Page 47 - Studio International - March April 1975

cathedral by the people, say, of
Peterborough or Durham. Yet in their
passing by or through, their waiting or
working near, their occasional glance or
stare, the citizens acknowledge these
things as part of their place; and
paradoxically their appearance with the
sculpture in these photographs rather
enhances the works' centrally abstract
qualities — the horizontal breadth and
expansiveness of the Table by the single
standing man : the deep and massive
embrace of the Gate by the emerging
crocodile of schoolchildren: the immense
presence of the column as one stands a
few feet away from its base. The
Column is seen distantly — as one cannot
see the two smaller sculptures in the
public park — but obscured by smoke
from the railway, by roofs and by trees,
its verticality and opticality emphasized
rather than subverted by intervening
elements of the everyday world. All
sculpture must be somewhere: no
sculpture I know takes on the challenge
.,of its particular setting with such success
as do these monuments.
William Tucker