[Nettime-ro] For your attention

[bory@xmail.com]

Bory spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

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Note from Bory:

Despre cea mai noua lucrare a lui Anish Kapoor.
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To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk

Tate unveils its biggest work
Anish Kapoor's 155 metre sculpture Marsyas is one of the largest in the world, but the artist frets at talk of its size
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Tuesday October 08 2002
The Guardian


The artist thought it was in poor taste to discuss the size of his installation. 

Marsyas, Anish Kapoor's new creation at Tate Modern, is already exceedingly big, and it still has a few metres to stretch.  

It is the biggest sculpture at Tate Modern - at 155 metres, longer than the outstretched wings of Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, though not as tall - and probably the biggest in any art gallery in the world.  

It answers spectacularly the regular plaintive question from puzzled first time visitors to the former power station, who walk in and ask: "But where is the art?" They cannot help but walk slap into the art now: it fills the cathedral-sized space of the turbine hall from end to end.  

Curator Donna de Salvo, who described it as inspiring terror and awe, said: "It will undoubtedly come to be seen as one of the most significant sculptures of this century."  

Cecil Balmond, chairman of Arup Europe, was the engineer who worked out how to turn the artist's drawings into an arc of raw flesh coloured PVC - the title refers to the Greek legend of the musician flayed alive by Apollo, because he played the flute better than the god - stretched across three giant steel rings. He was delighted to talk about size.  

All the PVC, made by a German firm from French fabric welded in Hungary, which unfolded into the largest span of unsupported sculptural fabric ever created, arrived at Tate Modern packed into one chest freezer-sized box.  

"It was hugely complex in engineering terms," Mr Balmond said. "It is at the very edge of what is possible."  

Sir Nicholas Serota was very happy to talk about size. Kapoor, a Turner prize winner, had to follow two extraordinary acts in the Unilever series of huge annual commissions, the opening installation by Louise Bourgeois, and what turned out to be the final major work by Juan Munoz before his death last year. Both pieces, though gigantic, occupied only the eastern end of the hall. This time, from the start, the Tate wanted an artist who would take on the whole awesome space.  

In the small hours of the eve of yesterday's launch, after three weeks' night and day building work, a tiny problem emerged, not unrelated to size.  

"It is very nearly ready," Sir Nicholas admitted, "we're just not quite there."  

By this morning it should have been stretched to its greatest tension, so that all the wrinkles and folds disappear and the fabric appears as taut and solid as the metal in which Kapoor more commonly works. It will by then be very big indeed.  

"I don't think it's the biggest sculpture in the world, but that doesn't interest me," he said firmly. "I am not interested in scale for scale's sake. Scale is just scale."  

Marsyas will be on display at the Tate until next April, and may then be sold. The artist made it clear that it would be in even poorer taste to ask for how much.  

Contact his agents, he suggested. 

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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