{"id":7024,"date":"2022-04-27T12:32:11","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T09:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=7024"},"modified":"2022-05-10T13:02:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T10:02:45","slug":"anish-kapoor-in-venice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/anish-kapoor-in-venice\/","title":{"rendered":"Anish Kapoor in Venice: gore, glory and blackest black magic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Wallpaper magazine interviews Anish Kapoor in his south London studio ahead of a major two-venue retrospective during the 59th <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/venice-biennale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Venice Biennale<\/a>, where the artist will finally introduce the world to his Vantablack sculptures<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wallpaper.com%2Fart%2Fanish-kapoor-venice-interview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><img srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_770w_scale\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 770w,\n                         https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_920w_scale\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 922w,\n                         https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1200w_scale\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 1200w,\n                         https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 1460w,\n                         https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1680w_scale\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 1680w,\n                         https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/wp_extra_large\/s3\/b12-kapo-portrait-09.09.2021-gd_002.jpg 2500w\" class=\"\" alt=\"Portrait of Anish Kapoor by George Darrell, 2021\"><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Portrait of Anish Kapoor by George Darrell, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor\u2019s art is rarely easy on the eye, but it is hard to stop looking at. Each of the many rooms in the artist\u2019s vast south London studio contains very different Kapoors. Some are visceral, messy and erupting with disobedient desires. Some reflect, warp and bend what we know as physicality; others pretend it doesn\u2019t exist. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a place of production, but also trial-and-error experimentation. For a Turner Prize-winning, Knighthood-bearing artist with frequent seven-figure auction results, he\u2019s remarkably willing to reveal works in progress \u2013 just don\u2019t take any pictures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re touring Kapoor\u2019s studio ahead of his mega-moment in Venice, where, during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/art\/venice-biennale-2022-best-pavilions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">59th Venice Biennale<\/a>, he will stage two simultaneous solo shows. The first takes place at the revered Gallerie dell\u2019Accademia, where Kapoor, who represented Britain at the 1990 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/venice-biennale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Venice Biennale<\/a>, will become the first British artist to be honoured with a show. The second will unfold across the canal at the 18th-century Palazzo Manfrin, which, following many years of vacancy, has been acquired by the Anish Kapoor Foundation to become its headquarters once restorations are complete.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/06_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg?itok=p6io3jYa\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor, <em>Shooting Into the Corner,<\/em> 2008-2009. <em>Photography: Dave Morgan. \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is poetic symmetry in these shows. In the 18th century, Count Manfrin, a wealthy, Croatian-born tobacco merchant, transformed the first floor of Palazzo Manfrin into a public picture gallery. It became one of Venice\u2019s main tourist attractions, visited by such cultural dignitaries as Lord Byron, George Ruskin and Edouard Manet. After Manfrin\u2019s death, the collection was sold and many masterpieces \u2013 including <em>La Tempesta<\/em> by Giorgione \u2013 ended up, and remain, in the Accademia\u2019s collection. In both these spaces, Kapoor, through iconic historical works and new, unseen paintings and sculptures, will consider what\u2019s to come through what\u2019s come before.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite his obvious market success, Kapoor shows little interest in \u2018playing the game\u2019. \u2018The artist in a way is, at an elevated level, the cosmic fool, at a less elevated level, just a fool,\u2019&nbsp;he quips during our tour. \u2018It is our job to allow the half-thought, the half-made. In today\u2019s art world, the market has taken over everything. We have to remind ourselves that we are not makers of commodities; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/tags\/louis-vuitton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Louis Vuitton<\/a> does it better.\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/07_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg?itok=QIIKSvFl\" alt=\"Anish Kapoor Sacrifice, 2019 Steel, resin\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/08_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg?itok=lDoJYPng\" alt=\"Anish Kapoor The Unremembered, 2020 Steel, canvas, silicone, paint\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Top: Anish Kapoor, <em>Sacrifice,<\/em> 2019, steel, resin. Above:&nbsp;<em>The Unremembered<\/em>, 2020 Steel, canvas, silicone, paint.&nbsp;<em>Photography: Dave Morgan \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first studio space on the tour is like an abattoir, chaotic red: \u2018the colour of interiority\u2019. The walls and floors are bloody. There are bits of bodies with the skin off, or which never had the skin on. Skin hangs and drapes on stair-like structures above pools of glistening, blood-like resin. The centrepiece is an utterly enormous steel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/tags\/sculpture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sculpture<\/a>. There\u2019s no skirting around the obvious, it resembles a vulva \u2013 a recurring theme in Kapoor\u2019s works. When I last visited his studio in September 2021, it was bare, now it bears a globule of bloody flesh. This piece is destined for the Palazzo Manfrin \u2013 shipping works to Venice is never an easy task, but at two and a half tonnes, this will be quite the operation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another room is erupting with what appears to be the inverted embodiment of Shakespeare\u2019s \u2018mountain of mad flesh\u2019, another enormous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/tags\/sculpture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sculpture<\/a> to be exhibited within the colonnade of Palazzo Manfrin.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kapoor\u2019s paintings, revealed for the first time at Modern Art Oxford last year, harbour a similar depth of gore and violence. Deep purples, whites, and most reds on the spectrum capture a human body that is desecrated before it ever came to be, perhaps even more fleshy, bloody, primal, anatomically horrific than the Francis Bacons currently dominating London\u2019s Royal Academy up the road.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/09_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg?itok=kC9uSNpn\" alt=\"\u00a0Dave Morgan. \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor, <em>Diana Blackened Reddened<\/em>, 2021, Oil on canvas, Triptych. Photography:&nbsp;Dave Morgan. <em>\u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In another room, the mood changes again with Kapoor\u2019s clean-cut, reflective works, the sort that often find their&nbsp;way into public spaces, and onto Instagram. Part science, part art, their concavity induces a kind of vertigo, enveloping the body, stretching it and turning it upside down, and confusing what we know to be physicality. These \u2018non-objects\u2019 penetrate the human desire to be seen from new perspectives, through the eyes of something, or someone else.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s difficult to avoid the feminine motifs that weave in and out of Kapoor\u2019s work so freely. Sometimes they\u2019re subtle, sometimes they\u2019re blatant. Either way, Freud would have his work cut out in these studios. \u2018Who is she? What is she? Is she my mother? I think that\u2019s of course an ongoing, deeper, pursuit, again to which I don\u2019t know the answer. Who cares!\u2019&nbsp;Kapoor exclaims, standing in front of a work that resembles a giant black vulva draped in a testicular formation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At last, it\u2019s time for the black magic show, also known as the \u2018Vantablack\u2019, \u2018Anish Kapoor black\u2019, or \u2018blackest black\u2019 works (or in popular culture wars, the subject of a longstanding, vitriolic stand-off with the artist Stuart Semple after Kapoor\u2019s studio bought the exclusive licence to its application for artistic use). After many years of fame, infamy, anticipation and mystery, these works will appear in public for the first time in Venice. \u2018There\u2019s been this ridiculous controversy about me having control over the colour,\u2019 Kapoor tells me. \u2018It\u2019s perfectly straightforward: it\u2019s not a colour. It\u2019s a technology. And it\u2019s extremely complicated and sophisticated.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/03_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg?itok=aqR6xmUp\" alt=\"Anish Kapoor Studio, 2020. \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021 blackest black vantablack Venice\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor Studio, 2020. <em>\u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those of us without a PhD in nanotechnology, Vantablack is a brand name for a type of \u2018super black\u2019 coating, developed for military stealth use by UK-based Surrey NanoSystems. When applied to a surface, the material becomes a forest of vertical particles that eat 99.8 per cent of visible light. When light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it gets trapped, transformed into heat, and never leaves. As Kapoor claims, the material is \u2018blacker than a black hole\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The room is a grid of glass cases filled with black forms on white backgrounds (as Kapoor notes, an homage of sorts to Kazimir Malevich\u2019s Black Square). Granted, these forms are very black, and, even on close frontal inspection, very flat. But look again, and move to the side of the glass boxes and something magical does indeed occur. What had two dimensions now has three as shapes protruding seemingly from nowhere.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kapoor\u2019s vacuous Vantablack works show no interest in their surroundings, reflect nothing and acknowledge no shadows. \u2018If you put it on a fold, you can\u2019t see the fold. So my proposition is that this material is therefore beyond being,\u2019 he says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a bold claim, but this is a bold material that gets to the very heart of art as an illusion, the <em>raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> of the Renaissance. Kapoor\u2019s affinity with the period, and Venice by proxy, is clear; they share an obsession with colour, perspective, spiritualism and optical theatrics: \u2018There are these weird wonderful, powerful parallels which I think are completely contemporary,\u2019&nbsp;he says. \u2018Look at this bloody world that we\u2019re living in.\u2019 But there is one key difference: whereas the Renaissance sought to capture reality, Kapoor\u2019s work attempts to swallow it whole. \u00a7&nbsp;<img class=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_770w_scale\/s3\/04_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg 820w,\n                 https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_920w_scale\/s3\/04_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg 1400w,\n                 https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1200w_scale\/s3\/04_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg 1600w,\n                 https:\/\/cdn.wallpaper.com\/main\/styles\/responsive_1460w_scale\/s3\/04_ak_venice-2021_11.jpg 1800w\" alt=\"Anish Kapoor, Void Pavilion V, 2018 Wood, concrete and pigment. Photography: Nobutada Omote. \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor, <em>Void Pavilion V,<\/em> 2018 Wood, concrete and pigment. <em>Photography: Nobutada Omote. \u00a9 Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved SIAE, 2021<\/em> Information<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anish Kapoor\u2019s work will be on view at the Gallerie dell\u2019Accademia di Venezia&nbsp;and the Palazzo Manfrin from 20 April \u2013 9 October 2022 in conjunction with the 59th <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallpaper.com\/venice-biennale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Venice Biennale<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/anishkapoor.com\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">anishkapoor.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gallerieaccademia.it\/en\/anish-kapoor\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">gallerieaccademia.it<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.labiennale.org\/en\/art\/2022\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">labiennale.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wallpaper magazine interviews Anish Kapoor in his south [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-parts\/content-blog.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_events_control_status":"","_tribe_events_control_status_canceled_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_status_postponed_reason":"","_tribe_events_control_online":"","_tribe_events_control_online_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-what-we-like-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7024"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7036,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7024\/revisions\/7036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}