Sir Anthony Caro

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a sculptor. His job, he says, is a bit like being a builder, and it's being a bit of a builder that's undoubtedly helped make his reputation. He read engineering at Cambridge, but subsequently went to the Royal Academy schools, and then became Henry Moore's assistant. He learned to question assumptions, he learned to test the rules. Girders, nuts, and bolts, often painted in brilliant primary colours, became the raw material of his vision, creating pioneering works which revolutionised sculpture. Today, at the age of seventy six, he's held in high international esteem, a position he's achieved, he says, by doing things which are difficult. British sculpture was sleepy for decades. We have to make sure it doesn't get sleepy again. He is Sir Antony

Presenter1:19

Is it your self-appointed task in that sense, then, Tony, to to keep pushing ahead, always to try to do something new, something different?

Sir Anthony Caro1:26

It's what I want to do for me. I want to challenge myself.

Sir Anthony Caro1:31

And if I didn't do things that were a bit difficult, uh I wouldn't be living.

Presenter1:35

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro1:35

Yeah.

Presenter1:36

How do you do that? How do you what's what is your stimulus? What what gives you inspiration for these different things you do?

Sir Anthony Caro1:43

All sorts of things get you going. Um seeing a piece of steel lying on the floor in a certain configuration, it can even come from from

Sir Anthony Caro1:53

Going to the theatre.

Sir Anthony Caro1:55

or a book.

Presenter1:56

But you don't go immediately then and and draw that. Uh you don't sit at a drawing board, you immediately go into your studio and begin to create it.

Sir Anthony Caro2:03

Absolutely, absolutely. Let's take a piece of wood or a piece of steel or a terracotta lump.

Sir Anthony Caro2:11

And you work from that. So that you might, you know, when I was doing a recent sculpture.

Sir Anthony Caro2:18

There was the terracotta lump, there were some things that were beginning to come, and then there was an old wardrobe, in fact, which was metal. Um

Sir Anthony Caro2:26

Bashed in

Sir Anthony Caro2:28

Let's try that on it.

Presenter2:29

And it worked. But I also get the impression that after that initial vision, and obviously, you are the artist, you are the visionary.

Presenter2:37

It becomes a more democratic process. You are willing to listen to others, aren't you? And and in incorporate.

Presenter2:43

what they're saying into your world.

Sir Anthony Caro2:45

At a certain stage, absolutely.

Sir Anthony Caro2:48

The first thing has to be your own. And then

Sir Anthony Caro2:52

From there

Sir Anthony Caro2:53

You really want other people to to look at it.

Speaker 32:56

Mm-hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro2:57

I remember years ago I was working in a steel yard in Toronto. I was working with very heavy steel, and there was a crane driver who'd never seen uh a sculpture in his life, I'm quite sure of that. And um I got stuck and I said, Dumb

Sir Anthony Caro3:13

What shall I do, Raid?

Sir Anthony Caro3:15

Oh, he said,'Turn it on its side'. Well, it was three tons. I would never have thought of turning three tons on its side,'cause I can't do that in my studio. And that that took off from then.

Presenter3:24

But that's interesting. So you're not, as it were, precious about your work. You're happy that yours has been the initial vision, but then other people can come in and have their two penneth.

Sir Anthony Caro3:32

Absolutely. It's like saying, you know, when my wife comes in the studio, what do you think of this? And she'll pick at once on the bit that was bothering me and say, well, well, there's a there's trouble there.

Presenter3:40

Yeah.

Presenter3:43

Oh, she used to tell you something was the wrong colour, didn't she?

Sir Anthony Caro3:46

Well, that would be at the end, yes, at the end.

Presenter3:47

She said this this is not a green sculpture

Sir Anthony Caro3:50

This is a

Presenter3:51

This is a red one.

Sir Anthony Caro3:52

That's right. That's right.

Presenter3:54

And and she's always right?

Sir Anthony Caro3:56

Pretty well. Yes, he's pretty good.

Presenter3:59

So, what about music? Is there any space where can you hear it? Do you have it on?

Sir Anthony Caro4:02

Oh yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro4:03

But I like to have music while I'm

Sir Anthony Caro4:05

Well, I'm working and I'd like to have music that applies in some way to my work, so that I could say, well,

Sir Anthony Caro4:13

Yes, there's a sort of similarity there. It's that it's not it doesn't it doesn't jar.

Presenter5:19

Arthur Rubinstein playing the opening of the third movement of Mozart's concerto for piano and orchestra No. twenty in D minor, with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alfred Wallenstein.

Presenter5:30

Can we talk, Tony, about how you do it, how you create these things? Let's take, for example, a piece that you did back in the sixties, but it's been much displayed in the Tate called Early One Morning.

Presenter5:42

It's about twenty feet long. It's steel and aluminium. You describe it.

Sir Anthony Caro5:46

Well, it's a lot of flat plates, and uh there are some sort of parts of it that are dancing along, really. Um I was working in the garage at home.

Sir Anthony Caro5:57

which I did for years, a one-car garage, very cramped.

Sir Anthony Caro6:01

and I stuck up the piece of aluminium against the back wall.

Sir Anthony Caro6:05

And that suggested that I should put two flat pieces of uh horizontally, a bit further out.

Sir Anthony Caro6:14

And it was the b that was the beginning. And then I got very stuck. And of course there's no room in that one car garage for anything very big, so I had to sit there and look at it for ages.

Sir Anthony Caro6:25

And then it seemed to want to go further out, and finally, in the end, I opened the doors of the garage, and it went right out outside. I liked being stuck in that garage, because I was right up against it, and I couldn't make aesthetic decisions. I had to make decisions of what the sculpture felt it wanted.

Presenter6:42

Yeah.

Speaker 46:42

Mm-hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro6:43

Uh you try and get onto the wavelength of the sculpture. Just just like you try and get onto my wavelength when you're talking to me or we do with other people, you know.

Presenter6:53

But, you know, we're talking about two human beings sitting across this table together. You're you you're saying that the sculpture to an extent has a will of its own.

Sir Anthony Caro6:55

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro6:59

Oh, I want very much that. That's why I went abstract in the first place. I want the sculpture really to be to be

Sir Anthony Caro7:07

A real entity and more like talking between two of us than.

Sir Anthony Caro7:13

That

Sir Anthony Caro7:14

General stuck upon the plinth.

Sir Anthony Caro7:17

Completely separated from our world. I wanted to be very much part of our world and very much, have very much that same.

Presenter7:19

I will

Sir Anthony Caro7:24

One-to-one thing.

Presenter7:25

And what about the title? As I said, this one we were talking about, the twenty-foot-long one, you called early one morning. Why?

Sir Anthony Caro7:33

Well, I think I called it after the song in that case. But I mean, in the beginning, I only wanted to call them one, two, three, and four, and five. It got too many and too confusing. I forget which was which.

Sir Anthony Caro7:45

So I would take

Sir Anthony Caro7:48

things which kind of

Sir Anthony Caro7:50

Felt like it.

Presenter7:51

The difficulty is, of course, if you give us, you know, the the the the viewer

Sir Anthony Caro7:51

The difficult

Presenter7:55

Um, a title. We tend to walk around, we're so literal, we walk around looking. If you say it's early one morning, one looks for kind of a bed or a sun or something.

Sir Anthony Caro8:04

How do you feel first thing in the morning? You feel, you know, early one morning, it's great. There's that sort of fresh feeling of possibility um when you get up on a wonderful day and

Sir Anthony Caro8:17

You can start life from there. And that's somehow how I think I want it to feel, that sculpture to feel.

Presenter8:23

So the title has to have some relev it has to feel right to you.

Sir Anthony Caro8:27

It has to sort of join with the with the work, and I've found it very difficult titling, and I sometimes have used titles of of um of

Sir Anthony Caro8:36

Paints, titles of racehorses.

Presenter8:39

Just sort of pluck them from somewhere.

Sir Anthony Caro8:41

Yeah, th you know, you go out to somewhere just says some incredible pineapple drink in the in the

Presenter8:41

But you

Sir Anthony Caro8:46

In the cocktail menu, and you said, God, that's a good title. And it might come in useful. I mean, you're looking you're looking all the time for possible titles.

Presenter8:55

But tight titles that are gonna make us

Presenter8:58

Are going to keep us awake, as it were, but not necessarily have any relevance to that.

Sir Anthony Caro9:02

Oh yes, they s they they're in the same mood. The mood has got to be right.

Presenter9:02

Oh yes, so they

Presenter9:07

Tell me about your second record.

Sir Anthony Caro9:08

Well, I think Brahms has a significance for me because he's not just heavy, he's partly sort of uh romantic and he's partly classical. And I like particularly this record because

Sir Anthony Caro9:22

He really takes.

Sir Anthony Caro9:25

a sort of emotional thing and makes it

Sir Anthony Caro9:28

Classical, he makes it a fugue.

Presenter10:30

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte, playing the final movement of Brahms Symphony No. four. Well, now, Sir Antony Caro, if your father had had anything to do with it at the beginning, you wouldn't have gone in for sculpture, would you? He didn't want you to do it.

Sir Anthony Caro10:46

Well, he wanted me to go into his firm. He was a stockbroker, and he wanted me to go into the city.

Sir Anthony Caro10:52

And I hated the idea, hated it. And so, uh

Sir Anthony Caro10:56

He said, Well, what do you want to do? I didn't know. Be an engineer, be an architect. And I tried all these things.

Sir Anthony Caro11:03

And, um

Sir Anthony Caro11:05

Finally, in the end, after I got an engineering degree,

Sir Anthony Caro11:10

and gone into the Navy'cause it was at the end of the war, and um I said, I really do want to do this sculpture, you know and he said, Well, you better do it then So he gave in in the end. He gave in and then he was very supportive, but I'm glad it happened that way, that I had to struggle to do it, because

Sir Anthony Caro11:27

It made me take myself seriously as a sculptor, or take take sculpture seriously, and do the job properly.

Presenter11:33

In order to prove to him that that what you were saying about yourself was absolutely right.

Sir Anthony Caro11:37

Well he had the idea that artists were dilitentis and the one thing I said I will not be is a dilitenti. I want to be a real artist who really

Sir Anthony Caro11:45

Did it like a job, but he he's

Presenter11:47

But he he got to sculpt around to see your stuff, didn't he, to see your work at some point.

Sir Anthony Caro11:52

Well, oddly enough, yes, uh he

Sir Anthony Caro11:55

We were introduced to somebody who used to be the sculptor at Saint Martin's, a teacher.

Sir Anthony Caro12:01

And my father went to see him and he said, Well, let's have a look at the work.

Sir Anthony Caro12:05

And

Sir Anthony Caro12:07

This chap looked at it and then

Sir Anthony Caro12:10

I said to my father, Your son will never be any good, you know.

Sir Anthony Caro12:13

And um

Sir Anthony Caro12:15

My father was rather pleased I think he said you see you could do it as a hobby.

Sir Anthony Caro12:19

And my father went away rather happy, but I'm afraid I stuck to it.

Presenter12:23

Ah

Sir Anthony Caro12:23

But how did you

Presenter12:23

But how did you know? How uh w what was it, uh you know, where was the inspiration from? Was it in the family, or was it something that you

Sir Anthony Caro12:31

It wasn't in the family. I think it was just uh you just knew inside you that's what you really loved doing and you were gonna do

Sir Anthony Caro12:37

Do it seriously?

Sir Anthony Caro12:40

Give yourself entirely to it. I think if I'd ever if I'd been a stockbroker, I would have done it in a half baked way, and I would have made a mess of it.

Presenter12:46

Tell me about record number three.

Sir Anthony Caro12:48

I think it was the first one of the first bits of Beethoven that I listened to and enjoyed very much. I think the quartets.

Sir Anthony Caro12:57

Are really marvelous and they're very deep and um

Sir Anthony Caro13:03

Tough music. I can't listen to these while I'm working. They've got their own they're s they're they're doing their thing, and it's not it's not the same as my thing.

Presenter13:09

F

Presenter14:13

The vague quartet playing part of the first of Beethoven's Razumovsky quartets. So then, Tony, you went to the Royal Academy schools, which didn't inspire you. I think you've called it staid. Why was it so staid? What was wrong for you?

Sir Anthony Caro14:26

It inspired me because I married my wife there.

Presenter14:29

Ah

Sir Anthony Caro14:29

That was fun.

Sir Anthony Caro14:30

But uh it it it was pretty traditional and it gave you a very good

Sir Anthony Caro14:37

Um grounding.

Presenter14:39

Classical.

Sir Anthony Caro14:40

Totally.

Presenter14:42

So did you feel stifled then?

Sir Anthony Caro14:43

No, not at the beginning. I felt I was learning a lot. I liked it when they had a different teacher every every term, and that you got a a great deal of of knowledge from

Presenter14:49

Mm.

Sir Anthony Caro14:54

Each one's speciality they would talk about terracotta or um

Sir Anthony Caro14:59

bronze or ivory or whatever.

Presenter15:01

But you obviously had eventually a a a kind of restlessness about it.

Sir Anthony Caro15:05

Well, it was a five year course, and by the end of it, or by even about half way through, I was beginning a bit cheesed off.

Sir Anthony Caro15:12

I mean, I when I'd gone there I thought that m being a sculptor was like making portraits and and uh I didn't

Presenter15:18

Well, that's what it was. I mean, I don't think we really knew sculpture. The world of sculpture didn't know there was anything else really, did it?

Sir Anthony Caro15:18

Well, that's what it was.

Sir Anthony Caro15:25

Not really, except there was Henry Moore, and and he was the most advanced sculptor that I

Sir Anthony Caro15:32

Fine, really and I said, Well, I gun't

Sir Anthony Caro15:35

and see if I can work for him. So I went

Sir Anthony Caro15:38

Up to his house.

Presenter15:40

In your Morris minor?

Sir Anthony Caro15:43

This man came to the

Sir Anthony Caro15:44

to the door, and said, What do you want?

Sir Anthony Caro15:47

Well, I said I I I want to work for you.

Sir Anthony Caro15:50

And he said, Well, you might have telephoned me.

Sir Anthony Caro15:52

But you better come in and and and have a cup of tea. And um

Sir Anthony Caro15:57

He looked at my

Sir Anthony Caro15:58

Photographs of what I had done?

Sir Anthony Caro16:01

And he said, Well, there's no job here for the moment, but six months' time we're going to build a little bronze foundry down the end of the garden.

Sir Anthony Caro16:09

And

Sir Anthony Caro16:10

Maybe there'll be a job for you then so six months to the day, exactly.

Sir Anthony Caro16:16

I rang up and said, Do you remember me? He said, Yes, I do.

Sir Anthony Caro16:19

Well, you can start on Monday, and I did.

Presenter16:21

This was what, about nineteen fifty, wasn't it? Yes.

Sir Anthony Caro16:23

Yes.

Presenter16:24

And obviously, you know, it was a wonderful experience. What what what for you how would you sum up that experience? Was it the man? Was it his work? Was it his library? What what did you get from it?

Sir Anthony Caro16:35

But one thing he taught me

Sir Anthony Caro16:37

What it means to be a sculptor, a serious sculptor, what it's like in a sculptor's studio. It's quite different from art school, and he

Sir Anthony Caro16:43

I learnt it. I learnt that from him. But then again, he was a very warm man, and he knew I was really interested in sculpture, and we'd talk a lot about art. And I would draw at the Royal Academy Schools, and I never understood drawing, and when I got back, he would criticise those drawings. It was amazing. I've got hundreds of drawings, with little drawings by Henry on the corner saying, Look, the light's coming from here, you can't make the shadow there, and so on. So he taught me about that, how a sculptor draws, as opposed to how a painter draws. Because I had been taught at the Academy School by painters, and they

Presenter17:14

So he

Sir Anthony Caro17:21

treated it completely differently.

Presenter17:23

But he obviously recognised your talent. Otherwise he just wouldn't have bothered. He wouldn't have spent all that time, would he?

Sir Anthony Caro17:28

Well, I think he was fond of me, and I think we you know, he was

Sir Anthony Caro17:32

It was really like a very much a father son relationship in a way, which was great. And then of course I got to know a little bit about modern art there, learned about um

Sir Anthony Caro17:41

Cubism, surrealism, all of which was new to me.

Presenter17:43

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro17:44

Which is very exciting, yeah.

Presenter17:47

Next piece of music, number four.

Sir Anthony Caro17:49

I always liked Big Gilbert and Sullivan. I think it was great fun. I enjoyed it very much. And we used to.

Sir Anthony Caro17:54

Sing this one in the car with m my

Sir Anthony Caro17:58

Two sons and my wife we'd all take apart and have the fun of singing this together. It's one of the things that I always remember driving along in the car, singing The Duke of Plasatorio.

Speaker 418:08

From the sunny Spanish shore.

Speaker 418:12

Worthy you could plaze upon

Speaker 418:16

And his grace is not just true.

Speaker 418:21

His grace is daughter tour

Speaker 418:24

And His Grace's private gum To Venetia's shores have come, To Venetia's shores have come.

Speaker 418:32

If everything and everything get back to spade, you never never

Presenter18:36

The arrival in Venice of the Duke of Plazatoro, his Duchess and his daughter too, from Act One of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers, performed by the Doilycard Opera Company with the new Symphony Orchestra of London, conducted by Isidore Godfrey. So you emerged, Tony, from the more years a much freer thinker, but but weren't you still essentially doing figurative stuff then?

Sir Anthony Caro18:59

Oh, yes, absolutely. Um I mean, for me it was

Sir Anthony Caro19:03

It was an adventure to even do something which was influenced by Picasso. In the last days at the Moore, I was looking at Picasso's

Presenter19:08

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro19:12

Angry animals, um, bulls and cats. And I remember I made some little bulls, and then I

Sir Anthony Caro19:21

Eventually got around to making a

Sir Anthony Caro19:23

Man holding his foot, which didn't look terribly like a man holding his foot, but there's a sort of distortion there pushing out of the foot. Yes, yes. But um.

Presenter19:27

There's a sort of distortion there, pushing out of the foot.

Sir Anthony Caro19:33

It was far away from from Moors.

Sir Anthony Caro19:37

No.

Sir Anthony Caro19:39

Fine, smoother, gentler figures.

Presenter19:42

So you're already moving away. But how and when did you make?

Sir Anthony Caro19:43

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

The huge leap that said let's do away with plinth, let's do away with all things figurative.

Sir Anthony Caro19:51

Well, that was about seven or eight years later, and um

Presenter19:55

But what was the catalyst?

Sir Anthony Caro19:57

I simply couldn't make the sculpture real enough by making a

Sir Anthony Caro20:02

person and the person

Sir Anthony Caro20:05

However,

Sir Anthony Caro20:06

Life size I made it. However much I set it on our ground and tried to make it like a real thing, it was still kind of a a pretence. It was like a model, it was clay.

Sir Anthony Caro20:16

And so, um, I went to America and when I was in America,

Sir Anthony Caro20:21

I started to feel freer in America. I started to feel far less bound by history.

Sir Anthony Caro20:26

And

Sir Anthony Caro20:27

Then I said, Well, let's go into another material.

Sir Anthony Caro20:30

And I tried something in steel, and some more in aluminium, and so on.

Sir Anthony Caro20:33

and then I was able to get straight to the material, straight to the feeling.

Sir Anthony Caro20:37

and cutting up figure.

Speaker 420:38

Mm-hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro20:38

Really, in a way, take a bit of steel.

Sir Anthony Caro20:42

and make a sculpture of it and then paint it in England at that time was was

Sir Anthony Caro20:48

Very shocking. It was very shocking.

Presenter20:49

It was very

Presenter20:50

Hm, indeed. It was amazing. I mean, when your exhibition went on, I think, at the White Chapel, wasn't it? The White Chapel Gallery was about sixty three.

Presenter20:57

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro20:57

Yeah.

Presenter20:57

And I think you had 15 pieces of that kind. And people were shocked. I mean, it was furious.

Sir Anthony Caro20:57

It's a

Sir Anthony Caro21:03

Yes.

Presenter21:04

Controversial.

Sir Anthony Caro21:04

Wasn't it? Absolutely. It was. And, um

Sir Anthony Caro21:08

I think that people hadn't seen that sort of thing before here. And it's hard to look back and remember how very stuffy English sculpture was. Despite Henry Moore, that people thought they were very advanced to be able to take a figure by Henry Moore. By and large, the general mood was much more conservative than that, much more. And then to go and put these

Presenter21:29

Much more

Sir Anthony Caro21:33

Mad bits of steel around.

Sir Anthony Caro21:35

Say that's sculpture. Sculpture is not sculpture at all.

Presenter21:38

In these brilliant primary, very sixties colours, of course, that green and that red.

Sir Anthony Caro21:39

Very sixties colours, of course, that green and that red. It looks like a an earth moving equipment.

Presenter21:46

Revolutionary, because, as you say, the whole business of sculpture had been asleep.

Sir Anthony Caro21:49

For so long.

Sir Anthony Caro21:51

Exactly. Because after all, you see, we were behind the painters. The painters had done this already. I mean, Cubism was.

Sir Anthony Caro21:58

thirty years, forty years back, beyond that and and

Sir Anthony Caro22:02

So it wasn't?

Sir Anthony Caro22:04

wasn't earth breaking in the way that Cubism was, but it was earth breaking for sculpture, because we also took the central sort of object out of it. We were taking that thingness out of sculpture, and that was that was a new a new thing to do.

Sir Anthony Caro22:21

It's more like a dance. It's more like more like music.

Presenter22:25

Hmm.

Presenter22:26

Tell me what's the fifth record you'd take to your desert island?

Sir Anthony Caro22:29

I take some Haydn because I'm very fond of Haydn.

Sir Anthony Caro22:34

There's not too much him in it, it's just music.

Presenter23:35

The Amadeus Quartet playing part of the first movement of Haydn's string quartet in F major opus seventy seven, number two.

Presenter23:42

And

Presenter23:43

As we heard, Tony, you brought about a a revolution, really, in in sculpture.

Presenter23:48

Though now your work is coming not full circle, but certainly coming back around. A lot of the more recent narrative pieces you've done, huge, huge pieces of work, sometimes, you know, I think somebody said the size of twenty-five double wardrobes, the Trojan Wars, The Last Judgment, now there are more recognizable things in them again. There are trumpets, there are spears.

Sir Anthony Caro24:14

Absolutely. I feel that I don't feel now that I have to

Sir Anthony Caro24:18

Establish this thing that sculpture doesn't look like.

Sir Anthony Caro24:23

an insect doesn't look like a person. It can be much wider now. We we've somehow wi the battle's won. That battle is won. Now we have to extend it and we can we can allow all sorts of things to come into sculpture. Why shouldn't it be narrative, for example?

Presenter24:37

Yeah.

Presenter24:38

So you're not saying that the language of abstraction has run its course?

Sir Anthony Caro24:42

Absolutely not. But it it but it's it's

Sir Anthony Caro24:46

Uh the battle to make an abstract sculpture, which was so hard, um is over. So we can do that, or we can do something much more.

Sir Anthony Caro24:54

Literal, more more narrative.

Presenter24:57

Let's just then talk about the the Last Judgment, because um, as I say, twenty five wardrobes how can we we describe it? There's the there's the bell tower, there's the unknown soldier, there's the

Sir Anthony Caro25:03

We have

Presenter25:09

The torture box, the gate of heaven, so many of these things. Um, you know, where does all that come from?

Sir Anthony Caro25:15

I don't know, but I felt forced.

Sir Anthony Caro25:18

Into

Sir Anthony Caro25:19

Doing something.

Sir Anthony Caro25:21

which had a resonance of what was happening in the world. I think it forced itself on me. That's all that happened really. I I knew I was going to do the Last Judgment, whereas I didn't know I was going to make the Trojan War when I started, and that the Trojan War happened, um because the pieces of clay reminded me of warriors and it somehow became a Trojan War, and it somehow began to have a little bit of significance to nowadays.

Sir Anthony Caro25:47

But I knew I wanted to make the last judgment.

Sir Anthony Caro25:50

It came from the f

Sir Anthony Caro25:52

I think it came from the war in Kosovo and and and the sort of um I was seeing so much horrors on the

Sir Anthony Caro26:01

television and so on, and I I just reacted to it.

Presenter26:04

Hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro26:04

Um

Presenter26:05

Because there were kind of biblical references, mythological references, but also this

Presenter26:09

This this modern day despair, really, isn't it?

Sir Anthony Caro26:09

Now

Sir Anthony Caro26:12

Something like that, something like that. Uh I felt I wanted to make a comment on it in a way. It's not it's not preaching or anything, it's just that I

Sir Anthony Caro26:22

You felt the quality

Presenter26:22

Felt required to do it?

Sir Anthony Caro26:25

I felt I couldn't.

Sir Anthony Caro26:26

I couldn't ignore it.

Presenter26:29

Next record.

Presenter26:30

Number six.

Sir Anthony Caro26:33

Well, we you talked about the trumpets in the Last Judgment, and here are some trumpets in

Sir Anthony Caro26:39

In the Massah.

Speaker 427:00

I'm going to get a survey raised in the world.

Speaker 427:10

What trumpets are so when the echo be raised?

Speaker 427:24

Be raised in the court of temple.

Speaker 427:29

We raised him for a child.

Speaker 427:35

And we shall eternal

Presenter27:42

Probertier singing The Trumpet Shall Sound from Handel's Messiah with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Macerris.

Presenter27:49

Your move, Antony Caro, into that kind of more architectural sculpture. I think you coined the word sculpitecture.

Presenter27:58

That must have helped win you the commission to design a new bridge over the Thames, with others, with Sir Norman Foster, in fact. Where is it to be, this bridge?

Sir Anthony Caro28:07

It runs from Saint Paul's over to the New Bankside Tate, and it's a walk bridge. It's a it's uh it's modest.

Presenter28:16

But the first bridge to span the Thames New Bridge since the eighteen nineties, eh?

Sir Anthony Caro28:19

Oh yes. It's a delicate bridge, and I hope people will

Presenter28:19

Uh

Sir Anthony Caro28:24

On a fine day, we'll wander across it and look at London from a new way. Because actually, when you walk across the

Sir Anthony Caro28:30

Big breaches of London, and they are big,'cause the Thames is wide. You don't stop and

Sir Anthony Caro28:36

Wander, you're hurrying here or there, or you're going across in a bus for a minute, but this is really a a lover's breed, we could almost call it.

Sir Anthony Caro28:45

The engineering part is a new sort of structure.

Sir Anthony Caro28:50

It's a sort of suspension bridge that suspends out sideways.

Sir Anthony Caro28:54

And, um, it'll be v not very wide, quite narrow, I th.

Presenter28:58

And what's your contribution? What are we going to see?

Presenter29:01

Adorning it perhaps, or the side of it, I don't know. What it is.

Sir Anthony Caro29:03

Well, my contribution at the beginning was to to be right in there deciding what sort of bridge we wanted. Did we want a more

Sir Anthony Caro29:11

Rocco Bridge and and so on, and the two ends were more.

Presenter29:13

Hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro29:16

uh sculptural. But they're markers, really. There's markers on the north end and and a very simple ending on the south end.

Presenter29:23

And when will we be able to walk across it?

Sir Anthony Caro29:26

From, I think, the tenth of June, so it very soon

Sir Anthony Caro29:30

But uh do it in good weather, because it it's a long way across the Thames.

Presenter29:34

Yeah.

Presenter29:35

Next record, number seven.

Sir Anthony Caro29:38

Well, I love this record. Um

Sir Anthony Caro29:41

And I love Ella Fitzgerald's singing of it.

Sir Anthony Caro29:45

And it's light, it's fun, you can't be serious all the time. Um and I wouldn't want to be

Sir Anthony Caro29:52

Too heavy on my island. I want some fun too.

Speaker 429:55

In olden days a glimpse of stockings was looked on as something shocking. Now heaven knows

Speaker 430:07

Anything goes.

Speaker 430:12

Good authors too who once knew better words, Now only useful letter words, Writing prose

Speaker 430:24

Anything go

Presenter30:27

Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter's Anything Goes. I get the impression that um being completely alone on a desert island is your idea of purgatory, isn't it, Tony?

Sir Anthony Caro30:35

I wasn't like going to be completely alone though.

Presenter30:35

How wasn't that gonna be

Presenter30:38

Any pluses at all I mean, one immediately thinks for a sculptor lumps of driftwood might um inspire you, but any other pluses you can think of?

Sir Anthony Caro30:46

Well, I do love going to the Caribbean, so I know that desert islands are pretty good when it comes to what you look out and see, the sun, the sunset, and the the sand and the

Sir Anthony Caro30:57

Palm trees.

Presenter30:58

Mm-hmm.

Sir Anthony Caro30:58

Um

Presenter30:58

Yeah.

Sir Anthony Caro30:59

to get up in the morning and look at

Sir Anthony Caro31:02

A beautiful scene. Seems to me to be vital. We've got a cottage in Dorset, it's right on the coast, and um nobody anywhere near, and I'm perfectly content there to just to look out on beautiful

Sir Anthony Caro31:16

skies and cliffs and sea. It refreshes the spirit.

Presenter31:22

Last piece of music.

Sir Anthony Caro31:25

A beautiful piece of music that I love.

Presenter32:28

The Malos Quartet with Rostropovich playing the opening of Schubert's string quintet in C. So, um if you could only take one of those eight records, Tony, which one would you take?

Sir Anthony Caro32:39

That's a hard one.

Sir Anthony Caro32:41

But I would be inclined perhaps to take the last.

Presenter32:44

What about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Sir Anthony Caro32:47

Well, you've got to give me War and Peace,'cause it's a it's a tough one. Uh there's a lot of it, so I'll be able to read a lot.

Sir Anthony Caro32:54

But it's somehow it's got

Sir Anthony Caro32:56

The whole of life in it.

Presenter32:58

And your luxury?

Sir Anthony Caro33:00

Oh, I'd have to take some glue.

Sir Anthony Caro33:03

Because I've got to be able to stick things together somehow. Shells, driftwood and everything. And then when I get back to uh to England we'll show them in the um take gallery.

Presenter33:15

Sir Antony Caro, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 333:27

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.