Van Gogh Chair III

"When the Director asked me to make a sculpture based on a National Gallery picture, I looked for a work with a sturdy block at its centre. In my own work I have recently felt the need to introduce the abstract monolith clothed, as it were, with an outer covering: I found in Van Gogh's yellow chair a painting equivalent. The chair stands not so much on the floor as within the box made by the floor and the two walls, the patterning of the floor tiles making the chair more real ... In working from this painting the challenge for me was to take an object from the world of everyday things, this chair that Van Gogh has invested with so much art, to abstract it just enough that it still retains its chair-ness and yet to transform the whole into a sculpture that is to all intents and purposes abstract. I travelled to Grasse in France where I make my clay works and there I made five clay seats, each of them composed of heavy solid forms. After firing, these were sent to my London studio where each one became the starting point for a series of five sculptures in stoneware and steel (which) are perhaps my homage to Van Gogh" (Anthony Caro cited in National Gallery News, March 1998).