Anthony Caro: Chapel of light.

Anthony Caro Chapel of light

L'Eglise Saint Jean-Baptiste

Bourbourg, France

One warm October afternoon in a small town in the Pas de Calais I greeted an elderly man enjoying the sunshine in a bus shelter; he returned my greeting (to a total stranger) enthusiastically and I went on to see the reason for our being there. He was Anthony Caro and the town, en fete for the occasion, was Bourbourg where a great many people had gathered to celebrate the dedication of his Chapel of Light in the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

In May 1940 the church, many times restored in its long history, was largely destroyed. Though the nave was repaired after the war, the enormous gothic choir was walled off and remained unused until in the late 1990s a decision was taken to restore it. Caro was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in the wake of the impact of his Last Judgement, exhibited in Venice in 1999 to transform a spectacular but empty structure into a live building with a new purpose.

For the Chapel of Light he designed an imposing sculptural ensemble, tightly integrated into the architecture and based broadly on the theme of the Creation. This evolved in discussion with the ecclesiastical authorities whose principal stipulation was for a font, naturally enough in view of the dedication. The sculpture is entirely and obviously Caros, displaying the eloquent, pitiless semi-figuration that has distinguished his work for the last 15 years. There are two groups, predominantly in clay, on the east walls of the choir; nine more groups in steel and clay are tightly inserted into the apsidal bays that enclose the very large, elegant font in cast and polished concrete, and a pair of massive oak towers, complex structures with stairs and platforms, are wound around piers. The chapel is awkwardly separated from the body of the church by an opaque glass screen, to the west of which stands the high altar. The centrepiece of a more modest but equally satisfactory ensemble designed by Caro, the altar is a slab of white stone that floats within its discreetly asymmetric steel frame, flanked by tall steel candle holders, a pair of subtly differentiated lecterns and a solidly defended box for the tabernacle. Low key and practical, this group offers little hint of the visual and spatial transformation that takes place nearby.

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Since the early 1980s Caro has explored, in works such as the Tower of Discovery (1991), the possibilities of a combination of sculpture and architecture - or sculpture that surrounds the human body. The free-standing porch in Corten steel that marks the entrance to the Chapel extends this idea, as do the towers inside. A transposition of motifs, reformulated and rescaled, runs throughout Caros ceuvre, linking completely disparate works: the porch is a short passageway with a zigguratlike profile topped by a structure of concentric circles, the ziggurat having appeared in a smaller form as a component of Ares, a character in the Trojan War, while the circles are echoed in the font and on the underside of the towers. These in turn have a close predecessor in a playhouse with internal staircases made in 1983 and currently exhibited in Dunkerque.

The towers--which offer the visitor an unexpected and beguiling experience of the Chapel--are to be used for musical performances, this area of the church having been designated a place for special ceremonies, notably baptism, which no doubt determined the emphasis of the apse sculptures on 'the watery part of creation', as John Spurling puts it. They are constructed of great waves of steel which shelter a virtual aquarium of clay sea creatures and water dwellers while an impertinent monkey swings, mocking, from a moulding. If this aspect of Creation is benign--or unexpectedly innocent the groups flanking the apse are more closely aligned with the Caro of the Trojan War and the Last Judgement. The male figure in Paradise Garden recalls Witness (2003-4) which evolved from a plate in Goyas Disasters of War showing a man facing a firing squad, whereas Alleluia despite its title suggests judgement, annihilation and violence.

Both these groups are made predominantly of clay, the medium that Caro first used in 1993, working with the ceramicist Hans Spinner on pieces that contributed to the Trojan War. There are few sculptural ensembles more eloquently sentient than this and Alleluia has a similar impact. Clay offered Caro an expanded expressive field in which, without resorting to full figuration he could convey the extremes of human sensation and desire and--most poignantly--explore the alterity of power and divinity. In contrast, the apse sculptures are slightly soft-centred; there is an undertow of 'nature as a replacement for theology: can the universal theme of divine creation be understood as an eco-friendly phenomenon?

Simultaneously with the dedication of the Chapel a retrospective opened in three regional museums in Dunkerque, Calais and Gravelines, covering the range of Caros career from painted metal sculpture to the paper works of the 1980s, narrative groups (the Barbarians and the Trojan War) and sculptures after paintings (the 'Arena group and the Duccio Variations). Together the exhibitions underline Caros continuing enthusiasm for experiment both with themes and materials--extending recently to plexiglass--and the way that clay above all has been a route to a hugely expanded imagery.

The Nord Pas de Calais has a strong record of showing British artists, but none has previously been invited to transform an entire chapel that is a French national monument though it is particularly fitting that Caro should have done so in a territory in which the French and British have shared so much grief and destruction. Artistically it is a rare privilege to see such a work as the Chapel of Light alongside a wide-ranging retrospective that enables us to situate it visually, thematically and physically in the context of more than half a century of one man's career and quest to reinvent sculpture.

Margaret Garlake is an art historian who has published widely on 20th century British art

Retrospectives of Caro's work 'Les Barbares', 'Scuptures d'acier' and 'Papiers et volumes' can be seen at Calais Musee des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle, Dunkerque Lieu d'Art et d'Action contemporaine and Gravelines Musee du Dessin et de l'Estampe originale respectively until 23 February 2009.