I think I’ve had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as i… - Anish Kapoor

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I think I’ve had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as if they were a discovery about an object and what an object can be; how an object can be and not be. Then, of course, the void pieces. The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don’t empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that’s more surprising than if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object.

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About Anish Kapoor

Sir Anish Kapoor (born March 12, 1954) is an Indian-born sculptor who is based in London. He settled in London during the early 1970s as a student, initially at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design. Kapoor has received many awards for his sculptures including the: Premio Duemila Prize, Turner Prize, his Knighthood in 2013 and Indian civilian award of Padma Bhushan. Some of his public sculptures are "Cloud Gate" in Chicago's Millennium Park; "Sky Mirror" exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in New York in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in London in 2010; "Temenos", at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough; "Leviathanat" the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Sir Anish Kapoor Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor Anish Mikhail Kapoor
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Additional quotes by Anish Kapoor

Do you know there’s a wonderful Christian idea in which Thomas stretches his hands out to try to touch Christ’s wound and Christ says ‘Noli me tangere’ (do not touch me). What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty. Something happens to where you are, to space; time changes. Time, I think, becomes slower. The mystical truth of art is time.

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Is it my role as an artist to say something, to express, to be expressive? I think it’s my role as an artist to bring to expression;it’s not my role to be expressive. I’ve got nothing particular to say, I don’t have any message to give anyone. But it is my role to bring to expression, let’s say, to define means that allow phenomenological and other perceptions, which one might use, one might work with, and then move towards a poetic existence.

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