Invited to Make Sculpture

Anthony Caro entered Helen Frankenthaler’s social scene in 1959, on his first trip to New York, and from then on remained one of her closest friends. The painter appreciated sculpture and sculptors, particularly Caro and David Smith, each represented in this exhibition. It is a fitting tribute to see Caro’s Ascending the Stairs (1979–83) in proximity to Frankenthaler’s Matisse Table (1972), Heart of London Map (1972), and Yard (1972).

Frankenthaler made all three sculptures during a productive two-week stint at Caro’s London studio in the summer of 1972. Caro provided materials and one of his former assistants. Frankenthaler approached sculpture the same way she painted: intuitively. Many of her sculptures channel Smith, who had repeatedly encouraged her to make three-dimensional objects. Caro’s Ascending the Stairs, completed after he and Frankenthaler attended a David Smith symposium at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, evolved piece by piece, weld by weld, in much the same way that Frankenthaler’s sculptures did. She and Caro both shared Smith’s improvised approach to object making. The tiny cube that rises off the back of Ascending the Stairs may be a sly reference to Smith’s late Cubi sculptural series (1963–65)—an insider’s bond between friends.