INDIA BY CARO
By Inga Phlegar, Sophie Matthewson and Bailey Bennett
A LITTLE BIT ON CARO
Sir Anthony Caro was born in 1924 in England. During his childhood, he attended a prestigious boarding school where he first began sculpting with clay. He went to a university in Cambridge where he studied engineering. He spent his free time in the studio of a friend, who shared his interests in architectural forms. Caro served in WWII, in the navy. After his experience with war he decided to dedicate his life to art. He continued on to art school and soon into his career landed his work in gallery exhibitions, which would continue on until his death. He until the age of 89, and he passed away in 2013. He lived an adult life of marriage, fatherhood, and university teaching. Caro traveled frequently, including a trip to India. He gained a lot of inpiration from this trip. This was reflected many years later in his peice, “India”.
CARO’S ART
As an artist, Caro worked primarily with steel as his medium, creating large scale, indoor and outdoor abstract sculptures. His indoor sculptures were often painted bright colors, but, as seen with India, the outdoor creations were typically left bare to allow the steel to rust overtime. There is not much information on Caro’s specific piece located on our campus, but after glancing over his other works, it is clear that India is an appropriate representation of the artist’s distinct sculptural style. Every angle of this piece presents an entirely different view, making the work to feel dynamic. Supposedly, Caro was not an active participant in selecting his sculpture’s exact location on Western’s campus, but after India’s installation the artist was satisfied with his work being easily visible in the small plaza and its moderate protection from the elements by the surrounding buildings.
THE MEANING OF INDIA
There is no definitive meaning of India presented by Caro. Some have suggested the tipping and leaning structure of the piece represents the progression of modern architecture, which is falling away from the straight and rigid styles into the more creative modern forms. A more common interpretation of this piece has to do with the political unrest in India around the time of this sculpture’s creation and installation to WWU’s campus.
The United Kingdom owned India for about 200 years. On August 15th,1947 India granted its independence. India once was marked as one of the most beneficial imperial possessions for the United Kingdom. Britain agreed to this independence after WWII for they realized a global empire could not be maintained. The UK could not find a political solution that all individuals agreed upon, so it resulted in the country being separated into India and Pakistan. Britain could not stop the inner tensions within the country resulting in numerous deaths. The forms of Caro’s sculpture on our campus could symbolize the struggles and the livelihoods of those people living in India, and their struggle against the powerful elite ruling them. This hypothesis of the work clearly ties in with the piece’s title and the historical timeline of British rule over India.
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