Anne and I have been going to see the Contemporary exhibitions at Versailles for a few years now. I had seen everything starting with Jeff Koons, in 2008, Xavier Veilhan in 2009. Anne joined me in 2010 to see Murakami, Venet in 2011, Joanna Vasconcelas 2012, Giuseppe Peone, 2013, Lee Uffan, 2014 and now Anish Kapoor.
Every year, the curators are criticized for their choice of art but this year is perhaps the first time it was vandalized. On June 15th just a week after it had opened. How on earth the delinquents got into the gardens in the early hours of the morning to disfigure the work with yellow paint is another story. This work has been called every name possible. It has obvious sexual connotations and those you can work out for yourselves but as to showing one’s feeling by disfiguring it, frightens me. Where are we going?
As we wandered back toward the main gates, a young lady of around 20 odd stopped us and asked
« out of curiosity, do you like this work? »
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Anish Kapoor is so right:-
« a work of art doesn’t exist alone but through its viewer. »
We were very circumspect in our comments. I did ask her if she knew the artist. She didn’t and like most of the visitors who had come to Versailles, it was to see the Chateau and the gardens rather than the artist. We had come to see the artist.
Our walk unfolded in a silence only interrupted by a few words about Le Nôtre, and French gardens– a small nod to history. The curator had met Kapoor but it took sometime for him to consent to an exhibition. A year later, he proposed “his” itinerary in the gardens of Versailles.
He had magnificently inhabited the space of the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011 with his Leviathan, however he felt he needed to measure up to the 800 hectares of the Versailles grounds. I bet he did.
I liked « Dirty Corner » from different angles. Behind, profiles with the large rock and splattered red paint - Anne described this as blood.
If you associate the work with a part of the woman's body, it’s certain you can come up with a lot of vulgar descriptions. Looking at it front on with the gear to clean off the yellow paint (they have been doing this for more than ten days now), I wondered how people would like to have walked in through the « gate «
The tunnel is 60 meters long and surrounded with these enormous blocks of stone - up to 25 tons….the tunnel itself is made out of steel.
I was frankly surprised that Kapoor was not more upset. He appeared very philosophical about the whole thing but did make mention that this was more « political » than anything else. It certainly provoked many articles on Internet. You can look if you feel like it.
His work for me is visible and invisible, inside and outside, shadow and light. I had already seen his « Shooting in the Corner »
(see…
http://discovmaggsie.blogspot.com/2013/07/berlin-bursting-with-energy-and-elegance.html)
and in action. It’s a work I find a little upsetting and didn’t want to see it again.
The exhibition starts on the Terrace with his mirrors. They are strange inventions where we appear normally and yet it’s difficult to see where we are - upside down……
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Then there is the C-Curve. Frankly I felt it was rather like a flying saucer coming in from another world. Especially as the sun was on it when I took the photographs and seemed to sting my eyes.
Then we needed to hunt for the « Bosquet de L’Etoile » it took a bit of time and we walked by the over gilded fountain ….
Before coming into this......
frankly after all the cubes I have seen or visited recently, I was not really impressed. « Sectional Body preparing for Monadic Singularity ». Even it’s title put me off. It was heavy. In French I would say mastoc… walking around it proved to be a little more compelling
but once Stephan,(you will see him below) told us to go inside, but not to touch the canvas all all, I was wonderstruck. The light on the red, the different shades, the different movements. This was Anish Kapoor for me.
We made the remark to Stephan that he was a perfect match for the sculpture.
One more to see - and this too was being cleaned. I didn’t know that Kapoor had worked with water. I did a video of it and it can be seen here on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ICZU6qzfCY&feature=em-upload_owner#action=share
The sound the raging current pulling us down into another world, the foam and movement of the water, was hypnotic. It was called Descension.
I think with everything we saw, I preferred his work at different angles rather as a whole. Then there was a mysticism, lights and shadows and as I said « inside-outside ». I wonder what we will be seeing next year?
We made the remark to Stephan that he was a perfect match for the sculpture.
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