of and seemingly propped in place by the slabs and shiny steel looks overmuch like surface filling
physicality and lyricism that gives to the new angles at its base. But being so large and (although procedurally, of course, it is the
work its unique character. physical it comes to near two-dimensionality opposite), and the contours are weakened where
The real and important breakthrough to new without loss. Indeed, Caro seems to have they would have benefited from being sharp.
territory these sculptures represent finds an realized that the larger and more physical the However, the fine balance of pierced plane and
interesting parallel with Olitski's recent current work became the more he needed to supporting beams is wellnigh perfect; and
paintings. Olitski has abandoned the fragile return it not merely to pictorialism but to the rebounds on Straight On, which looks
illusions of spraying for a kind of surface where condition of painting itself. The smaller the somewhat top heavy in contrast (though better
illusion is a property of the physicality of paint work, the further it departs from the wall-like — in colour). Here the fact of the series does start
itself Caro's taking physicality into his art or relief-like — nature of its conception. to play a part in one's reaction. Recognizing
seems likewise a step into a more direct and And yet, each of the four smaller works from Straight Cut that the upper section of
natural relationship with his medium. As a new presents at least one strong relief-like view. Straight On is potentially removable, we start to
departure it is still fraught with certain Though block-like in their dimensions think of it as visually apart — and to reading
problems : some pieces seem too physical, too everything is organized around a single pierced the two slabs that hold it as analogous to those
squat and heavy, and except in two or three plane. This gives Caro the best of both worlds : large plate magnets that sculptors use.
cases an absence of that sheer buoyancy we room both for his genius in eccentric And yet, other details in these works have
expect of Caro continues to make itself felt. But juxtapositions and for that sturdy sense of procedural connotations as well. The supporting
at their best — especially in Straight Left — they containment the new planarity affords. One's steel rod in Straight Up, for example. Or the
reveal a whole new breadth of feeling that Caro views — the kinds of access the sculptures make 'step' device used at ground level in many of the
has opened up : a new naturalness, and flexible possible — are delimited and directed in a way sculptures, which steadies any plane to which it
give-and-take with his materials, that carries the always true of Caro's work, but done so more is affixed as a counterweight to the plane's mass.
pictorialism of his work even more entirely into resolutely now. The sculpture actually seems to And similarly, the whole 'propped-up' format of
sculpture's own terms. enforce its views : most evidently towards the sculptures like Straight Cut, and of the larger
The unpainted surfaces of all the new work facing planes but equally so in the diagonal pieces too, evokes the physicality of their
epitomize this. They make other than avenues the sloping back-side planes create. construction and the weightedness of their
self-coloured (or at least brightly coloured) Being so particularized — stressing their materials. But this is not — to repeat — a pure
surfaces look somehow artificial : at worst possessions of frontality, of sideness, of physicality. Though continually present, it
gratuitous and at best dissipative of some of rearwardness, and so on — these smaller recedes in importance as we adjust to the
sculpture's natural attributes. Although the sculptures establish themselves as a highly surprise of the new work. While our natural and
current sculpture in no way devalues even the specific instance of the sculptural medium. They inherent expectations of weight, balance, mass,
most polychromatic of Caro's earlier pieces, it constitute — as did the table sculptures — a new and so on are an integral part both of a
suggests, nevertheless, that their painting was kind of medium of sculpture; one that can be sculptor's conceptual vocabulary and of our
among other things remedial in ambition — to defined only through contradiction — as a visual experience of his work, the address of
expunge from sculpture a worn-out sense of free-standing sculptural relief. sculpture is to our eyes and by no means
materiality, while investing it with a new candour Straight Cut is most easily recognized as exclusively dependent on kinaesthetic response.
of feeling and expressing the particulate nature relating to the larger sculptures of the series. That sculptural dream of defying gravity frees
of its make-up. Now, bared surfaces shrug off It is a version of Straight On with the top mass from its weightedness to make its situation
the kind of deliberated quality painting brought removed. I find the gain enormous, though have an aesthetic one — to transform it into a visual
— and its sense of appliedness as well. The effect reservations about its colour, wishing that the motif. Making the floor a part of sculpture can
of this, however, is that surface itself becomes ground areas on the two upper faces had not acknowledge weightedness while anulling its
an issue in the new work to a degree it never was been stopped short of their edges. Here, the significance. In such a situation, weight has
before. Its ground and wire-brushed treatment
renders it far closer to painting than painting
itself.3 In Straight Flush and Straight Run, a
range of warm but subdued reds and rust-like
hues running through to almost grey-green
actually lightens the feel of the pieces. In
Straight Up, two edges of the facing plane are
burnished to catch the light. This just checks the
fixedness of the contour, stretching the whole
plane downwards into its protruding angle (in a
way altogether worthy of Olitski), while the
lower burnished area itself helps lift
and lighten the plane above the ground.
In Straight Measure, the three separate
components of the facing plane are modulated
and tied within the very treatment of surface
detail. Though demonstrating the material
attributes of sculpture, Caro renders it pictorial.
Physicality does not exist on its own behalf.
Straight Flush and Straight Run are amazingly
narrow pieces, considering their size. This gives
authority to the new aesthetic weight that
surface carries. Though wall-like, however,
they are not simply presented surfaces. Straight
Run comes closest to being all surface. Its
jointed planes spread out laterally, pulled out

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