An art that creates a world

Let us start with two statements made by Anish Kapoor. They are taken from the interview with Douglas Maxwell for Art Monthly in May,1990 which was published in the catalogue for the artist's exhibition held in Milan in 1995, whose organization was attended by Germano Celant by appointment of the Fondazione Prada. The said statements seem to be very helpful in attempting a first definition of this artist who is considered to be one of the most interesting sculptors of the last fifteen years. "When I was in India I used to paint. It was abstract painting and things like that, in the early Pollock's style which is still fascinating to me. Rothko and his time" and also "I am a painter who is a sculptor". This paradox already poses questions regarding not only Kapoor's work and artistic conception, but concerning the definition of art as a whole for they are the same questions that people have in mind when they wonder what this contemporary art really is, seeing as the painters describe themselves as sculptors, the sculptors as painters, artists say they are not artists any more and art is thought of as an anti-art.
A generally valid way of answering could be that of mentioning the eternal dilemma between appearing and being. Therefore we must immedately point out that Kapoor's statements make him rightfully part of that generation of artists who, like Duchamp, develop alchemic issues and act according to even paradoxical ideas or who, like Fontana, realize works that go beyond appearances looking for the real being; they have another predecessor in Judd, who said that "the new work seems obviously closer to sculpture than it is to painting, but in reality it is closer to painting".

 

In fact, Kapoor's statements reveal the nature of a man who uses tridimensionality - which is part of sculpture and architecture, and thus of the concrete reality - to explore the principles of surfaces and of the illusory vision which are typical features of painting. Already in his early works he used to cover up tridimensional forms like half-spheres, cones, pyramids, parallelepipeds and the like with white, red, yellow and blue powders. The choice of using the basic colors reminds us of painting, just like the powders that question the tridimensionality and the compactness of the forms making the entire surface vibrate. Forms and colors are pure and yet they look as if they were just about to dissolve, to turn into anti-matter, into air, or spirit, so that they pass from the state of appearing to that of being by means of a natural phenomenon; this has been expressed through the use of colors by Yves Kline, too, to whom Kapoor refers. Thus we come to another goal in the interpretation of his works, that is, the form that is about to dissolve and is therefore full of tension; the apparent quietness that makes us reflect upon the latent power of matter itself, upon the energy it contains, and so makes matter nothing but a metaphor of the entire universe. In this way, the artist tells us about universal and eternal issues such as the creation of the world, both in its material and in its spiritual aspect.

  We must not forget that science deals with the level of the matter and religion with that of the spirit, but art is assigned the demanding task of demonstrating the compatibility of these two separate worlds, that is, it must bring together two irreconcilable aspects, two opposite qualities; in this connection I shall mention the fact that his first work was a chalk drawing on his studio's floor portraying an androgynous figure. In fact, we must talk of duality rather than of opposition, that is, there is no clash of differences but there are couples that come together and generate something else, like the void and the fullness, the whole and nothingness, the appearance and the being, which unite and give birth, give life. By so doing Kapoor solves the Hamlet-like dilemma between being and not being, and this is evident in nearly all of his works since the middle of the 1980's, where the stones, the walls and the settings of his works are characterised by openings and by convexities colored in black and in blue.

Spaces and colors are dense and deep and attract us towards the inside, the center of the world, towards the unknown; they are colors that we are not interested in placing at a specific level of the chromatic scale for the colors of fear and of mystery are not simply the appearance of the black and the blue, they are the darkness itself and the fact of being in the darkness. And darkness finds its opposite in the light just like the non-color black finds its opposite in the white that sums up all the colors. It is towards this luminous totality that Kapoor oriented his research during these last years creating white parallelepipeds, works that once again seem to dissolve their form into light. This light is the ultimate sense of the work placed in front of the church of S. Giusto in Volterra. Here there is a big white marble block of which only one side is carved whilst the other three are left rough, showing the process of transformation of the matter and its energetical power. The front of the work, on the contrary, appears smooth and full from far away, but as we get closer we realize that it is polished and carved to form a convexity that attracts us towards the inside. As if the stone would breathe thus creating an inner passage, a void, that is not a black hole anymore and that needs not to be a colored cavity anymore for now it is a bright surface that captures us inside it, imprisoning our bodies and our souls, giving us a real perception of what Michelangelo meant when he said that "Sculpture is made by taking away, while painting is made by adding".

In fact, the crucial point of Kapoor's work lies precisely there where the vision passes from the full image of the block to that of the void, that is, in that moment in which the flat white surface (the surface of the painting) turns into sculpture, and viceversa. So Kapoor the painter expresses himself in sculpture, and expounding Michelangelo he shows us the illusory essence of appearances and the deep light of the being; in this relationship art goes back to art and it is therefore entirely, eternally contemporary. It is a going back to art by means of the images of the being, our being which is unknown and unknowable and to which we strive to give meaning with the variety of our religious, philosophical and scientific expressions, posing eternal questions such as: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? It is the same being which the artist portrays to us as the pneuma of the matter, as the breathing of the world, melting together knowledge and experience. Then we could say that Kapoor's "stones" are a sort of an alchemical attempt, too, a new way of searching for the philosophers' stone which will not be used to make gold but to make something way more precious such as the form and the spirit of the being, of art and of life. This we can see in the four alabaster sculptures realised in Volterra and placed in the city's Pinacoteca, for the work is full, void, heavy, light, luminous and golden at the same time. Thanks to the translucent quality of the material, the artist has been able to give more strength to the transition from painting to sculpture, breaking the whole cycle because if the form belongs to sculpture, light belongs to painting. There we have the light of the matter, a golden light like the one of the philosophers' stone which captures the moment of the transition in its being both a moment of appearing and of being, just like the sunset which closes a day, or dawn which starts a new one. Here lies the answer to those who wonder about the meaning of painting, of sculpture, of the artist and of art, for we can understand that the duality in Kapoor's works is actually a creative circle reminding of the naturalness of the seasons, of the movement of the planets and of the universe which acts between the individual and the collectivity and that ends up being - just like nature - an art that creates a world.


Giacinto di Pietrantonio

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