FRANCE-ART/VERSAILLES Artist Anish Kapoor sparks controversy with Versailles exhibition

Record ID: 150203

  • Title: FRANCE-ART/VERSAILLES Artist Anish Kapoor sparks controversy with Versailles exhibition
  • Date: 5th June 2015
  • Summary: VERSAILLES, FRANCE (JUNE 5, 2015) (REUTERS) CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES REFLECTED IN ANISH KAPOOR'S WORK "C-CURVE" VARIOUS OF CROWDS OF TOURISTS ENTERING GATES OF CHATEAU FORMAL GARDENS WITH FOUNTAIN IN FOREGROUND AND KAPOOR'S WORK "DIRTY CORNER" VISIBLE IN THE BACKGROUND VARIOUS OF "DIRTY CORNER" REAR OF "DIRTY CORNER" TOURISTS TAKING SELFIES IN FRONT OF "DIRTY CORNER" (SOUNDBI
  • Embargoed: 20th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA815S0OSSMQJU3FRDLPXYC2V7X
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The thousands of visitors pouring through the gilded gates of the Chateau de Versailles were in for a shock on Friday (June 5) as a controversial new art project stalked the elegant grounds.
    The latest contemporary artist to be invited to exhibit at the sprawling 17th century palace -- once home to Sun King Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette -- is Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, famous for his gigantic installations.
    He has now turned his hand to disrupting the ordered symmetry of Andre Le Notre's formal gardens with a series of eye-catching sculptures including "Dirty Corner", which has raised eyebrows in some conservative corners of the Paris art world.
    Its content is seen by some critics as overtly sexual and Kapoor himself sparked controversy by describing it as the "queen's vagina" in an interview with French newspaper the 'Journal du dimanche'.
    The work got a mixed reception among visitors to the Chateau on Friday, with U.S. tourists John and Megan saying it was not in keeping with the grounds.
    German tourist Dunja herself said its giant steel tube opening out towards the palace, recovered in part with rocks and earth, resembled a vagina and she was unimpressed, hoping merely to visit the grounds with her boyfriend.
    Kapoor said he did not shy away from controversy but was reluctant to put a single interpretation on the work, one of the six featured in his exhibition.
    "Undoubtedly what I'm doing here is taking the surface of Le Notre's ordered garden, opening it and looking inside or attempting to look inside. Inevitably, inevitably I say, one comes across the body, our bodies, and a certain level of sexuality. That's one of the things the work's pointing to or perhaps is even about. But it's certainly not the only thing it's about," he said in front of another of his featured works - a curved mirror distorting the Chateau's symmetric facade.
    "You realise here every tree is cut perfectly. It's geometry, geometry, geometry. It's as if the insects eating each other in the grass which are inevitably there are completely invisible. And part of what I think I'm dealing with is the idea that some of those abject parts of life get brought back into the equation," he added.
    The exhibition also features the latest incarnation of the artist's "Shooting the Corner" -- a mounted canon which has fired blood-coloured wax pellets onto a white wall strewn with messy, violent dribbles of red. The setting -- an outbuilding not far from the palace and sight of the Jeu du Paume sermon, a key turning point in the French Revolution -- has also prompted debate.
    Among Kapoor's most famous works are the giant Leviathan, an inflatable installation erected in Paris's Grand Palais, and the ArcelorMittal orbit for the London Olympic Games in 2012.
    The exhibition at Versailles officially opens on June 9 and runs until the autumn.
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