I’m torn, I’m not sure I like Anish Kapoor’s work anymore, which is kinda tricky as I was looking at him for my research paper. I’m sure he doesn’t mind, but there you have it, after looking for a while I’ve become less enthusiastic about it.
I do like the language of the materials. The imperfect dialogue, I can’t translate it all, but who can? The text of steel or the dialect of paint. It murmers in deep tones, a quiet melodic muttering.
Yet I feel disatisfied, like I’ve eaten but still feel hungry. I want to access more but feel arrested at times. I know how much Homi Bhabha enjoys his work, which makes me stop, pulls me up. But when I hear him talk it seems like a lot of the creativity and intellectual rigour is Bhabha’s rather than what Kapoor has invested in the work.
Some of his recent paintings feel tedious and a little in the territory of art therapy. I find I don’t want to interpret them, I feel repelled rather than a desire to enquire. Content and context matter. Materials matter. The above work I do like however I’m finding that there is more that I don’t.
The work of translation and interpretation is often the burden of the audience, yet how much? This is another rabbit hole of Roland Barthes and others.
