CADI blog 2012: Week 6- Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor

Cloud Gate (2004), Millennium Park, Chicago

Celebrated for his gigantic, stainless steel Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor is changing the cultural environment with his public works.

1.Research Kapoor's work in order to discuss whether it is conceptual art or not. Explain your answer, using a definition of conceptual art.

"... Conceptual art seems to be doing is questioning the the condition that seems to rigidly govern the form of visual art - that visual arts remains visual.' The same issue printed Sol LeWitt's 35 ' Sentences on Conceptual Art' which convey a more nuanced and experimental relation to the object of art. " (Norman, Bird. 1999, pg. 5) [para. 1]

Basically Conceptual art is challenging the formal aspects of visual arts. Challenging the aesthetics,processes and meanings that are usually used and describes in ' art'. Duchamp was one of the most well known artists who challenged those ideas. He become much known as a conceptual artist.

Anish Kapoor also uses the ideas where most of his works are on massive scales which can't be put into a gallery or in ordinary 'artspaces'. His processess and materials differ greatly from materials traditionally used in art, Hid work express for shape, form and the idea than it expressing real contextual/ historical references.

2. Research 3 quite different works by Kapoor from countries outside New Zealand to discuss the ideas behind the work. Include images of each work on your blog.

' Islamic Mirror' (2008) is part of Anish Kapoor's works in an ' Intervention on Space'
Installed in a Islamic Palace located inside a Christian Monastery, now a public museum. 'Islamic Mirror' looks at how the public views a 'space' and when it becomes a 'public art space'.
In this space visitors will see multiple images of themselves yet neither of them are reality, it is just a reflection in a religious space causing the mind to think of how we view these types of spaces.
"Islamic Mirror is a circular concave mirror measuring 2.4 metres in diameter and weighing approximately 80 kilograms"

Located in Vienna, Austria MAK Exhibition Hall Stubenring ' Shooting in the Corner' 2008/09 .Not much is said meaningfully about this piece but
It doesn't need a big meaning to be felt. Just the scale and colour he has used with the wax shot from a cannon towards a wall is a dramatic and enticing piece on its own. The Viewer can feel a complexity of emotions. The subconscious can relate this to the physical state of the human body. Our body and the fragility of the it when something like a collision can occur.

Located in Annenberg Courtyard in the Royal Academy 'Tall Tree and the Eye' 2009 is stunning, eye-catching and memorising. The stainless steel combination of silver spheres is rather hypnotizing in how they have used the same dynamics of a centennial in the middle of a square, but here again we see how Kapoor still plays with the mind and all its mysteries in how we view things.
With the Repetition and Reflectiveness or the space around it, gives the illusion of infinite dimensions.

3.Discuss the large scale 'site specific' work that has been installed on a private site in New Zealand.

'The Farm' Works this specific site because of where it has been placed and how it has been made to give the 'kaleidoscope' effect. Making both the Foreign and Natural work together, Bringing together the elements of the surroundings.

4. Where is the Kapoor's work in New Zealand? What are its form and materials? What are the ideas behind the work?

'The Farm' is on a 400ha privately owned site outside of Kaipara Bay Art Gallery, made from both Fabric and Steel. Fabric Architecture :

" Thirty-two longitudinal mono-filament cables provide displacement and deflection resistance to the wind loads while assisting with the fabric transition from horizontal ellipse, to a perfect circle at midspan, through to the vertical ellipse at the other end."

Combining these elements together helps enhance the Kaipara Bay and all it beauty, This piece has been treated as a part of the body and Kapoor says "I am concerned with the way in which the language of engineering can be turned into the language of the body" How these materials to create this imitation and aesthetically feel as if its on with the body, giving you a different and much more complex feel to it.

5. Comment on which work by Kapoor is your favourite, and explain why. Are you personally attracted more by the ideas or the aesthetics of the work?

As I have previously discussed this work, I found this work both aesthetically and conceptually intriguing because of how it constantly reminds me of different things each time I look at it.

From every angle it can be seen differently, and also trick you into what is really there in the actual surroundings. With the distorted view of the surrounding, viewers have been led to see the infinite dimensions that's around them.

As I like the idea of mind manipulation and disruption of space this works well in conjunction with what I am personally interested in, here we see how we cannot just look at this aesthetically because it does play with ideas in the subconscious of the viewer so we can see how ideas stream from just a glance.

So personally this is a work which I most enjoy of Anish Kapoor.

Youtube has some excellent footage on Kapoor-take a look at Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy.

www.royalacademy.org.uk ›
http://www.robgarrettcfa.com/thefarm.htm
http://www.billslater.com/cloudgate/