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PARTISAN REVIEW
probably because of its greater coherence as a vo lume. But these are
quibbles. As always, Tucker's thought-provoking, tough-minded objects
made you reexamine your preconceptions about what sculpture can be
at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Further reexamination was provoked by Anthony Caro's
The Bar–
barians
at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, a brilliant ensemble of six near–
life-sized horsemen and a smaller-than-life ox-drawn cart, forc ed into
being out of stoneware, wood, steel, and derelict vaulting horses. While
at first acquaintance the group seemed dramatically unlike the abstract
constructed scu lpture in steel that established-and maintained-Caro's
reputation since
1960,
The Barbarians
proves more seamlessly related
to the British master's continuing concerns than was initially apparent.
As a young scu lptor, Caro first attracted notice with heavy-set, expres–
sionistically modeled figures, a direction that he abandoned when he
began to work in steel.
The Barbarians
and the multivalent narrative
groupings that preceded them,
The Trojan War,
1993-94,
and
The Last
Judgment,
I997,
(which share the same elusive approach to narrative
and the same rich, disparate material palette) suggest that at seventy–
eight he is rethinking first impulses, returning to unfinished business.
Unlike his early figures, however, Caro's recent a llusive works depend
not on urgent modeling, but on the additive language and expressive
syntax of how things touch that he devised in his abstract steel works.
It's as though this endlessly inventive artist had dec ided to reconceive
the "new tradition" of constructed sculpture that he inherited from
Picasso and Gonzalez, via David Smith-at least for some of his current
works.
In
The Barbarians,
Caro forces the language of additive con–
struction
to
accommodate his lifetime's accumulated fascination with
ancient and modern tribal and archaic scu lpture from both East and
West, with workaday objects, votive offerings, and more. More impor–
tant, he transforms these complex, fleeting references into unexpected,
new objects that embody deep fee ling.
The Barbarians
seems to sum up the history of constructed sculpture.
Caro's implacable riders appear wholly modern, but they also seem pri–
mal, as though they revealed the origins of image-making: one thing
added to another thing and another thing, to make something that
stares back as a confrontational, nonliteral figure. At first, it's hard to
get past Caro's potent imagery, but time makes it subside . The way ele–
ments are stacked and butted, the sculptures' frontality, symmetry, tex–
tural variations, and subtle spatial articulation become paramount.
Then those fierce riders declare themselves again. I kept thinking about
