Page 40 - Studio International - September 1974

(Far left) Hogarth After the Marriage c.1743
Oil on canvas, 27½ x 35¾ in.
The National Gallery, London
(Left) Caro Departure 1970
Photo : Andre Emmerich, New York
(Below) Caro Titan 1964
Steel painted blue, 3 ft 5½ in. x 12 ft x 9 ft 6 in.
(Right) Pugin St Giles Church, Cheadle
Photo: National Monuments Record
(Far right) Caro Table Piece CXV I 1973
Steel, 32 X 25} X 36 in.
Photo : Andre Emmerich, New York

not interested in the leftward spatial plunge -
even though this effect is under control - and I
am not at all pleased by the mantelpiece
cluttered with 'interesting' things meant to be
regarded one-by-one, like words. I am equally
discouraged by the novelistic cuteness of the
satisfied bride, the ethical but bawdy exhaustion
of the husband, the servile worldliness of the
secretary or clerk, and the gross suggestion of
all-night activity on the part of the yawning
butler. I like the fact that the socially exclusive
eroticism of a French situation is made very
domestic and healthy and English, but even
that does not satisfy the part of my mind that is
entered through the eye. So far the picture
might as well be made up of paper tags with
words on them. I don't even like the
compositional bluntness with which the
spectator is pulled into the narrative: of the four
figures, three are positioned near the corners of
an askew rectangular carpet and one is relegated
to the next room, the implication being that the
fourth and nearest corner of the carpet,
truncated by the lower edge of the canvas, is for forming another regular triangle in encounter like the joining of chair seat and back. The back
us. (The floor-bound angle of the carpet may be with the stool - is fully integrated into the of the chair, pinned down as flat to the floor as
compared with long, low right angles by Caro, geometrical system of the master and his chair; the shoulders of a wrestler, touches the violin
as in Titan, of 1964.) Yet even some of these in fact, the two configurations fuse in a rather case, and both lie underneath the violin and
features may seem to carry over into Caro's art, Caroesque way where the hind paw of the dog music book - themselves a touching pair. The
where a French elegance and lyricism takes on just touches the foot of his master's chair, while specifically shallow, oblique angling of these
solidity and hardiness, and where spatial even the categorical relation of man's leg to dog four elements, more or less flat and sliding over
plunges and clusters of small elements become leg to chair leg suggests the inanimate one another, can be paralleled with such
subjugated to a comprehensive balance. anthropomorphism of grips and handles in sculptures by Caro as Departure (1970),
What really is pleasing in the Hogarth has Caro's table pieces of 1966-67. although more general similarities have to do
still more to do with Caro. I like the way the The still-life group in the lower left-hand with spatial dislocation, gently firm fusions of
main objects are placed with regard to their corner of Shortly After the Marriage is even forms that just touch, and an attitude toward
mass, shape, and even centre of gravity. Two more exciting. A chair lies overturned, its back artistic form as a partial alteration of pre-existing
clusters of forms are most important for this against the floor. Narratively, this has to do with form the given, original form of Hogarth's
purpose, the husband with dog, at the right, and the frantic human activity that has dislocated it. chair, for instance, still showing through its
the chair and violin in the lower left. The man But there is more abstract value in regarding formal radicalization.
slouches down in his chair, almost tipping, his Hogarth's chair as the imaginative rotation in If this kind of comparison is worthwhile, it
legs extended rigidly in an angle geometrically space (and consequent de-functionalization) of must be true also with other types of art and
similar to that at which his legs meet the floor. an otherwise common structure. Moreover, the other periods of English art history, although
A spatial prism results from these linear tumbled chair is only one of four elements the eighteenth century was, appropriately,
elements describing planes that in turn describe carefully united, among several overlapping extraordinarily clear and deliberate about its
facets of a three-dimensional abstract form. sets of four (four persons differing in class; man, own Englishness. The only visual art included
There is a decidedly narrative relation between dog, chair, stool). Together with the chair are a in T. S. Eliot's remarkable formulation of
the dog propped up on the small stool and his violin (viola ?) and its case and an open music Englishness in his 'Notes Towards the
master stretching down from the chair, but book. These pair off in various ways, as two Definition of Culture' (1948) is a reference to
what impresses me more is that the relation dark and two light objects (in analogy with `nineteenth-century Gothic churches'. This is
passes from a narrative stage (dog and master) husband and wife), as violin and case, both generally significant because it points to an
through a conceptual purification (tall seat: low similar in form, and as music book sharing element of picturesqueness that is possibly final
stool—man: dog) to a fully visual one, as certain properties with the chair - soft over hard to any characterization of Englishness in art.
follows. The rectilinear placement of the dog - material, it is sewn between two open leaves Picturesqueness, with its preference for gentle

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