Anthony Caro: Early One Morning

Anthony Caro is an English abstract sculptor who is known to work with found objects such as steel and plastics.

One of his most famous pieces is called Early One Morning (1962) which is a work that is very hard to describe.

It is an abstract piece and only rectangular shapes were used while creating the sculpture. The sculpture is not illusionistic. We simply appreciate it for what it is. It’s up to us to interpret its meaning because it has no narrative or story. The way the sculpture’s been positioned and its supports make a reference to the fact that it is not heavy. Traditional sculptures are known to have a solid and heavy appearance whereas this one seems quite light. Through his work, Caro aims to keep sculpture alive as a medium by challenging conventional sculpture. By using stick-like shapes to support the sculpture he was able to highlight its lightness and make it less intense.

Despite the fact that his work was criticised for being overly simplified at first, once his thought process was explored the way people saw his sculptures changed.

Caro believes that a sculpture’s physical existence is more important than aesthetics and decorations. Whilst creating his sculptures, Caro focuses on their meanings and effects on the audience rather than how they seem to appear. This contributes to the idea that his work is more than just a decoration. It deals with emotions. Caro said he doesn’t want to make ‘a picture of someone crying but a sculpture that makes you cry.’ His statement makes it clear that he wants to make the audience feel certain emotions instead of visually describing the feelings himself. The best way to understand an emotion is to feel it yourself as no matter how well it’s been portrayed, if you can’t relate to it, you won’t be able to comprehend what it means. Caro tries to get the audience to have a first-hand experience which has a greater effect compared to the conventional ways of portraying emotions.

Another point one can make about Early One Morning is that it does not convey a ‘perfect’ image.

This is very significant as traditional sculptures such as David (1500–1504) by Michelangelo aimed for visual perfection. Caro describes this as the weakness of sculpture and claims that perfection is meaningless. This can be seen from his use of materials and the process of creating new sculptures. He uses materials such as steel which he gets from scrap yards. Compared to expensive paints and brushes, steel has no artistic value. Caro tries to turn scrap into art by rescuing them from what they originally were.

On the other hand, steel is hard and malleable which means that you cannot change it completely. This means that it never loses something from what it really is as it cannot be transformed fully. Despite the fact that steel is hard to change, Caro finds it easier to work with. He suggests that you can move steel if you don’t like how it looks and claims that it is more flexible than painting in that sense. His final pieces show that he responded to the way steel was moving and instead of making it look artistic and perfect he accepted the material’s nature and left it as it is.

Caro conveys a new way of working with materials through which he deals with emotions rather than representation.

Instead of creating figurative works that depict a feeling, he aims to communicate with the audience and make them feel the emotion. This can be considered a stronger way of displaying an emotion as the audience will have a better idea of what it is if they can actually understand it. Caro takes this a stage further by claiming that perfection is unnecessary in this process and uses materials that have no artistic value to support this.

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