Anish Kapoor
The “art” of sensory assault. What is it? What is he? Does it matter? Does he?
After visiting Kenwood House, I came away loathing the pallid sycophancy of Reynolds and Gainsborough and the sterile, static patterns of Robert Adam. I was much looking forward to my introduction to Kapoor. I had read the blurb produced by the Hayward Gallery and realised that the exhibition might likely satisfy my proclivity for other worldliness and the doors of perception.
I was not disappointed. Vast organs of a decidedly sexual orientation hung on the walls, entries to an alternate reality through a visceral reproductive organ from this. Lyra’s Subtle Knife was also to be seen, tearing a great gash in the membrane separating the regions of the multiverse.
It was not comfortable to stare into the abyss time and again, to see the blackness of infinity and to be minded of the ephemeral nature of myself and all that surrounded me. The entrance to Hades was everywhere, exits nowhere to be found. Deep black holes which might have gone on for ever, or might by contrast have been a simple dead end. End being the operative word.
A giant, gory black and red volcano retched down from the ceiling, surrounded by great shining round bags of jelly, or blood. Discombobulated by this vision of hell, I stumbled on to great plastic body bags of blood, offal, fat and severed muscle in another room (or abattoir). Maybe the end product of one of the many cults of religious nutters which plague our world.
The lake of Gehenna, the ghastly sordidity of Revelation and St John the Madman. Or some terror dreamt up by those other charming gents from the Middle East who, over the course of the second millennium and beyond, have murdered and rampaged their way through the world to rival the finest of our psychotic dictators.
My host was a learned and earnest guide, and my thanks to him. He recognised I would relish the challenge and for some days and nights the images have lived with me.
To my shame I had never heard of the “artist” and imagined in my ignorance that he must be a great prophet: perhaps his god had given him all this vision. Perhaps his object was to show us the light, the truth, the way. Armageddon was, for him, the way forward perhaps? Instead of leading to the return of a crucified Judean preacher, something far more terrible awaits. Not eternal life or resurrection but a vast cosmic gash leading to ever greater horror.
I am a persuaded anarchist. I metaphorically urinate on the society we have created as a species – most especially on Trump, the latest incarnation of naked greed and beastliness.
Kapoor must be a kindred spirit! A light unto the Gentiles! A guide for our age, a man for a better world! Surely all this blood and gore was allegory! A cry for peace and love and human dignity!
Sadly it seems not. Instead of despising the establishment, he seems to court it. He fills his vast wealth bags and is apparently worth upwards of $200,000,000. Like most gurus, he appears to pedal one thing and practices quite another.
Or am I being unjust? He seems to throw quite a bit of cash at good causes. But somehow he seems to be all about business rather than art.
I found myself thinking of that Indian fellow who proffered salvation to the Beatles. Modesty, meditation and humility – but he ended up collaring enormous wealth and string of yellow Rolls Royce. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who charged people a packet to learn meditation. When all that’s actually necessary can be written on the back of a packet of Capstans.
Am I too cynical perhaps? Art, religion, meditation: they don’t sit comfortably in my mind alongside great wealth and an elevated position.
And yet they have always done so. What a paradoxical farce.