Anish Kapoor

0:06Welcome to This Cultural Life, a series in which the world's leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the sculptor Anish Kapoor. Renowned for his innovative, often monumental works, Kapoor gained international recognition in the late 1980s. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and won the Turner Prize the following year. Sir Anish was knighted for services to art in 2013. His public works include Cloudgate in Chicago, the Orbit sculpture next to the London Arena, commissioned to mark the 2012 Olympics, and the 110-metre-long structure of giant rings and connecting wires known as Temenos in Middlesbrough.

0:52In 2025, a piece called Butchered, a collaboration with Greenpeace, was installed onto an active shell oil rig in the North Sea as a protest against the fossil fuel industry. The Hayward Gallery in London is one of several cultural institutions around the world that's hosting major exhibitions of the work of Sir Anish Kapoor in 2026.

1:17Anish Kapoor, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you, John. I'm really pleased to be here. Many, many times over the years, you have claimed in interviews that as an artist, you have nothing to say. So let's get that out the way before we start. What do you mean you have nothing to say? I think it's really important that my views of the world, which I have very strong views on the world, of course, especially nowadays, don't get in the way of the poetic project. Paul Valéry, the great French poet, said, a bad poem is one that falls into meaning, falls into meaning, no less. therefore one must assume that a good poem is one that sits between meaning and no meaning the implication there i think is that the viewer then comes along the reader the listener the whatever they are comes along and fills that place makes the meaning or helps make the meaning It's not that the work sits there completely passive.

2:32Of course it doesn't. But it allows the space for the poetic project to be completed. So you're passing the responsibility to us, to the viewers. Yeah, it's more than just responsibility. It's engaging, if you like, a cultural life, to use your title here. But by making work which seeks to elicit independent thought, response, strong feelings, emotions, I mean, that is what you have to say in effect, though, isn't it? Totally. Of course it is. But it isn't saying that, I don't know, fascism is bad or that whatever else we might, you know, there's a big difference. Why do you make art, do you think?

3:12What is the primary motivation? Gosh. Maybe that's what we're going to explore over the next 40 minutes. Maybe it's because I don't know how to do anything else.

3:27on this cultural life anish kapoor my guests reveal the most important creative inspirations and influences on their own work and your first choice is growing up in india you were born in in mumbai formerly bombay in 1954 so what did your parents do my father was a hydrographer A hydrographer. Which is ocean map making. And your mother? And my mother was a clothes designer. So science and creativity there. Exactly. Your father was Hindu and your mother was Iraqi Jewish. Correct. So was either religion practiced at home? No. My parents were superbly cosmopolitan and open, modern human beings. You know, this is post-independence India, just post-independence India, one must say.

4:18And they had a very broad, wide view. Even though my father's family were, you know, they ran away from Pakistan. So they were kind of refugees. You know, it was difficult. And my mother's family ran away from Baghdad in the 1920s. Tried to go to America, hated it. and then went back to Baghdad and came east rather than went west, came to India. But they were poverty-stricken. My grandfather was the cantor in the synagogue in Bombay and then in Pune. So even though there was this religious background, my parents somehow were modern human beings. Would you describe them as secular? Yes, I would.

5:02When you were 16, you went to Israel to live in a kibbutz to study there as well. What took you there at the time? Well, we'd grown up in the context of, I don't know, 30 ,000, 40 ,000 Iraqi Jews in Bombay. That was the community. The Israeli agency wanted to bring Jews from all over the world to Israel. And I don't know, much to my horror, my parents decided that it was what my brother and I should do. He was 15 years old, my brother Roy, and I was 16 years old. And we were sent off. It was terrible. It was terrible in what way? It still gives you the shivers to think about it. It still gives me the shivers.

5:48I had the most awful nervous breakdown. I mean, being real, it actually happened. At 16? 16, because somehow it felt completely disorientating. It's as if I didn't understand what was happening or why. It took me a while to recover, but I did. How did you overcome it? Initially through taking Valium or whatever it is that one took in those days. And then I engaged in psychoanalysis. But the main thing for me was I hitchhiked with a friend. We could only afford to get to Istanbul. So we flew to Istanbul and we hitchhiked from Istanbul to London. I wanted to come to London. I wanted to go to art school.

6:40By then I knew I was going to be an artist. I was probably 17 and a half, maybe 18 years old. I was absolutely clear, this is what I'm going to do. I tried to go to art school in Israel, they wouldn't have me, which is great. But sorry, in the midst of this profound unhappiness, that's when you decided being an artist was your calling. and that I wasn't going to listen to my parents, to my father in particular, who wanted me to be an engineer. I understand why. He wanted me to be able to earn a living. What are you going to do as an artist? You'll never make a living. OK, well, I'll take the risk for now.

7:11What to do? So this unhappiness, was it homesickness? Was it missing India? I mean, was it missing your mother, possibly? Possibly. I don't know. I think it was my own, how can I put it, psychic instability. which you know many of us have to to live repair struggle with i think i felt that that was vital for me a awful difficult experience but one i wouldn't give up but was this instability was it only apparent when you were in israel had you had you been a happy child what was the upbringing in india i was a reasonably happy child you know i had my troubles of course with my papa but one of the amazing things that happened in israel was that i had an aunt who lived there already in tel aviv um and she was a kind of strange visionary she had these sort of sense of things and she said to my mother hilda you must go back to india and you must collect some earth from a place that matters to Anish and bring it here and put it under his bed.

8:29I could almost cry, to be honest. And she did it. She went to India, brought some earth, and put it under my bed. I was living on the kibbutz at the time. Ever since then, earth has been one of the magic materials for me. I've come back to it again and again and again. And it's rather overwhelming at one level. Anyway. I can see that this memory is still so strong for you. It is. Do you know where she took the earth from? Was it a particular place? I think it was Deiradoon, in the garden. And what did you do with that earth in Israel? I put it under the bed and then, you know what? I have no idea what happened to it.

9:19Was it a source of solace? Did it give you some strength? Yes, yes it did. So it worked? It worked. Perhaps it was about belonging. Perhaps it was about, you know, at some level inwardly tying oneself to something. And it's weird because it's nebulous, isn't it? It's a bit of earth from India. But I've come back to this thought again and again and again. It's one of those primal materials. Yeah, and that soil took you back, I guess, in a primal way, to childhood, to upbringing. You say, I mean, just give me a sense of that childhood. You say you were reasonably happy. Yes. But at the time, no obvious artistic ambitions apart from just being generally creative.

10:06Well, I was always making something. And my mother would forever be making a painting or rather copying Matisse or whoever it was. She had this strange thing. She would never finish them. And I would. And I would take them somewhere else. You know, in India, we were always the Jewish boys at school. Even though we were Jewish, you know, it wasn't a big, big feature in art. But we were the Jewish boys. So we were slightly outside. We spoke English at home. Most of my friends spoke either a regional language, of which there are so many in India, or Hindi at home. But everybody spoke English. English was at school.

10:44I went to the Doon School with my brother Roy in Derudan and the Doon School was, let's say, I don't know, the so-called Eton of India in those days. I was going to say, this is a very privileged school. It's a very privileged school. And, you know, my father earned a pittance. We went there because there was privilege for high-ranking naval officers who were allowed to send their children to such a school. We could never have afforded to go there otherwise. So you're regarded as the Jewish kids in India at school. How were you regarded when you went to Israel? Oh my gosh, that is a hard part.

11:15That's a hard thing. It was the time when Ethiopian Jews were coming into Israel in the early 70s. And suddenly we were called Kushi, Kushi meaning black. I mean, I'm brown. My brother's much fairer than I am. we were shocked shocked at how it could be that here we supposedly coming home the homeland of the jews we were suddenly set apart again and it was clear this was a term of abuse totally but it was weird and frightening remember we were kids so i knew by 73 before the war I didn't know the war was coming obviously but there I had to go and that's when I set off with this Swedish friend of mine and we hitchhiked to London Well you studied at the Hornsey College of Art and then also at Chelsea as well Yes Many people were introduced to your work around 1990 when you represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and then the following year I think it was you won the Turner Prize and you talk about the soil which links you to India But the other constant over the last 35 years or so since then has been your use of raw powdered pigment and a material which is so associated with India, of course.

12:37Is that where it started? And is that a direct reference, do you think? Yes, I think that's absolutely right. You know, that earth that was under my bed was red and I keep returning to it. And I've often pondered why. Red, of course, it's a colour of vibrance. But, of course, it's the colour of the inside of our bodies. It has this double association. Ritualistic, if you like, internal. Red makes a kind of darkness. There's a particular kind of crimson red. It was there right from the start. The very, very early pigment pieces were all red and white. And that is a reflection of the redness of the soil that you've said.

13:15Precisely. When you were first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1990, I think you were still an Indian citizen. I was. And billed at the time as a British Indian artist. Now that you are a knight, you are Sir Anish, and your work is represented on British passports, what is your relationship to India now? Oh, gosh, it's very important to me. I've lived in Britain for 50 years, but I return to India all the time. Whenever I'm there, I'm with my eyes wide open like that. It's full of magic for me. I can't think of another word. Perhaps being away from it is an important step in maintaining magic.

13:58But I do have a very strange relationship to the idea of home. I don't know where my home is. I'm homeless. I've always felt that.

14:16Your next choice for this cultural life, Anish Kapoor, is Buddhism. When did you first become a practising Buddhist? About 40 years ago. I went to the Buddhist society and felt deeply drawn to what was there and then got involved with the Zen group. Do you meditate every day now? I do. It's very, very important. The essential question here is, is perhaps about going beyond I, going beyond me. The world I inhabit, the art world especially, is full of ego, ego, ego. And this is something, this is a practice that says, uh-uh, it's beyond. Something else must occur which is not just driven by my wish, my desire, my will.

15:12Hard stuff to hold, especially in today's world. And how does that process of silent inward contemplation, how does that inform so much of the works? especially those spaces that are often hewn from rocks, from the walls, from the floor underneath our feet? I've always been very playful, and especially in the studio. I don't see it as a place where one just goes to make things. Who cares? I don't believe in that. I have a practice. I go to the studio every day. It's rather like meditation, if you like, the same kind of thing. I go there every day, and I try to let whatever has to happen happen and not direct it because I've got this thought.

15:58Let's see. Of course, you've got to get the thoughts out of the way. That'll happen first and then something else happens. One day I went into the studio and I made a bowl. It was about a metre and a half, a metre 20, let's say, deep and equivalent wide. So a big bowl, empty bowl, carved out of polystyrene. I coated it with a bit of resin and then put it on the wall and decided to paint it Prussian blue, a colour I'd hardly used until then so I put it up and painted it, say, late in the afternoon and then I went home and came back to the studio in the morning it had dried by then and to my astonishment, I thought I'd come back and it'd be a blue bowl on the wall, you know, okay it wasn't a blue bowl on the wall it was a space full of darkness different things it was not an empty space it was full rather like some of the works in the show at the Hayward so suddenly I thought what is this?

17:01Well you say full, full of what? Full of depth, ideas? Full of darkness It was literally brimmed to the top with darkness That polystyrene bowl was the start of one of the overriding recurring themes of your work which is the void The Void. The Void. And then over the next years, I'd started, just started making some works in stone. And I wondered if I made a negative space in a stone and painted it in this way, could it hold the weight of the stone? Could it have an equivalence, if you like, with the majesty, the weight, et cetera, of the stone? And I made a work called Adam. Of course, the title comes afterwards, as always.

17:46So it was a block of stone with a window in it carved in this particular way and painted the Prussian blue. And suddenly it felt to me like, wow, that negative space is as powerful, as present as the stone. Then I slowly, as I reflected on that over the years, of course, that relates to, if you like, the space inside of ourselves and the space that sits there in meditation. meditation in, all you have to do is close your eyes, you know it's there. And do some of the work start at home during the practice of Buddhist meditation? Or is it distinct and separate? Do you then have to go to the studio and think about your work and meditate on your work in a separate, in a different way?

18:30It's the second of those. So you never have the great idea when you're at home meditating? Hardly ever. Mostly it's something that occurs out of the process of playing, I like to call it, in the studio. So I've tried to work with this notion of the immaterial parallel of the material object. And it's something I've stuck with and gone to again and again and again and again. Some of the most remarkable void pieces that you have made, especially in recent years, have been using Vantablack, this substance. Well, for those who don't understand what it is, Just explain what is Vanta. OK. It's a name.

19:09Vanta Black is a name invented by the company that makes the material. I read an article in, I think it was Guardian, 15 years ago, in which a man called Ben Jensen claimed to have discovered the blackest material in the universe. And he literally said 99.8 % of all light is absorbed by this material, blacker than a black hole what that's impossible so i don't know how i got his number called him up and i we had a chat and he said oh and he's oh come on i'm nothing to do with artists you know i'm making this for space technology for defense industry and so on so forth so i said ben let's give it a go anyway eventually we gave it a go and at the time we could make little panels uh five, six, eight centimetres square.

20:03And slowly we've been able to work together and take it to other places. And just to be clear, it's not pigment, it's not paint? No, it's not. It's a technology. It's a coating that's put on a normally metal surface and then that's put into a reactor. I'm not allowed to know what the reactor is. I know that it's very high temperature. I don't know what else, though. And the particles, which are nanoparticles, stand up, rather like a piece of velvet. And what happens is that the light, as it hits the object, gets trapped between the standing particles, and most of it's absorbed. And the effect is absolutely astonishing.

20:42There's one piece in the Hayward Gallery show that's on at the moment, which is a black circle on the floor of the gallery that appears to be a perfect circle, but it looks like a black rug. There's no sense of depth, and yet I was assured by people in the gallery that there is a hole there, and if I'd walked into that hole, I would have probably disappeared up to my head. Yes, you would have. Yes, you would have, but, John, that is not a Vantablack. That hole is actually painted in Prussian blue. What? Yep. So there are two black objects in the show, in cases. Which are three-dimensional objects, which look from the front on, look like they just disappear.

21:21Exactly. Those are the two Vantablack objects. There's a little sphere, was the first one I ever made, and the other one, which is a big zigzag form. But the other works in the show are all either Prussian blue or black, a different black, not vanter black. But let me tell you a little further, if you like, fictional reality, because art is all about fiction too. In the Renaissance, there were two great discoveries. One we know about, of course, it's perspective, and the other is the fold. The fold, or early Renaissance painting, has this amazing fabric all over it. Of course, the fold is a sign of being.

22:00If you put this black material on a fold, it disappears. Now, put that to one side for the moment. Think of the great Russian painter Kazimir Malevich, who painted a black square in 1915. his proposition also related to hinduism in a sense because he's he was a theosophist was that the black square was a four-dimensional object so it's an object that if you like went beyond the three dimensions we know into some other metaphysical dimension somewhere else right now let me come back to the fold my proposition is alongside malevich that what this material does or can do is to take the object somewhere else.

22:51Let's call it the fault dimension because that's a good way of putting it. That's why I say it's fiction and reality. Yes, it is and no, it isn't. But those parallel things always live with the poetic object. That, I think, is the point. After discovering Vantablack, you secured an exclusive contract to use it as an artwork, a deal which caused outrage amongst some fellow artists. Can you understand why? No. Did it feel like that? Was it not sort of gatekeeping? No, no, no. It was, you know, we were in the middle of a very, very difficult process. Highly technical. It's not a paint. It's much, much more than that.

23:32And there's this silly fellow who's made his name from it. Bless him. I've just tried to not engage. You're talking about Stuart Semple, who's the artist who was so outraged he decided to create the pink as pink, I think. Exactly. And everybody was allowed to use it apart from Anish Kapoor. And Anish Kapoor did use it. He did use it. Somebody sent it to me and I stuck a middle finger up in an Instagram post somewhere or the other just to be silly and naughty. So you don't regret that? I mean, that is a deal that you stand by. It's not restricting artistic freedom of expression? Not at all. There are many, many places in the world that you can use, that you can get hold of this black, black material now.

24:13MIT makes it. All sorts of people make it. This is fiction. If you really want to do it, it's not cheap. It's not easy to use. It's a bloody difficult process. And I've been engaged in it. You know, it's a technical nightmare. Well, and it's incredibly delicate, isn't it? Because looking at this Hayward show and these objects that you have behind glass, so they have to be protected because it would literally fall apart. It would ruin the artwork if we brushed past it. And the material isn't good for your health. It's also extremely fragile, as you say. I hate things in cases, but there's no choice here.

24:54Your next choice for this cultural life, Vanneesh Kapoor, is the American abstract expressionist artist Barnett Newman, who's best known for these very large paintings in which a single colour, like a colour field, is divided down the middle by a bold stripe of paint. He used to call them the Zips. Where and when did you first come across Barnet Newman? I came across Barnet Newman when I was a student at Hornsey. And at first, I must say, I was completely baffled by them. What is this? Yeah, OK, it's a monochrome. Yeah, OK, it's, you know, following on from Mondrian and following on from a certain tradition of abstract painting.

25:40and then I understood that the zip, so-called, was exactly what I'd been looking for. It's a place. What it does is cite the viewer very particularly. What it does is indicate it's normally not a coloured strip, the zip. It's often a blank piece of canvas. And what it does is indicate that there's a space beyond the painting. And it does this in a very, very interesting confrontational way, forcing the viewer into a field of color. So you have, you know, let's say it's a red canvas, because I like red, but they often are red. He liked red as well. Exactly. You know, which is when you stand at the right place, beyond 180 degrees of your eyes focus.

26:32Then you're immersed. So you're immersed in the color. and then there's this zip in front of you, which is a space beyond, a space through, a space somewhere else, the void, in other words. So I've come back to this physically and metaphysically again and again and again. You know, if we compare a contemporary of his, Rothko, I feel Rothko's much easier to understand than is Barney Newman. Barton Newman is pushing that concept of spatial uncertainty to a much more difficult place. Intellectually, I also feel Barnett Newman's really challenging. What art can be? One of the questions that arises, you know, why isn't this just a decorative piece of...

27:18Why is it art? Love that question. That's a great question. But had you already seen Mark Rothko at this point when you came across Barnett Newman? I probably had. Because he would have been the bigger artist even then. Absolutely so. So Rothko, who'd already died and bequeathed the paintings, the ones known as the Seagram series, to the Tate, which are big and red throbbing paintings. Well, they're very, very dark. They're not red, but yes, OK. But there was a crimson aspect to that. Correct. What's really interesting, though, is when you sent this list through to us and Barnett Newman was on there, I initially thought that's interesting because I can't really see the relation.

27:55The way you're describing your initial reaction to a Barnett human painting, the field being immersed and then the zip being almost a portal. So it is the void. And he was the start of that, along with the Buddhist. Yeah, without realising it. Yes. How does the sense of scale of his paintings as well, because often they are very large canvases. They're big. How does that relate to your own often very monumental sculptural work in particular? Yes. I'm interested in colour as a condition, not as a coating. And one of the things that happens with Barnett Newman is when you stand in the right place and it's the right painting, of course, always has to be the right painting, you're immersed in colour.

28:43It is, you know, Yves Klein does that too at a different scale. And that is fascinating, fascinating. And that's what I've returned to. I've often talked about it as saying, you know, that I want colour to be almost as if you're going into a shower. You get completely wet. If you're looking at something red, I want you to get completely red. Colour as a condition? As a condition. Is that a form of synesthesia are you referring to? In a way, yes. So the colour itself is affecting the condition, the thought process, the emotion. Correct, correct. And I've returned to that again and again. Your current exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London is one of, I think, six major shows around the world in 2026, all showing different work.

29:30So this is a real, it's almost like an industrial operation now, a production line. How do you ensure that with such a massive team of assistants as well that there is enough Anish Kapoor in a Kapoor work? OK, OK, OK. Now, wait a minute. I don't have a massive team of assistants. I have about 12 people who work with me in the studio and eight or nine people who work upstairs in the office. Administrative stuff is huge. Sure, that's in the studio, but then there's all of the people that are involved in the construction. Indeed. So at the Hayward, for example, on the terraces, there are stainless steel works.