Sir Anthony Caro OM

Description

'Goodwood Steps started from a work that I made indoors in Halifax, Yorkshire, and whilst working on this piece I realised that it would be quite different from the Halifax work, which was a sculpture inside a room with a stone floor. Although it was an open form, it was very enclosed within the room. Goodwood Steps is a sculpture against a landscape. You can get away from it, see it whole, look at it from above, and you are conscious of the view of the countryside through it and the big sky. However, the sculpture still relates intimately to the viewer. Walking along its length and under the steps one gets a kind of physical experience - something like the way the viewer experienced The Tower of Discovery which stood at Sculpture at Goodwood for three years.

'I have been fascinated by the project because it's so architectural. Because of this the piece seems to bear a different relation to us and to the environment from what we normally expect of sculpture. The repetiotion and mechanical elements are a counterpoint to the grand view of the downs - not as in the work of Moore, which was often a reminder of the landscape, but as a contrast to it, much in the way that the mechanical shape of a windmill brings a human dimension to the land.'

This statement was made by Anthony Caro at Hat Hill Copse whilst he was working on the sculpture.