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Anthony Caro - You need to show your work (40/53)

273 views · Published 14 June 2017 · 1:45 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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To listen to more of Anthony Caro’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFz9rq56s32Mdyx6_MiTN0WB 

Abstract sculptor Anthony Caro (1924-2013) was born in England. His characteristic method of sculpture involved the use of prefabricated metal. An influential tutor, Caro taught at St Martin’s School of Art.  He was knighted in 1987. [Listener: Tim Marlow]

TRANSCRIPT: You've got to get your work out because it's so depressing not to. It's so depressing: make a sculpture, send it to the store and you don't see it again for ten years. It's very depressing, that, and you don't feel that you... you've done only half the story. So, the other half of the story is for people to see it.

[TM] OK, but what about you make a work, someone buys it, it goes to their private house? It's the same thing as it going to a store, isn't it? Doesn't...? 

Yes, very much, very much and... and disappointing in a way. I would like to have it shown properly first so, in a way, you know, the... most shows which are chronological – they're not... unless they’re retrospectives, you know. It's like the last bit of making the stuff so you make the stuff, you write it in your book and you write the... the date of it and the size of it and the... the paint you used or whatever. And you have a photograph taken of it. And then the last of those equally pedestrian things usually is having a show of it. Then I think... then it can go its own merry way, but I don't think... it's not to me as real and as important as looking at it and saying it's right, you know, that's it.

[TM] Do you learn from exhibitions? Do you look at work with a distance and think, ‘Oh yeah, I see what I did there and I know...? 

Sometimes but not much... not much. I learn a little bit from retrospective... and restrospect and saying, ‘Yes, well, you know, there was something fresh about those colour sculptures that was interesting’, you know. And... but I don't think you learn much from the past, no.

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