Anish Kapoor
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| 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.
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.
A definition of conceptual art is “a type of art in which the artist's idea, or concept, of a work of art and of the means of executing that ideas have primary importance while the artwork itself, which may or may not be produced, is regarded as secondary”.
Kapoor’s works are conceptual art because the way he made the work doesn’t look like anything particular. His work is an abstract form. In the hands of sculptor Anish Kapoor, forms become at once monumental and evanescent, present and absent, physical and ethereal. Whether using the materials of classical sculpture like stone and bronze or newly applied forms of aluminum, pigment, enamel, resin, polymer, and PVC, Kapoor's sculpture seems to disappear, dissolve, levitate, or extend beyond a space the viewer can perceive.
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.
anish kapoor
sky mirror, red 2007
sky mirror, red 2007
Kapoor’s monumental works, whose stainless steel curved, mirrored surfaces reflect their park surroundings, providing a new perspective of the green setting within the bustling city. I believe the idea of his work is as the audience how we can view the world in a lot of different way. Constructed from polished stainless steel and with the combined title 'Turning the World Upside Down', Kapoor's wavy wall 'C-Curve', pointy witch's hat 'Non Object (Spire)' and two curved discs 'Sky Mirrors' distort and reflect back both the leafy landscape surrounds and their audience, the majority of the latter clicking away on camera phones on my visit, highlighting our now ubiquitous desire to record and share an event, almost in preference to actually experiencing it. The sky mirrors, both places in or near water, are the most dramatic. The larger one, on this overcast day reflecting the cloudy grey sky to look like the moon fallen to earth. While the smaller, placed in the round pond and tinted a blood red, could ne the angry planet Mars, the clouds reflected in it its swirling atmosphere.
'arcelormittal orbit' by anish kapoor
This work is almost 115m tall and the deep red trumpet shaped tower, will give the guests a view of the London landscape. It is almost 1,400 tons of steel are used to make this. According to Kapoor; 'there is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible. A procession, if you like. It’s a long winding spiral: a folly that aspires to go even above the clouds and has something mythic about it.'
'leviathan' by anish kapoor
Kapoor has been working on this sculpture for almost 20years. 'The sculpture is a total immersion in an unexplored physical and mental dimension. once you are inside,
in the giant 4-armed balloon, the involutes form reminds you of an organic outer space and inner self at the same time -- but when you travel outside of it (once you are back in the space of the grand palais), I hope the viewer has another encounter with the piece and with the luminosity thrown down by the glass roof.' (Kapoor interview with design boom). Kapoor is a perfectionist and had to overcome lots of ‘technical’ problems.
in the giant 4-armed balloon, the involutes form reminds you of an organic outer space and inner self at the same time -- but when you travel outside of it (once you are back in the space of the grand palais), I hope the viewer has another encounter with the piece and with the luminosity thrown down by the glass roof.' (Kapoor interview with design boom). Kapoor is a perfectionist and had to overcome lots of ‘technical’ problems.
3.Discuss the large scale 'site specific' work that has been installed on a private site in New Zealand.
Kapoor was challenge the daunting height of the Turbine Hall was, paradoxically to use its length. The ellipses are orientated one horizontal, the other vertical. 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.
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,” a 400ha (1,000 acre) private estate outdoor art gallery in Kaipara Bay, north of Auckland, New Zealand. Kapoor’s first outdoor sculpture in fabric, “The Farm” (the sculpture is named after its site), is designed to withstand the high winds that blow inland from the Tasman Sea off the northwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The sculpture is fabricated in a custom deep red PVC-coated polyester fabric by Ferrari Textiles supported by two identical matching red structural steel ellipses that weigh 42,750kg each. The fabric alone weighs 7,200kg. Throughout his career, Kapoor has worked extensively with architects and engineers. Kapoor insists that this body of work is neither pure sculpture nor pure architecture. Maybe the main idea of his work can be making the world largest sculpture in the world.
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?
I personally interested in 'leviathan' because when I look inside the giant balloon it feels like I’m in my own world. The idea of this work is interesting large scale of the sculpture and also the different colours of inside and outside I guess the best part was since it’s so enormous many number of people can fit at once.
References
http://fabricarchitecturemag.com/articles/0110_sk_sculpture.html
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kapoor/default.htm
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/11673/anish-kapoor-at-kensington-gardens.html
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/
www.royalacademy.org.uk ›
http://www.robgarrettcfa.com/thefarm.htm
http://www.billslater.com/cloudgate/
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