(UK, USA, Netherlands / 2009 / 55 min. / Director Matthew Spingford)
The Year of Anish Kapoor was designated to be the closing film of the 29th edition of FIFA – International Festival of Films on Art, held in Montreal every year in March. Kapoor, a world renown sculptor, dazzles public with color, monumental sculptural designs, and the play on inverting and containing space. The film deserves the focused attention of the public since it brings into the forefront a very accomplished sculptor with a one-of-the-kind spatial and sculptural aesthetics, and it also raises a number of pertinent questions.
The concept ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality ‘ is heard throughout the film. Anish Kapoor says of his work, “Just as you can’t set out to make something beautiful, you can’t set out to make something spiritual. What you can do is recognise that it may be there. It normally has something to do with not having too much to say. There seems to be space for the viewer, and is sometimes something we identify as being spiritual. And it is all about space.”
This perception of spirituality being all about space is very specific to Kapoor. A number of questions could be asked in regard to the statements made in the film by him and others about spiritual aspect of Kapoor’s work:
Above, Kapour’s sculpture “C Curb” (2009) near Brighton is set in the middle of a field. It reflects, distorts and inverses the natural space in its mirror surface. It is a very remarkable sculpture with a playful theme, and liked by public. But does it offer a spiritual experience or only an aesthetic one?
The sculpture above is called “Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc” and was presented at Brighton Festival in 2009. It is bright read. Kapoor states, “One is literarily walking in her, through her, through her body. The implication is that the viewer is involved – something fundamental to sculpture. One body, one person responds to another, the memories of various parts of the body… It is as if this body is laid out in almost religious way. A kind of pilgrimage, as if somebody is to go to Santiago de Compostela.” Why red? Kapoor explains, “it makes it kind of black the way blue does not. It’s the black you see when you close your eyes. It’s something you know intuitively. And that sort of knowing… is the real subject of the work.”
Kapoor’s above sculpture “Svayambh” (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, 2007) is a structure made of red wax that passes through museum’s doors, where wax is subtracted and then added again . Kapoor comments about it “Self generated, leaving a trail, violent, collecting stuff, dropping stuff… Spiritual… What is a physical experience and metaphysical experience? … Terminology of spiritual… Spiritual powerful effect on you … dimension away from rational… You are forced to feel something.”
Site-specific Work at the Farm, Kaipara Bay, New Zealand 2009, is build into landscape, restructuring, enhancing, and “beautifying” the natural landscape. Kapoor comments about it, “Somewhere deep in my heart is a Wagnerian will to the grand.” Is it possible that it is this type of will that could be mistaken for spirituality?
I will conclude this article with a question I asked already earlier: Is our modern society so spiritually starved that it would seeks to find spiritual experiences and sensations through artistic statements of contemporary artists and through inanimate aesthetic objects they create?
-Is space spiritual?
-Is enticing you to enter into an artistically created, modified, and even distorted space a spiritual act?
-Are the feelings spectator experience vis-a-vis such artificial artistic spaces of a spiritual nature?
-Does artificial activity of shooting paint in to a corner in a gallery and thus visually reconstructing the space and the perception of it, represent a spiritual activity and a spiritual experience?
-Is a sculptural object placed in the middle of a countryside, in the middle of nature, that reflects, or distorts, or enhances nature a spiritual statement?
-Is the distortion of real space as perceived either on the surface of a sculpted object or in the inner cavities of it an act of creation of an illusive spiritual space?
-Could the abstractly represented dismembered body of a Saint, and the spectators walking between the separate body parts, be equated to an experience of a Christian pilgrimage?
-Would the act of creation itself, of creating a unique artistic object, give an artist a consciousness that he is involved in a spiritual act?
- Is our modern society so spiritually starved that it would seeks to find spiritual experiences and sensations through artistic statements of contemporary artists and through inanimate aesthetic objects they create?
The photo at the top, at the very beginning of this article is that of “Cloud Gate” (2004-2006), Chicago. Kapoor sais about it, “Distorts, people see themselves in, see the city, plays with your mind like a woman, simple and beautiful outside, complex and perhaps discovery inside.” Discovery of what? Of the sculpture’s souls or perhaps simply of the sculpture’s aesthetics?
Below are several examples of sculptures presented and discussed in the film.
Above, Kapour’s sculpture “C Curb” (2009) near Brighton is set in the middle of a field. It reflects, distorts and inverses the natural space in its mirror surface. It is a very remarkable sculpture with a playful theme, and liked by public. But does it offer a spiritual experience or only an aesthetic one?
The sculpture above is called “Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc” and was presented at Brighton Festival in 2009. It is bright read. Kapoor states, “One is literarily walking in her, through her, through her body. The implication is that the viewer is involved – something fundamental to sculpture. One body, one person responds to another, the memories of various parts of the body… It is as if this body is laid out in almost religious way. A kind of pilgrimage, as if somebody is to go to Santiago de Compostela.” Why red? Kapoor explains, “it makes it kind of black the way blue does not. It’s the black you see when you close your eyes. It’s something you know intuitively. And that sort of knowing… is the real subject of the work.”
So what is true spiritual knowing? Is is not supposed to be of Light rather than of blackness?
Kapoor’s above sculpture “Svayambh” (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, 2007) is a structure made of red wax that passes through museum’s doors, where wax is subtracted and then added again . Kapoor comments about it “Self generated, leaving a trail, violent, collecting stuff, dropping stuff… Spiritual… What is a physical experience and metaphysical experience? … Terminology of spiritual… Spiritual powerful effect on you … dimension away from rational… You are forced to feel something.”
Site-specific Work at the Farm, Kaipara Bay, New Zealand 2009, is build into landscape, restructuring, enhancing, and “beautifying” the natural landscape. Kapoor comments about it, “Somewhere deep in my heart is a Wagnerian will to the grand.” Is it possible that it is this type of will that could be mistaken for spirituality?
I will conclude this article with a question I asked already earlier: Is our modern society so spiritually starved that it would seeks to find spiritual experiences and sensations through artistic statements of contemporary artists and through inanimate aesthetic objects they create?
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