Saptarshi Ray talked to Anish Kapoor at his London studio. Excerpts:
What prompted the idea for this exhibition? And is it on the scale you wished for?
I바카라ve always had this scale of exhibition in mind in India, which is fairly generous, let바카라s say. The problem is, sculpture by nature is of a certain scale, you can바카라t miniaturise it or break it up...so it바카라s been a long attempt to find the right space. And then of course there is the logistics of moving certain things, many of the pieces are of a certain size and that just takes awhile, which takes commitments바카라both financial and logistical. This is why we바카라ve had to assemble this team together in order to be able to do this바카라the Indian government, the British Council, the Lisson Gallery, Luis Vuitton and so on.
How much influence did your childhood in Bombay have on you?
The Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay, especially in the late 1960s, was absolutely dead. There were a few things very mustily shown, but it was almost as if in India, post-independence, the museums were trying to form an idea of what an Indian visual context might be, but it was full of cliches, cliches that we바카라ve bought into.
You바카라ve cited the Jantar Mantar park in Jaipur and the Elephanta caves as inspirational places.
It wasn바카라t really until I left India and lived here that they became special바카라maybe it always works like that...one forms a mythological vision of some kind where those things become important. It바카라s not incidental that E.M. Forster used the caves as a metaphor for that dark mysterious interior of India. I think it바카라s a very powerful emblem. There is something at least about the India I knew as a child...that remains profoundly unknowable, even in the imagination.
What became of the idea to create something to time with the recent Commonwealth Games?
It바카라s hard to overestimate what an effort this is, it바카라s like a military operation. The timing just wasn바카라t right.
Your exhibitions have stopped traffic in Chicago and caused a sensation in cities from Tokyo to Berlin, do you expect the same kind of response in Delhi and Mumbai?
What바카라s very important to me is to step beyond the art world. The art world in India is relatively small. So we바카라re trying to ensure the shows are free, not ticketed, available and approachable바카라that democratic agenda is a very important thing.
With your love of shiny surfaces and vibrant colours, is it a case perhaps that you can take the boy out of India but not the India out of the boy?
바카라Well, I don바카라t know about that...it바카라s your line!바카라 (laughs)
