Five Sculptures by Anthony Caro
From the collection of
From the collection of
An enjoyable discussion between the abstract sculptor Anthony Caro and art historian Norbert Lynton about his latest exhibition called Five Pieces
Made by the Arts Council in 1982, this programme features the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro in conversation with Professor Norbert Lynton as they walk around an exhibition of five of his sculptures. After brief scenes in the artist's studio, we see Anthony Caro talking with Norbert Lynton about how the exhibition is able to represent Caro's body of work. Caro and Lynton then walk to the first sculpture called Woman Waking Up, from 1956. This figurative piece was made using ‘found objects', in this case stones from a beach, incorporated into a casting and depicting a reclining female shape. By the time we visit the second piece, Slow Movement, from 1965, we see that Caro has abandoned the figurative for abstraction. Caro mentions that he wanted to express how objects feel, rather than what they represent. In this way Slow Movement is just itself – steel sheets at angles. The much larger Shore, from 1968, reveals a very different assemblage of ‘floating' steel sections and Caro mentions that he likes to adopt new approaches all the time. In that way productivity and satisfaction never get stale or become ‘performance' – which, he claims, is what happened to the older Picasso. Caro sees himself as an explorer and CCLXIX, from 1975, results in a radically different ‘softer' sculpture made out of steel off-cuts from the steelworks at Consett. It is another example of Caro's ‘objet trouvé' technique. The programme ends with Half Moon, from 1980, where Caro and Lynton discuss the sculpture's complex shapes and their interactions with each other. Caro then comments that he might adjust elements of the piece, claiming that it is too ‘fussy' in its present form. This process of thinking about how a sculpture is to be shaped or modified gives Caro immense satisfaction.
The Arts Council's touring exhibition, Five Sculptures by Anthony Caro, visited six galleries in the UK from 1982 to 1983.