Early One Morning 1962 Tate. Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1965 © The artist, Barford Sculptures Ltd.

Transcript: Early One Morning, 1962

[Montage of Anthony Caro installing his exhibition at Tate Britain]

"It comes out too far, that's all. I'd turn it a bit more like that because that's the way it's supposed to be. I think it's too wide, a bit, don't you?"

"Yes, I think so, don't you?"
"Put something underneath it..."
"And here."

"Now we want to try to get more light onto this. And now we've got to make sure that this is in line. It's pretty good."

[Anthony Caro in interview]

I think when you look at a retrospective show of your own work, you just look at the work and you say "Let's get it as good as we can. Let's try and put things in a way that they're going to be readable and they're not going to get in each other's way and so on."
 

[Montage of Anthony Caro installing his exhibition at Tate Britain]

"I, yeah...try and...Why don't you move the back first? Oh..."

"So then that would pull that in line with that and that in the centre."
"OK."
"I'll show you what we'll try and do. But it may look funny. "
 

[Anthony Caro in interview]

But I don't think you really question the work. The work is there, it' s made, it's got it's own character, it's got it's own life and it's left you.

I mean another thing I thought was, for example, important about Early One Morning, how long it is and you don't get it all in one. You really have to walk round it or walk along it to, kind of, to get it.

Early One Morning takes time and, I mean, all things like that I felt were very important. So, in other words, how you respond to a sculpture, how a viewer sees the sculpture, is vital.

Well, I tried it green it didn't work. Ha ha! If I think about Early One Morning green it would be awful but no, I started doing them, just painting them for protection. You can't leave steel because it is going to rust so you varnish it, you paint it, you do something like that with it. And they were brown and then...why all this brown paint I've got? We've must try... Let's try to paint it in another colour and see what happens. And, you know, I would get suggestions from Sheila.
"What colour should I do it?"
"Well, try...try this one, red."
"Well, which red?"
"Well, let's choose a red."
I mean, you know, it was household paint. Have a shot. And it has become an important aspect of the sculpture. However, I think that another change, or breakthrough, or something happened when I stopped colouring and I felt that, in fact, to have coloured those later pieces would have been too decorative and it would have played too big a part because in a way, colour hits you hard. It doesn't last as long as form, but it hits you harder.

But I don't think that sculpture belongs in everyday life like a table does, or like a chair. But I think sculpture is special. It has a specialness, so there is perhaps a little invisible barrier around it. But I like idea of it being invisible.