Sunday 15 November 2009

The Laugh

Early train from Paris. Into London and bright joyous sunshine. What are the options with a few hours to kill before work? A cycle along the canal to the zoo to make the most of my new London Zoo all year entry card? Or a bit of art?

Art. Royal Academy art. Anish Kapoor is gracing the galleries though I wonder just what it takes these days to be called art.

The boy Kapoor has done well. My favourite bit was having a canon fire a 50lb globule of wax at one of the white walls. This is art? This is damn lucky.

I guess the creativity comes from having the guts (and the back catalogue) to say to the curators: "Look, what we're going to do is explore the relationship between violence and formation in the supra context of global reduction." I paraphrase of course.

But the canon went off and caused a flurry of chattering. It was a loud bang and the splat of wax was equally impressive.

One room was devoted to sludges. It reminded me of Paris. Lots of doggie dejections piled up high. Needless to say I thought these particular pieces were crap.

Loved the mirrors. Anybody who gets people in to look at themselves while looking at his art gets my vote.

Gets my laugh too.