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The New York Times
NEW YORK, N.Y.
D. 834.278 SUN. 1.435.908
May 3 1975
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Anthony Caro's "Source" is in a show at the Museum of Modern Art, which owns it

Art: Fine Sculptures by Caro

By John Russell

Anthony Caro is by any rational count the most remarkable sculptor to have appeared anywhere in the world during the last 25 years.

This being so, the Museum of Modern Art has fulfilled its true function by mounting the full-scale survey of Mr. Caro's work that will be on view there through July 6 and will go later to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

As a show, it was difficult to choose, difficult to install, difficult to elucidate. What can you do in a limited space with a man whose output during just a part of last summer included 37 very large pieces? And how can you get those very large pieces to cohabit with the pieces, done in the summer of 1965, who musculature is as delicate as that of an ibis or an egret?

Mr. Caro's work thrives on space and isolation; and if his development is difficult to discuss, it is not because each pieces has not its own self-sufficient rationale, but because Mr. Caro cannot be bullied into sticking with one or another historical position. As William Rubin concludes, in the book that runs parallel to the show and can be had either at the museum or through the New York Graphic Society ($17.50 hardback, $7.95 paper), Mr. Caro employs an intuitive and improvisational approach that allows him to turn from one material, one ambition and one mode of expression to another. And he can do this without going into those weird rituals of self-justification that are mandatory elsewhere.

In his beginnings as an independent sculptor, in 1960, Mr. Caro wanted to get out from under what was then called "the fine art thing": the centuries-old apparatus of implication and association that went with "noble" materials, with an allusive attitude toward nature, and with a long tradition of deliberate monumentality. A sculptor had been something to back away from, if possible in awe. It was tightly, laboriously and in intention impressively organized; and the organization showed.

Mr. Caro's approach was just the opposite. "I don't want my sculptures to be beautiful," he said around that time. "I want them to be true." They were "true" to life, in a metaphorical sense, in that he used ready-made materials that were innocent of art history. And they went on being true to life by risking, over and over again, the element of chaos. The things that he got to life together had never lived together before, and there had been no reason to suppose that they would ever do so - or, for that matter, that they could be lifted clear of a utility situation.

Where the hierarchy of nations is concerned, England does not rank high with the Museum of Modern Art. (Somewhere between Portugal and Luxembourg, I would guess.)

But Mr. Caro's mid Atlantic stance has always earned him preferential treatment. The museum owns "Midday" (1906), that longtime favorite of the Sculpture Garden whose buttercup color so nicely sets off its rough-hewn, blunt-spoken and yet not at all ponderous forms. It also owns "Source" (1967), which stands out even in what turned out to be an annus mirabilis in Mr. Caro's achievement (see its contemporary, "Prairie," in the present show).

Mr. Caro in the earlier nineteen-sixties treated the ground as an adversary: something to be denied, played with, made light of. On no account was the ground to exert its normal gravitational pull. In "Source," the ground is as near as not ignored, and the air becomes Mr. Caro's accomplice. The hallowed tradition of sculpture as a blocklike object that stands still in space was mocked by the huge area of steel mesh that is "Source"'s most conspicuous feature. The ground was acknowledged merely by two thin lines penciled in space; a similar line, set toward the top of the mesh, has a look of emphasis that further encourages us to forget about the ground. Rectangular motifs abound; but we remember the skidmark of the tall thin line that ought to go straight up toward the sky but swerves away as if to say, "I am too independent."

That was eight years ago. "Source" is great art, but Mr. Caro has refused to rest with it, or with anything else. A whole new family of ideas came to him in Italy (1972-73) and in Canada (1974). Generous as is the scale of the show, it can give us no more than a sample of the extent to which Mr. Caro has reinvented the poetics of sculpture.

Other current shows of interest include:

James Brooks (Martha Jackson Gallery, 32 East 69th Street, and Finch College Museum of Art, 52 East 78th Street): A double-header show, revelatory as to Mr. Brook's drawings (at Finch), firmly confirmatory as to his status as a member of the heroic generation of the first New York school (born, 1906, W.P.A. muralist, 1938-42, close friend and neighbor of the Pollocks from 1949 onward, now pushing 70 as anything but a burnt-out case). Paintings of 1973 like "Fangle" and "Persolis" are long-service medals that any painter would be glad to earn. Through May 24 at Jackson, through June 8 at Finch.

Gene Davis/Anne Dunn (Fischbach Gallery, 29 West 57th Street): Mr. Davis's stripes come on long, baton-thin strips of canvas this season; extent, not height, is the unit of reference. Miss Dunn's colored-ink drawings set up a cunning antiphony between the luxuriance of a Provençal summer (old stone smothered in flowers and foliage) and the bare, grimy, manmade rectangles of Manhattan; the one fuels and complements the other ideally. Through May 21.

Swiss Books and Prints (New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42d Street): In relation to its size, Switzerland has probably bred (or, if not bred, harbored) more memorable people over a longer period of time than any other country in the world. From Dürer and Erasmus through Voltaire and Rousseau to Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti, C. G. Jung, Le Corbusier, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov the list is dazzling. Given legs in good repair you can climb all over the Public Library (through June 15) and find all this spelled out. Banks are not the only interesting thing in Switzerland.

Peter Arno (Nicholls Gallery, 1014 Madison Avenue at 78th Street): Nature meant Peter Arno to be funny. Society made it impossible for him to be anything else. The interlocking of the two over four decades makes a great little show; and many of the jokes (see the ones about Arabs and oilmen) come up brighter than ever. Through next Saturday.

Transcription Notes:
This is complete and ready for review except for one thing: under Swiss books and prints (near the bottom) is a name with a letter I don't know how to type.