“Just because a thing is big, it doesn’t mean it’s of any interest, or even good,” says Anish Kapoor. In fact, this statement should have raised a lot of hue and cry from the practitioners of king size art but surprisingly everyone seems to have taken this for a profound statement by the veteran conceptual sculptor whose big size sculptures are currently on view in London’s Hayward Gallery.
It is the rich always philosophize about the worthlessness of money and being rich, but the poor only see money in anything. When you have the excess of it you could pontificate about the virtue of its absence or lack because you are sure that you are not going to lose it by saying it. But when you are poor, you are simply crass and gross as you are speaking, thinking and dreaming money. So does the ones who do big size stuff, be it architecture or art. When you have a palatial house filled with art and luxurious wares and furniture, you say it doesn’t matter.
Ah yes, being rich does not translate into being wise and discerning. Being big does not mean power and persuasion. In that sense Anish Kapoor is right and profound. But it also is a self-endorsement. Kapoor says it not in many words that anybody doing big sculptures does not become an Anish Kapoor because being Anish Kapoor also means being big. And a meaningful big can happen only when it is done with those artists who can afford to have that bigness. May be, Kapoor would approve of Anselm Kiefer. Ron Mueck, hmmm. What about the works of Antony Karo, Richard Serra, Antony Gormley? And our own Damien Hirst and Subodh Gupta?
Anish Kapoor does not give any conclusive answer because his bigness of the works have not yet turned into embarrassment so far and wouldn’t show any signs of turning so in the near future. That is one good thing about art. Unlike histrionics of a period that would slowly sour into comedy for the future days, a work of art would hardly turn into a piece of embarrassment though the context of its creation no exists. Then we know what would happen to them; they will become museum pieces, out of parlance, out of economic dealings and out of history. Haven’t we encountered such innumerable pieces of works of art in the museums all over the world, despite having footnotes and labels, remaining remote, obscure and generating no interest?
In the case of Anish Kapoor and his works, even if the context changes, their relevance and the philosophical vehemence that he attributes to them, from science to metaphysics, from religions to philosophy and from populism to quotidian, a bit graver than Jeff Koons, wouldn’t change because those concerns would reappear along with the presence of these works whenever they are presented.
Size matters because the same impact wouldn’t have been seen had Kapoor done them in miniatures. In the 1980s, yes Kapoor had done them, like maquettes of future success, then fully pigmented, now fully waxed. Anish Kapoor is a smooth artist who has profound philosophy like Kiefer and cynically bold outlook like Salman Rushdie. That’s why he could make such statements about the size of the work even when he does not adhere to his own views on the same.
