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 Anish Kapoor, Turning the World Upside Down #4, 1998 ANISH KAPOOR: ICON AND ILLUSION by Donald Kuspit In 1951, writing on Smooth and Rough, the English art critic Adrian Stokes observed: "Man's greater consciousness implies both an increased fragmentation of experience and a restorative unity: the ego is now stronger, now more split." Anish Kapoor's sculpture seems to apotheosize splitting, even as it suggests, by way of the detour of the spectator reflected in the sculpture, the reintegration of the opposites that result from splitting. The spectator binds the opposites together by way of his or her precarious, ambiguous position. Almost Human, 1998, makes the point clearly. A very smooth, finely polished concave space is scooped out of a monumental block of raw limestone. The concave space seems infinitely deep -- if one looks into its center it seems to become an abyss -- and mirrors the spectator, inverting him or her in the process. The spectator is in effect separated from his or her substance, and becomes pure, precious spectacle. He or she is divided into the same crude physical reality (left in the worldly space outside the sculpture) and refined "transcendental" illusion (within the concave sculptural space) as Kapoor's sculpture. At the same time, the insubstantial, spectacular illusion of the spectator, incorporated into the sculpture -- for an optical illusion is created, in which the spectator seems to be permanently suspended in the concave space, as though his or her appearance is a timeless spiritual revelation in the niche of a church -- restores the stone of the sculpture to a kind of wholeness, however absurd, by filling it in with his or her ironic presence. |
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