Lagoon 1977

Anthony Caro made this sculpture, Lagoon, out of painted steel, though I don't know exactly when. It's a testament to process, to how an artist works through materials to discover form. The rusted surface of the steel gives the sculpture a tactile quality, almost like skin. The way the planes intersect and overlap, it reminds me of constructing a painting. Look at how the tilted slab cuts across the vertical support, creating a dynamic tension. There's a real push and pull, a give and take, that feels so immediate and present. You can almost feel Caro making decisions as he goes, adjusting and readjusting the relationships between the elements. Caro's work always strikes me as a conversation, like a three-dimensional drawing in space. He reminds me of David Smith, both so attuned to the industrial materials, but also to the poetry of form. In art, there’s always more than one way to see, more than one way to understand.