Page 41 - Studio International - September 1974

transitions and for asymmetric arrangements
that are frank and even homey in their massing,
is a definitively English bridge between
literature and art, as well as between the
eighteenth century and the nineteenth. Out of
it came the gothic revival, and in the mature
phase of that moment nothing was more
English than the churches of Augustus Welby
Northmore Pugin, whose French parentage and
Roman Catholicism made him, if anything,
more English than thou.
What about a building like Pugin's church of
St Giles art Cheadle (Staffordshire), built
between 184o and 1846, that seems
comparable with the sculpture of Caro ? In
details like the spatial angling of planes, and
the use in the interior of mesh-like ornamental
patterns, we find art least similar points of
approach. There is a decidedly English
conjunction of soaring verticality in the tower
with an extreme ground-hugging gravity in the
main fabric (especially the stubby porch). This
use of a vertical foil to offset or punctuate relations of sameness and difference in the another sculpture by Caro, Trefoil (1968).
insistent earth-boundedness is frequent with shape and means of structural support of its Caro's use of I-beams, angle-iron, and similar
Caro. Furthermore, a specific formal parallel various parts. materials originating in building construction,
could be drawn between the shallow angling of The gothic revival was both nationalistic and his dedication to steel, relate — together
the separate roofs over the nave, aisle, and and the beginning of a great tradition of with the motif of angled cross-bracing in some
square-ended chancel of the church, and the English influence in the foundation of pieces — to metal architecture and to the idea
fused, shallow, oblique planes of Caro's table international modernism in architecture. It of construction as derived from architectural
piece CXV/ (1973). always had to do with pride in the English past, execution. When we think of the history of
Pugin's ornamental attitude is in step with even when it was in the most progressive way metal architecture we think first of London's
his more abstractly Caroesque sequence of roofs. concerned with insight into the evils of Crystal Palace, although the British were
Consider that just as one very large element — capitalism. Engels himself was interested in its notably interested in the visual effect of
the tower with spire — is fused to the body of the religious evocation of Elizabethan times. By and engineering construction even before the Great
church art one end, so art the other end two large Europe and America recognized that, for Exhibition of 1851: witness W. H. Fox Talbot's
small vertical elements — a bellcote like an revived gothic, England was in the lead. Even photograph of scaffolding around the base of
Eleanor cross and a cross — spring, in the Didron, the editor of the Annales the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square
manner of Caro, from the exact tips of their Archéologiques, although he preferred French (c. 1844).
respective roofs. This emphatic reconciliation models (from a nationalism equal to that of the Earlier on, Cotman had drawn attention to
of sameness (all three vertical elements, all English), visited England for the express the aesthetic charm of engineering construction
fused to the edges of masses) and difference purpose of attending the consecration of in his superb watercolour Chirk Aqueduct, in
(one vs. two, or, in different sets, two spires and Pugin's St Giles, Cheadle. In any case, the the Victoria and Albert Museum. Chirk
one cross) recurs in Caro. Even his magnificent Pugin parallel is reinforced by the very title, aqueduct had been built between 1796 and
Prairie (1967) depends for its hovering effect on as well as the bowed and cuspy forms, of 1801 by Thomas Telford, the great bridge

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