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Apotheosis of Caro

John Spurling

Wednesday, 22nd October 2008

Anthony Caro’s Chapel of Light
Church of St-Jean-Baptiste, Bourbourg

The Barbarians and Clay works
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, until 23 February 2009

Paper works and Table sculptures
Musée de Gravelines, until 21 February 2009

Steel sculptures
Lieu d’Art et d’Action Contemporaine, Dunkirk, until 21 February 2009

There was once a small town called Vence, just inland from Nice on the south coast of France, which few people had heard of. Then, between 1947 and 1951, the octogenarian Matisse transformed a derelict garage, used by local nuns as a chapel, into an architectural work of art which has made Vence one of the landmarks of the modern world.

Bourbourg is a small town, just inland from Calais and Dunkirk on the north coast of France, which until this month had little to boast of except its big 14th-century church of St-Jean-Baptiste. The church was almost entirely destroyed by artillery fire and a crashing aeroplane in 1940 during the British evacuation of Dunkirk, and, although most of it was restored after the war, its huge Gothic choir remained empty and virtually derelict, walled off from the rest of the church. Then, in 1999, the French cultural authorities informed the newly elected mayor of Bourbourg, a cabinet-maker called Francis Bassemon, that they intended to restore the choir and would commission an artist to enhance it. The artist suggested was Anthony Caro, whose monumental set of 29 sculptures ‘The Last Judgment’ had just been shown in Venice. The mayor consulted his daughter-in-law, a museum curator. ‘Anthony Caro!’ she said. ‘He’s working in Tokyo or Barcelona or London or New York, you’ll never get him to Bourbourg.’ M. Bassemon thumped the table, ‘Then that’s the man we must have!’

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