Sir Anthony Caro

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2000

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Sir Anthony Caro. Universally regarded as the 'grand old man of British sculpture', in the 1950s he had learnt from his mentor Henry Moore that artistic rules were there to be broken. So he yanked sculpture off it's pedestal and set it on the floor. And he rejected the traditional materials of bronze, marble and wood for girders, nuts and bolts. In fact as he confesses to Sue Lawley, nothing is safe from his magpie eye: parts of ships, cars, even kitchen equipment have all been incorporated into his work. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: String Quartet in C by Franz Schubert Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Luxury: Glue

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for
0:05.6	rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.7	The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.
0:31.0	My castaway this week is a sculptor.
0:33.0	His job, he says, is a bit like being a builder and it's being a bit of a builder
0:37.6	that's undoubtedly helped make his reputation.
0:40.0	He read engineering at Cambridge but subsequently went to the Royal Academy schools
0:45.0	and then became Henry Moore's assistant.
0:47.0	He learned to question assumptions.
0:49.0	He learned to test the rules.
0:51.0	Gerdas, nuts and boats often painted in brilliant primary colours
0:55.0	became the raw material of his vision, creating pioneering works
0:59.0	which revolutionised sculpture.
1:01.0	Today, at the age of 76, he's held in high international esteem.
1:06.0	A position he's achieved, he says, by doing things which are difficult.
1:10.0	British sculpture was sleepy for decades.
1:13.0	We have to make sure it doesn't get sleepy again.
1:16.0	He is Anthony Caro.
1:18.0	Is it yourself a pointed task in that sense then, Tony, to keep pushing ahead
1:23.0	always to try to do something new, something different?
1:26.0	It's what I want to do for me.
1:29.0	I want to challenge myself.
	...

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