Room 6: Reality and Illusion: 1969-1970 Installation shot at Tate (from left to right) Orangerie (1969), Sun Feast (1969) Enlarge image Orangerie 1969 Kenneth Noland © The artist, Barford Sculptures Ltd.   Sun Feast 1969-70 Private Collection © The artist, Barford Sculptures Ltd. Photography: John Riddy

Caro's table-sculptures now fed back into his work on a larger scale. Towards the end of the 1960s he made a number of masterly sculptures, each of which incorporated a level plane, apparently floating.

In Orangerie 1969 the raised level has become a kind of table top forming an integral part of the fabric of the sculpture itself. Then, in a significant extension of table sculpture, various curved forms, some of them plough-shares, are inflected above and below the plane, connecting it to the ground.

This theme is developed further in Sun Feast 1969, which sustains the illusion of a gravity-defying table-level in the midst of a chain of animated shapes. The table shape suggests a connection with the world of recognisable things. But the vivacious play of abstract form, and the illusion of weightlessness, are purely expressive.

"I think that Sun Feast. works like a concerto. as if there were things happening where the orchestra plays and then somehow a lighter theme comes in, like the piano, and reflects it in a different way."

Anthony Caro interviewed by Noel Chanan 1974, as quoted in Ian Barker, Quest for the New Sculpture, 2004, page 186.