Hello everyone, I hope all of you have been doing well during these challenging times! I know I haven’t written a new blog in some time, that’s because I was busy doing other things. The blog is titled “Anish Kapoor – Genius Sculptor” as it celebrates the artist’s ingenious approaches in inventing and conceptualizing his sculptures.

The primary emphasis is on the artist’s showcase at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, along with highlights of several other significant exhibitions and sculptures featured worldwide.
Kapoor is known for his public sculptures, especially in the United States and the UK, but also in Paris where he created the famous Leviathan for the Monumenta at the Grand Palais in 2011. I will go into more detail about it later.

I had the chance to visit Anish Kapoor’s studio in London in 2015, in the company of the Advisory Board of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice; years ago in the summer of 2011, I had the pleasure to work as an intern at this wonderful museum.
Anish Kapoor gave us a tour through his studio which was spread out over many huge and former factory buildings.
We were able to see finished works as well as the ones in progress. It was a great experience, and we learned a bit more about the artist himself, as he he gave us some insight about how he decides on making certain sculptures. Kapoor has some topics which always occupy his mind. More information follows.

Anish Kapoor is a British sculptor of Indian origin specialising in installation and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, in 1954, Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s where he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.
Kapoor represented Britain at the 44^th Venice Biennale in 1990, where he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 1991, he received the Turner Prize and in 2002 the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Anish Kapoor was also elected Royal Academician in 1999.

Anish Kapoor at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

The idea of a cooperation between the Pinakothek der Moderne and Anish Kapoor was first born in May of 2018 when the curator of the Pinakothek Oliver Kase met Kapoor at the Lisson Gallery in London. At the opening of Kapoor’s exhibition in 2019 at the Galerie Bernd Klüser in Munich, the artist and Mr Kase met again to talk about the installation in more detail.
The idea was to fill the rotunda of the museum with an object, a project the Pinakothek has been doing with different artists for several years.
Anish Kapoor’s monumental installation is a huge balloon entitled “Howl” which hangs about a metre under the roof of the museum and is exactly 2.8 metres above the ground. It is a site-specific structure.
The opening of the installation took place on 16^th September this year, which was at the same time the 18^th anniversary of the Pinakothek der Moderne.

Anish Kapoor is known for creating symbiotic relationships between architecture and sculpture and he uses precise engineering to realise them. For the sculpture at the Pinakothek he asked for a model of the museum on a 1:20 scale, so he would be able to create the balloon exactly down to the centimetre.

The sculpture is the biggest object to have ever been displayed at the Pinakothek der Moderne. It is made of dark Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), the artist’s fourth sculpture using this material.
The colour was chosen as it is Kapoor’s favourite. He also wanted to allude to his belief that culture is feminine. Therefore, the colour stands for menstruation, uterus, birth, the earth, and femininity. After having chosen the colour, the word/title “Howl” just came to him, like a dark howl in the middle of the night.
The artist also relates the title to the current political situation around the world.

Kapoor chose PVC to work with and test its limits. When the balloon is seen live, it seems like it will overflow into the whole museum being only stopped by the railings and columns. This creates an incredibly strong impact on the visitors.
He was also inspired by his work At the Edge of the World, which is a smaller sculpture hanging from the ceiling as well, exhibited a the Lisson Gallery in London in 2017.

The fantastic installation will be on display at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich until August 2021.

Architectural works

As already mentioned above Anish Kapoor likes to work with architectural spaces, some of his notable projects, during the last decade, include:

• Ark Nova an inflatable concert hall that will travel around the earthquake struck regions of Japan, designed in collaboration with architect Arata Isozaki (b.1931, Oita, Japan).

• 56 Leonard Street, New York, in collaboration with architects Herzog and de Meuron.

• Taratantara was installed at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and later at Piazza Plebiscito, Naples.

• Dismemberment Site 1, installed in New Zealand at the Gibbs Farm sculpture park, owned by New Zealand businessman and art patron Alan Gibbs.

Public Commissions

Anish Kapoor was also commissioned to make permanent sculptures in public spaces around the world, as well as for certain periods of time at museums or in gardens.
They are primarily found in the USA and the UK, but he also made a huge walk-in sculpture called Leviathan in Paris for the Monumenta 2011. He had an amazing exhibition at the Château de Versailles from June to November 2015 as well.

Anish Kapoor’s first public commission was in 1995, he made the sculpture called Mountain for the Tachikawa Art Project in Japan.

The sculpture for Nottingham Playhouse, was commissioned in 2001 and is called Sky Mirror, it is on permanent display outside the theatre.  

Another permanent sculpture is in Chicago, it has been installed at Millennium Park since 2006. Cloud Gate, also known as “The Bean,”  is a 110-ton stainless steel sculpture with a mirror finish.

The Greater London Authority selected Kapoor’s Orbit sculpture from a shortlist of five artists as the permanent artwork for the Olympic Park of the 2012 Olympic Games. At 115 metres, Orbit is the tallest sculpture in the UK.

Leviathan

The sheer scale of the Grand Palais in Paris inspired a truly gigantic idea: Monumenta. Every year, a major contemporary artist is invited to create a work especially for the enormous volumes offered by the Nave. The first edition was in 2007 with Anselm Kiefer.

Anish Kapoor was chosen for the Monumenta in the year 2011 and made the sculpture Leviathan for it, which was on display from May to June 2011. His sculpture connected art with high tech and the title refers to the biblical monster Leviathan.
Formed of three 35-metre-high interconnected balloons, the Leviathan sculpture has a dark purple skin and a translucent red interior.  When walking inside the sculpture the silhouette of the Grand Palais ceiling is visible through the PVC.

Versailles

Anish Kapoor was asked to install an exhibition at the Château de Versailles in 2015 (June-November). He displayed works inside the castle as well as in the gardens of Versailles. I will talk about a few of the works which were on display during the show.
It was the eighth exhibition of contemporary works at Versailles since 2008 and coincided with the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV.

Dirty Corner

In alignment with the Grand Canal and behind the recently restored Latona fountain, Dirty Corner was a 60-metre-long tunnel of rusted Corten steel, surrounded by boulders and a red-painted ditch. It may suggest a battle site, which was inspired by a smaller work of his exhibited at Jeu de Paume, this provoked the press to various interpretations. Le Figaro described the work as a contemporary romantic ruin, and BBC News was certain that it looked like a vagina.
The sculpture was very controversial, it even got vandalised, because people believed it was inappropriate to show this type of work in such a location.

Descension

Beyond the Apollo fountain and just before the Grand Canal, Descension opened a giant black whirlpool into the ground. It measured 8 metres in diametre, and the unseen turbine that swirled and churned the dark water produced a constant and ominous roar.

Sky Mirror

Sky Mirror was installed between the Latona fountain and the palace. The double-convex mirrors inverts views of the sky above with upside-down views of the palace and Le Nôtre’s perfect gardens.

C-Curve

Just like Sky Mirror, C-Curve inverts views of the palace and the viewers. It was placed between the palace and parterre, flanked by the classical bronze statues of Antinous and Apollo.

Sectional Body preparing for Monadic Singularity

In the Bosquet de l’Etoile, adjacent to the Bosquet du Théâtre d’Eau, Sectional Body preparing for Monadic Singularity was a 7-metre tall black and red cube, pierced with wormhole pathways into its interior. Visitors walking inside experienced a saturated interior that is reminiscent of Kapoor’s Leviathan at Monumenta in 2011.

Anish Kapoor is the eighth contemporary artist to receive an exhibition at Versailles. The first was Jeff Koons in 2008, followed by Xavier Veilhan, Takashi Murakami, Bernar Venet, Joana Vasconcelos, Giuseppe Penone, and Lee Ufan. Anish Kapoor is the third artist selected by Catherine Pégard, President of Versailles since 2011, continuing a curatorial program of contemporary art in dialogue with the historical estate. Perhaps more than others, Kapoor disrupts the order and symmetry of Le Nôtre’s gardens.

Conclusion

Anish Kapoor is one of the most outstanding artists of the 21^st Century.

He has had many international exhibitions and is usually known for his concave mirror sculptures. But his Oeuvre includes many other different types of works, as you have just seen.
Because Kapoor is just in his 60s, we can look forward to all of his new creations in the future. His works appeal to a wide variety of people, which is one of the reasons why he is such a popular artist.

Kapoor is one of my favourite contemporary artists as his works are aesthetically pleasing while holding intriguing messages as well. If you ever get the chance to visit one of Anish Kapoor’s exhibitions, please do so as it will definitely be worthwhile and will stay in your memory forever.

Thanks for reading my blog and until next time!