Table Piece XXVIII 1967

Anthony Caro made this painted steel sculpture, Table Piece XXVIII, sometime during his lifetime, but the date is unknown. Isn’t it funny how a few pieces of metal, seemingly arbitrarily arranged, can create such a feeling of... what? Uncertainty? Defiance? It's brown, plain brown. But it feels so alive, like a still from a cartoon. I wonder what he was thinking, bending that steel, coaxing it into these shapes. That curve, hooking around the cylinder – it's like a thought, half-formed, grasping for something, but not quite finding it. I bet he saw something, a gesture, a relationship, and had to make it real, out in the world. It's like he was inventing a language, trying to say something beyond words.