Anish Kapoor

Lisson Gallery, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2009

This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a minor rub mark approximately 3/4 x 1/4 inch located to the reverse rim edge towards the lower left, and a small number of extremely faint handling marks to the left side of the base drum at the center of the reverse. The angle of the current wall bracket is fractionally incorrect, so that the work currently leans forward by approximately ¼ inch. This issue can be improved with further work on the bracket.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The artistic enterprise of Anish Kapoor occupies an impossible space where art and theater reside.  Kapoor's highly polished surfaces are palpably inimitable, and embrace the Minimalist concerns of form and surface while simultaneously rejecting pictorialism. The present work, Untitled, 2009, a deep plum amaranthine extension enforces a literal, yet chromatic, projection back to the viewer. As such, Kapoor is seemingly the Post-Modern heir apparent to the perceptual models of Minimalist predecessors such as Donald Judd (for form) and James Turrell (for color). The artist's career-long concern with the impossible corporeality of the sculpted form aligns with the Minimalist concern that a work should reveal nothing other than its constitutive materials and manner of construction, perhaps best articulated by Frank Stella's tautology "what you see is what you see."  This was further espoused by Michael Fried in his seminal defense of the tenets of Minimalism, where he famously, and rather bluntly, concluded that "the shape is the object." (Michael Fried, "Object and Objecthood," Artforum, June 1967, p. 12). The rejection of representation is Kapoor's insistence that his work does not follow any narrative impulse, "As an artist," he said once, "I have really nothing to say. Otherwise I would have become a journalist." (Randy Kennedy, "A Most Public Artist Polishes A New York Image," The New York Times, August 20, 2006, p. 25).

The recipient of the prestigious Turner Prize in 1991, Kapoor refers to his mirrors as "nonobjects." The spherical form mounted on the wall, while forming an illusion, has little meaning beyond the physicality of its presence. The visual contradiction and inventive and intentional inversions, however, are deeply philosophical for the artist: "It seemed it was not a mirrored object but an object full of mirroredness. The spatial questions it seemed to ask were not about deep space but about present space, which I began to think about as a new sublime. If the traditional sublime is in deep space, then this is proposing that the contemporary sublime is in front of the picture plane, not beyond it. I continue to make these works because I feel this whole new spatial adventure. To make new art, you have to make a new space." (Exh. Cat., Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Anish Kapoor, 2008, p. 53).  This sentiment is a continuum of the dogma once eloquently described by Judd who insisted that 'real space' was "more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface...the thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone, and more intense, clear and powerful."  (Donald Judd, "Specific Objects," Complete Writings 1959-1975, 2005, New York, p. 187). Using deep emotive colors, reflectivity and other illusions; Kapoor blurs the boundaries with an effect that is often overtly sensual.