Caro at the National Gallery

 “…We live in a world full of objects, tables, chairs, crockery, motorcars, etc.  What makes sculpture more special, isolates it in fact, from all of this? Often it is the delimiting of its world from ours…We put it on its base and stick it on the mantelpiece, [it is as if] the base says, ‘My world ends here- now yours, the spectator’s, starts’…Now if you bring the sculpture off its base it begins to have only those merits that are intrinsic in its nature – either it is lifeless junk or it carries an intention, it has poetry about it or it’s nothing.” –Anthony Caro, 1965

“The old statue was made on a base and it inhabited a world of its own, the limits of which were set by the limits of its base.  Whether it was an equestrian statue or a little model on a piano or a mantelpiece, it inhabited its own world.  I don’t want my sculpture to relate to the spectator in this imaginary sort of way.  It has to do with presence, more as one person relates to another.” –Anthony Caro, 1972

I’ve learned a lot about Caro over the past few weeks, researching his work for a future exhibition at the Phillips Collection.  And I must say, I am now a pretty big fan.  Caro notably freed his works from the traditional base, which had previously separated and elevated object and viewer.  He wanted to move away from the monumentality of traditional statues on bases that, for example, reminded citizens of the dominating presence of royal figures.  He wasn’t the first sculptor to do this: in the early 1950s, David Smith (one of the major influences on Caro’s work) had been experimenting with this idea.   But Caro took this a step further by completely removing the base.  He wanted to bring his work down to human level and, in effect, occupy the same  “world” as the spectator.

So you could imagine my surprise to encounter this particular sculpture, “National Gallery Ledge Piece,” on display in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art...

While Caro created the sculpture specifically for this space, it achieves the opposite effect of what comes forth in Caro’s quotes about his process.  Not only is it raised physically above the viewer, it maintains the same dominating presence that Caro claimed he was deviating from.  Although it is not a traditional base, placing this on such a raised ledge both elevates the object and separates it from the viewer.  This piece is unlike his smaller works that can be intimately viewed, and even his large-scale sculptures that have been on view on the Met rooftop allow for more viewer-object interaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate the sculpture.  I think it fits perfectly in this interesting space, and functions in conversation with the David Smith sculpture just across the hallway.  But it contradicts the very essence of Caro’s stated intention.