ANISH KAPOOR

ANISH KAPOOR

It wasn’t easy for me to understand the way Anish Kapoor thinks, not even a bit. After all, some attempts at understanding the artist might be in vain. Back in the day, art stood for itself and meant exactly what it was; these days, these oft breath-taking works require some words of explanation. Fortunately, artists like to share not only their works, but also their thoughts about them, and the internet offers us nearly unlimited and unfettered access to a variety of sources and materials.

My first encounter with Kapoor’s art was in London, a year after the 2012 Olympics. The towering Orbit sculpture took my breath away. I’m not an art historian, so at first, I thought Anish Kapoor was a brilliant architect, but then I realised that a large sculpture can become architecture, just like great architecture can be a work of art.

Aleem Yousaf / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Orbit is made of steel, and 60% of all the material was made by recycling old washing machines, refrigerators and cars. The steel was supplied by ArcelorMittal, a company owned by Indian entrepreneur Lakshmi N. Mittal. Interestingly enough, the 600 star-like elements were made by 100 people, but only 4 were needed to assemble them on site.

 By Bengt Oberger - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64733462

 Kapoor himself is a very interesting figure, characterised by his multi-cultural roots and background, as well as international education. The fact that he was born in India to Iraqi Jewish mother and Indian father and that he spent his childhood in India, a country where colours are considered important and where they are truly ubiquitous, is probably the reason why colour has become the artist’s hallmark.

By Daniel Villafruela, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29985684

Let’s go back to the tower, though. Orbit is mad, just like its creator. Kapoor says he’s not interested in what he knows as an artist. His works aren’t about using knowledge, and the artist is a madman, an idiot who travels to discover something,  and the quality of that discovery is the artist’s secret. That one travel resulted in a mad tower of a mad artist.

By Aleem Yousaf - Arcelormittal Orbit, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40195032

Kapoor is in part a philosopher, who creates visual representations of his thoughts, and the questions he asks himself concern the object and its absence, colour, space and time. He believes that it is important to search for something that is the opposite, something that complements the object, since human beings are more than just flesh and bones, objects cannot be nothing more than just matter.

NON-OBJECT

The artist strives to create something he refers to as non-objects. Objects that aren’t. His “Ascension” is an object made of something intangible – theatrical smoke. Kapoor often draws inspiration from religion. In this work, he compares the installation with the cloud, which the Moses followed for 40 years in the desert, following the spirit of something material.

By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France - Ascension (54ème biennale de Venise), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24668321

COLOUR

Colour is fundamental in Kapoor’s artistic endeavours. For Kapoor, every object has its physicality and its illusory nature, and the artist uses colour to create this illusion. Colour is a mystery. It’s more than just a painted surface. It’s a state. It occupies a space. It's a bit like when you go into the shower you get wet, and when you go into a red room you get red.

 By Mbop - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61723427

Colour changes the space; it is an abstract quality that creates space. Maybe that's why the artist uses the blackest material in the world – Vantablack – which absorbs 99.8% of all the light. Looking at an object painted with Vantablack is like looking into a black hole.

 

By Gobierno CDMX - Flickr, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75456892

One of his projects is a huge peanut-like shell object, several dozen metres long, completely empty inside. The viewer walks on a long platform until they reach the Vantablack-painted part, where the platform ends and leaves the viewer as if floating over a black hole. Why is Kapoor fascinated by the darkest black-hole-like colour black? Because it allows to achieve the effect of infinite space inside the object.

 The use of this black paint is linked to a story, which would be... Or rather is funny, despite the painful consequences for its protagonist. Anish Kapoor built an installation entitled Descent into limbo inspired by the descent of Christ into the abyss. In a kind of a cube-shaped building without any windows, the artist made a two-and-a-half-metre deep hole in the middle of the floor, and painted it with Vantablack. Since the artist is an illusion expert, nobody could know for sure if there was a hole or just a black spot. One 60-year-old Italian tourist decided to try and see for himself – by jumping into that hole. Thankfully, he survived with no lasting injuries, just some bruises.
Anish Kapoor has a special attitude towards the pigment, which has the dual physical and illusory nature. It seems to be a material, but at the same time it’s just a powder, which creates illusions. The artist is particularly keen on using the red colourant.

Andym5855 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

MIRRORS

A mirror is yet another took, which can be used for creating illusions, and for Kapoor, mirrors – like all his other works – are used for playing with the audience. Creating a sculpture is half the work, the viewer’s reaction to what the object will tell them is the other half.   Kapoor creates perfectly polished concave mirrors, which reflect the world, but in a deformed shape, and they are enormous. For some reason, the artist finds sheer scale somewhat mysterious and important. His Bean, which stands in Chicago's Millennium Park is not only huge, but also leaves quite an impression on the viewers, because it’s also seamless.

His other famous mirror works include the Sky Mirrors,

the largest of which reflects the Rockefeller Center in NJ.

By Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11904555

I had the luck to see one of Kapoor’s mirror works myself – the Tall Tree and the Eye at the Bilbao Museum. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that a perfect copy can also be found at the Royal Academy of Art in London, just like his Sky Mirrors. It’s kind of difficult for me to accept that works of art are no longer unique, and that the artist does not have a tangible contribution in the creation of the work of art, which are copied, just like cars.

 I’ll conclude with a mention of another one of Kapoor’s brilliant ideas. Some of his works, such as the Memory, which could be seen in Deutsche Guggenheim, were made in such a way that the viewer will never be able to see and grasp the entirety of the piece, so that they can look at it from all sides, take a look inside all they want, but they need to build a cohesive whole in their heads, thus taking part in the act of creation. The material part is already done, the rest needs to be finished in the viewer’s head.