Anish Kapoor and Public art

Anish Kapoor , The Bean, Chicago

There was an interesting program on TV on Saturday about the respected artist Anish Kapoor. There is a piece of his work at Heide Art Gallery if anyone has been there. Kapoor creates images that seem to have a strange ability to engage the viewer with the experience of looking
and what it means to be the viewer. Some of his work seems to have a power to transcend beyond the material and questions without imposing some "big truth". The above piece 'The Bean" has clearly has a positive impact on the people of Chicago.

Some of you may have watched the video by Andy Rooney: A Critique
of Modern Art recently posted. While the examples used in this essay are deliberately chosen to maximise a laughable view of Modern Art, we are also left with the opinion that there is not much in the art world to respect.

If the world of art was what Rooney portrays I would want to agree with him, there is certainly an enormous amount of mediocre and empty objects veiled as art. However, Rooney fails to give a balanced picture. For all the rubbish out there, there is also the amazing, incredibile, inpiring creations that remind us of our time, that transport us to world beyond the mundane. I think Kapoor is one of these artists and there are others.

Rooney makes a point, but it is short sighted. Perhaps the strength of art education is to learn to see what is really there, and to make up our minds independant of persuasive yet quite limited perspectives.

D