Lot 70
  • 70

Anish Kapoor

Estimate
450,000 - 650,000 GBP
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Description

  • Anish Kapoor
  • No. 8
  • alabaster
  • 119 by 72.5 by 28cm.; 46 7/8 by 28 1/2 by 11in.
  • Executed in 1997, this work is unique.

Provenance

Lisson Gallery, London

Private Collection, London

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2005

Exhibited

Volterra, Chiesa di San Giusto and Pinacoteca Civica, Arte Continua, 1997

Condition

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although fails to convey the translucency of the alabaster. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Executed in 1997 No. 8 is a superlative paradigm of Anish Kapoor's investigation into the possibilities of spatial manipulation. Captivatingly alluring, the sculpture provokes primal physical and psychological responses, invites profound cerebral and spiritual discourse, and exports awe via its sublimely beautiful form. Circumnavigating the piece, the viewer is enchanted by each detail of the surface, noticing the changes in the grain, the nuances in its colour and the veins in its core. A stunning sculptural phenomenon that exudes striking visual polarities and affords a complex simultaneity of vision, cognition and comprehension, it exemplifies the dualities that have become the hallmark of Kapoor's seminal oeuvre.  

Contrasting the rugged, unpolished surface of the work’s exterior, one beautiful hollow has been carved out of the stone’s centre, creating a spatial echo across a screen of alabaster so thin that light glows through from either side. While the work's scale is highly affective, addressing the viewer at eye-level and engaging total bodily experience, the piece is also imbued with a sense of weightlessness. Perceptively identifying the dualities that drive Kapoor's unique practice, Professor Partha Mitter has noted that: “With its different and sometimes contradictory elements, Kapoor’s work thrives on coincidentia oppositorum, the coexistence of opposites. He explores metaphysical polarities: presence and absence; being and nothingness; place and nonplace; the solid and the intangible; objective and non-objective.” (Professor Partha Mitter, ‘History, Memory, And Anish Kapoor’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future, 2008, p. 118).

The enchanting opalescence of the present work is innate to its very material. Heralding the naturalistic essence of the Earth’s organic matter, No. 8 alludes to the notion of transitory geological eons and the corresponding passage of time. Kapoor acknowledges this inherent property by proclaiming that: “There is a history in the stone and through this simple device of excavating the stone it’s just as if a whole narrative sequence is suddenly there” (Anish Kapoor quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Hayward Gallery, Anish Kapoor, 1998, p. 27). Continuing a venerable tradition of stone carving, which dates back thousands of years and reached a pinnacle of expression during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Kapoor began his investigation into this new material in 1987. Making use of the physical properties of alabaster the artist embarked on a seminal exploration of positive and negative space – an investigation that would lead him to discover what would come to be the signature of his work; the representation of the void. Exploring the physical properties of solid mass as a means to create a sense of depth and emptiness, Kapoor set out to sculpt the infinite space. As pointed out by Dr. David Anfam “rather than give his stones a countenance, Kapoor inscribes upon them the sign of emptiness: an excavated core that can be inky black… faintly polished… night-sky indigo… more illuminated… or raised to the pitch of a circular excavation glowing like a cryptic orb” (Dr David Anfam, Anish Kapoor, London 2009, p. 100).

No. 8 is a poetic embodiment of the meditative powers of art, whose spiritual enterprise finds a subtly differing ontological response in every viewer. The distinction between the roughly hewn exterior and the polished recess precipitates a dialogue between presence and solidity versus absence and intangibility, and stands as a paean to the salient tenants of Kapoor’s seminal artistic dialectic.