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Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Art London

From:     Ben Zanoe
Category: Art
Date:     30 October 2009
Time:     11:00 AM

Review:

The high volume over orchestrated past may come back to haunt the crowd pleaser's of the day, in the
form of the Gormley or the Kapoor. In this blog Hirst was tediously presented against Whiteread but
the analogy does have some merit if greatly expanded, I know they are chalk n cheese, like Gormely
and Kapoor but Gormely is the product of Tate Modern edict that somehow includes Kapoor. They both
get through the door dress code no questions asked because they prescribe to touchy feely Guardian
land multi-cultural, public art speak, a category that Whiteread could be shoehorned out of, but
Hirst, wether you think he "stinks" will never realistically accomodate or have leanings toward.
I wonder in my ignorance if Tate Modern would have loved to have mounted this Exhibition, that being
said it illustrates my view that the show is a crowd pleaser and an old style blockbuster but there
is a great deal to commend it.
I did'nt realize that Kapoor is not a YBA , although he's often lumped in with them, neither is
Gormley both just happened to catch the big opportunity boxcar that slowed down and gave them a
notorious ride, he is rooted in Hornsey School of Art and Chelsea, there is a pervading didactic
undercurrent which you could easily perceive as just playful, maybe experimental but it's too
complete. There are pure pigments in basic colours, allusions to geometry in the attempted coiled
pots, playful reflectors referencing light, colour plays an extraordinarily prominent role for
sculpture of this scale, a big yellow sunshine concave, a white oblique convex, a huge steel gun
lobbing cartridges of red, seems a bit precious but drama students were auditioned for the role of
loading the cannons breech, again this sort of approach fits in with the Tate Mod Guardian caring
community role, I searched in vain for clues to link Kapoor's Asian cultural links with Clive of
India uprising wherein the cartridges used by the Indian Army (British Colonialism) were
manufactured using Pig Grease which caused an uprising, mutiny whatever term you might care to use,
but no such allusion, Kapoor is a modernist, among the classical arches and balustrades of the
Academy, no this would not work quite so well in the Tate Modern, to that degree the work is very
site specific even if some of the exhibits have appeared all over the place, often seems slightly
crass but then one reasons the ultimate objective of such work, it's a bit of a game so what if you
are led a merry chase it all ends with a sensational if shallow finale. I would go again but can't
the ticket allow re-entry?  


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