Anish Kapoor: Something

“One of the influences in his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel the sense of building the impossible” that “has something mythic about it. The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are “cathedral like”, according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind “up and up and in on oneself” on the spiral walkway.”

Anish Kapoor

His views of Arcelormittal Orbit
Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

Sense

“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.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish kapoor in conversation with Homi K. Bhabha in 1998. Quoted in pdf, Anish Kapoor, 18 December 2013, Royal Academy Organization http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/files/anish-kapoor-education-guide-558.pdf,

Thinking

“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.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish kapoor in conversation with Heidi Reitmaier in July 2007 in "Anish Kapoor" by Royal Academy Organization.

Way , Feeling , Idea , Thinking

“I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

Understanding , Thinking

“I’m thinking about the mythical wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. It’s as if the collective will comes up with something that has resonance on an individual level and so becomes mythic. I can claim to take that as a model for a way of thinking. Art can do it, and I’m going to have a damn good go. I want to occupy the territory, but the territory is an idea and a way of thinking as much as a context that generates objects.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

World , Art , Way , Idea

“There’s something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

“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.”

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

Truth , Art , Idea , Thinking

“It is more than a month that he's been completely disappeared. It is a true tragedy. Accuse him of something. Give him a lawyer. Let him defend himself …”

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor dedicates "Leviathan}, his largest ever art work at the Grand Palais in Paris to dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
Anish Kapoor dedicates Leviathan sculpture to Ai Weiwei