In March 1965, Gerald Laing was struggling to create an intricately shaped canvas in his New York studio. Frustrated in his attempts to bend the traditional structure of canvas and stretcher to his needs, Laing decided to try a new approach and cut out a long curving shape from a sheet of aluminium. By hinging the bottom portion of the sheet, he was able to reproduce the effect of a segmented canvas. The upper segment he painted in the red, white and blue swirls of a parachute against the sky, familiar from his earlier Skydiver paintings. The bottom section he chromed, substituting this reflective surface for the monochrome halftone dots of his earlier paintings. Laing had been experimenting for some time with silver paint on canvas and woven fibreglass but had not been entirely happy with the effect; now, with these new materials, taken from the world of custom cars, he was able to achieve a more satisfactory silver, as well as having greater flexibility in the shape of his 'canvas'.

Viewed with a hindsight informed by the next half-decade of his career, it is tempting to see this work (Stab One, 1965, 75), as the moment Laing became a sculptor as well as a painter. Laing came to describe his work from the period that followed as 'abstract utopian sculpture', but initially he was adamant that they were 'metal paintings'¹.

From Painting to Sculpture

Laing had always seen his paintings as objects in their environment rather than simply windows into another world. While a student at Saint Martin's School of Art in London, he had hung Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962, 5), depicting a figure seated on a swing, as a swinging canvas, and taken Anna Karina (1963, 9) out onto Charing Cross Road and onto the roof of the school as part of a filmed project². From his time as a studio assistant to Robert Indiana in 1963, he had adopted Indiana's practice of painting around the edges of his canvases, increasing their 'objecthood'. His Skydiver series of paintings (1963–4) had made use of increasingly complicated shapes, joining multiple canvases to convey an illusion of three-dimensionality. For example, the uppermost panel of Skydiver VII (1964, 44), portraying a halftone figure, gives the impression that it might be projecting out from the wall, over the viewer. The shapes and divisions of the canvas were already of equal importance to the painting thereon.

Many of Laing's early abstract works were designed to be hung on a wall, and even when they crept around a corner, slunk onto the floor, intruded into the room or reflected their surroundings, they retained a 'flatness' that was often greater than his works on canvas. When Laing began to prise his works away from the support of gallery walls, their volume was only the bare minimum necessary to make them free-standing (Freestanding Pin, 1966, 133). His Screens of 1966 (155, 156, 157, 165) were formed of flat surfaces, the bends in which allowed each work to stand on its own.

Production Methods and Craft

At first, Laing had his paintings/sculptures spray-painted at a custom car workshop in Queens. The quality of this work, however, soon fell short of the standard he expected. He describes the stand-off that ensued: "This nearly led to an impromptu gang fight, except that the two artist-soldiers who were all I had managed to recruit to accompany me to Queens were obviously no match for the five greasers the opposition brought to the field of battle. It seemed wise to settle it in the civilised manner which was apparently common in the eighteenth century – we counted who had the most support and he was deemed to have won. I paid my final bills to them, took up my work, and walked away."⁴

Thereafter, Laing favoured the hands-on methods of production that characterised his approach throughout his career, building a spray booth in his own loft. Just as his carefully crafted halftone paintings echoed the mechanised commercial printing process, so these new works, which mimicked the appearance of mass-produced items, were crafted by the artist himself.

Even when he began to produce series of small sculptures in editions of ten and twenty-five, Laing soon stopped sending them away to be manufactured, preferring to construct, paint and assemble most of them in his loft. The first of these multiples, Laing named Print (1965, 92), in a conscious challenge to established notions that a print must be a work on paper, just as he was blurring the distinctions between sculpture and painting.

Primary Structures Exhibition

This questioning of the lines between painting and sculpture, and the conversation between flatness and three-dimensionality, was a theme that Laing's work shared with that of many of his contemporaries. A new show at The Jewish Museum in New York in 1966, entitled Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors⁵, was particularly concerned with this issue. Its curator, Kynaston McShine, wrote in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue: "Depending upon the way in which space is used and occupied by a form, the material means, and the artist's intention, as we may understand it, we name the work a 'painting' or a 'sculpture'."⁶ Laing's Indenty (1965–6, 113) and Trace (1965, 111) formed part of the exhibition, being displayed in the underpass that linked the two halves of the museum.

The Primary Structures exhibition quickly came to be seen as the defining moment of the nascent minimalist movement. It showed the work of British and American artists who, like Laing, were engaged in taking a reductive approach to their subject matter. As well as establishing the careers of Donald Judd and Carl Andre, the exhibition also featured prominently the work of Anthony Caro and his students, David Annesley, Michael Bolus, Phillip King, Tim Scott, William Tucker and Isaac Witkin. Thus, Laing found his work displayed with that of a number of his near-contemporaries from Saint Martin's who had formed part of the New Generation exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery in London⁷.

As a painting student, Laing had not been taught by Caro – the few sculpture classes that he attended were with Elizabeth Frink⁸. He had, however, attended many of the weekly discussion sessions that Caro held in the sculpture department. Although his sympathies lay with the 'new art', Laing had been disturbed by the intolerance of dissent within these discussions and was deeply suspicious of the dogmatic approach that prevailed. It was not so much the ideas espoused that Laing objected to, as the intransigence with which 'arcane, arbitrary and intolerant'⁹ rules were applied to art, alongside a refusal to acknowledge the validity of other approaches. However, despite his reservations about Caro and his 'school', and though he had lived in New York for several years, Laing's works sat easily alongside the abstract, brightly painted metal shapes of the New Generation artists.

The Hybrid Project

Laing's work was included alongside other artists represented by the Richard Feigen Gallery, including his old friend and fellow New York-based British artist Peter Phillips. While their work was being displayed in one of the most important defining shows of the decade, Laing and Phillips were also showing their Hybrid project (1965–6, 115, 116, 117, 118) at the Kornblee Gallery in New York. Hybrid was one of the most discussed artworks of the year, featuring prominently in the pages of LIFE, Time and Arts Magazine¹⁰. They had formed Hybrid Enterprises the year before to undertake market research among art critics, collectors and gallerists of New York and London, with the goal of tailoring a work of art to match their preferences. The finished objects (which were displayed at the Kornblee Gallery along with research kits, completed questionnaires and blueprints) would not have looked out of place among the works displayed in the Primary Structures exhibition; indeed David Mellor has noted that "generically it was instantly recognisable as an English 'New Generation sculpture'."¹¹ For Laing, at least, the project carried a satirical edge and reflected a jadedness with the commercialisation of the art world in which he was embedded.

Continued Success in New York

If Laing was beginning to become disenchanted with New York, the city's art scene continued to embrace him. The use of new materials and the move towards greater abstraction did not have a great impact upon Laing's career. His work was still exhibited and sold by Richard Feigen; collectors such as John and Kimiko Powers continued to buy it. Indeed the changes in his work kept him in step with a New York art world that was falling out of love with Pop and embracing the 'cool' style of 'hard-edge', 'colour field' and 'post-painterly abstraction'.

Significant Form

Even the figures most closely associated with the minimalist movement, like Judd, declined to describe themselves as such, and Laing was too much of a romantic to ever have been a true minimalist. He came to see his works, not so much as 'primary structures', but as 'significant forms'. In Clive Bell's writings from 1914, outlining his theory of significant form, he found a resonant description of his own concerns:

There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless. What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cézanne? Only one answer seems possible – significant form.¹²

Laing's abstract sculpture became, in part, a search for the stripped-back, Platonic essence of significant form. As such, Laing's works, however abstracted or pared-down, still retain a physical presence that speaks directly to the human experience in a manner that goes beyond mere formalism or purely conceptual concerns. The forms that emerged from this process constellated into a number of shapes, which Laing repeated and developed. The initial 'Stabs', 'Traces' and 'Drops' remained clearly linked to the 'Skydiver' imagery from which they drew their inspiration; later, the sculptures such as 'Indenties', 'Pins' and 'Standards' broke free of their figurative origins and explored realms of purer abstraction.

Move to Scotland

The archetypal character of these shapes deepened and grew more evident when Laing abandoned New York City for rural Scotland. His disenchantment with the New York art world, which had been evident since the Hybrid project, had grown into an almost visceral disgust with what he saw as the increasing solipsism, commercialisation and banal excess of the city's art scene¹³. In 1969, he moved with his wife, Galina, to the Scottish Highlands, where he threw himself into the restoration of the ruins of sixteenth-century Kinkell Castle¹⁴, which was to become, for most of the rest of his career, his home and centre of activity.

Transformation in the Highlands

His absorption in the physicality of rebuilding Kinkell Castle and the landscape of the Scottish Highlands had a powerful effect on his work. Laing's work until now had been destined for the pristine whiteness of New York galleries. His quest for purity of environment had even led to the construction of a series of works in formica boxes (Untitled, 1965, 81; Three Falls, 1965, 99; Small Backdrop, 1965, 101; Stack, 1965, 102), isolating them from the contamination of skirting-boards and other domestic clutter.

Following his move to the Highlands Laing began working with local blacksmiths to create huge steel versions of the forms that he had developed in New York. These were placed within the landscape around Kinkell Castle and several were named after nearby places. Big Trace (1969, 266) is a six metre high version of Trace (1965, 111); Milbuie (1969, 268) is a larger, more solid steel counterpart to the Gold Standard series (1968, 229, 239, 240, 243; 1969, 247). Double Free-Standing Pin (1970, 270) reflects the earlier abstract work Freestanding Pin (1966, 133).

Materials, Scale and Archetypal Forms

Working within this context, his previous attempts to purify the environment of his sculptures was futile and Laing's work embraced his surroundings. Placed within the rugged landscape of the Black Isle, the gleaming utopian perfection of his work seemed out of place. The polished chrome and spray-painted finishes that seemed to promise an untarnished immortality gave way to materials that acknowledged the inevitability of time's passage and were more appropriate to such an ancient weathered landscape. Many of Laing's sculptures from this period, such as Callanish (Steel Henge) (1971, 300), Corten Pyramid (1971, 290), Tunnel and Pyramids (1972, 301) and Twentieth Century Monument (1973, 303) were fabricated in COR-TEN steel, a material that is protected and preserved by the very layer of rust that forms in the weathering process.

In order to survive both physically and visually in their new environment the sculptures now also required greater volume and weight. Laing developed the shapes with which he had been working in New York into more emphatically three-dimensional structures. In this new landscape his 'Pins' became 'Biliths', twentieth-century standing stones, and from these developed his even more substantial 'Pyramids'.

The search for archetypal shapes that was implicit in his earlier work with 'significant form' now became more pronounced. Northern Scotland is home to many groups of standing stones and Laing's placement of his sculptures within this same landscape could not help but bring to mind these ancient structures. He named his first major public commission, for the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, after the Callanish Stones on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis and it became informally known as 'Steelhenge'. Laing's modern monuments from this period share a timeless sense of silent authority with their Neolithic predecessors.

Laing created these structures in a range of sizes – from small tabletop pieces such as Small Steel Pyramid (1973, 305), to the five metre-tall Pyramid Folly (1973, 295), which is large enough for two people to sit in. Twentieth Century Monument was built at less than 30 cm high, but he produced a series of drawings of this shape set in the landscape at vast scale. Both the Biliths and Pyramids use symmetry to create a sense of simultaneous connection and separation between their reflected halves. The two halves of the Pyramids in particular, appear to be reaching towards each other but stopping just short of a unifying embrace. Laing's final works of his abstract period, the Anthropomorphic Pyramid series, (1973, 307, 308, 309) draw out the humanity implicit in the Pyramid shapes, the two forms now have faces that stand in mute conversation with each other. These anthropomorphic shapes are the first signs of Laing's disenchantment with pure abstraction and his subsequent embrace of figurative sculpture.