Art

Anish Kapoor’s Brexit art: ‘It looks like a transition year Photoshop project’

The sculptor was asked to create a Brexit-themed artwork and this is it

I’m no art critic but there are a few problems with Kapoor’s work

Patrick Freyne's face
Patrick Freyne
Wed Apr 3 2019 - 14:35

The sculptor Anish Kapoor has been specially commissioned by the Guardian to represent Brexit in a work of art. So he has depicted the island of Britain with a vast chasm running down the centre of its landmass. He calls it "A Brexit, A Broxit, We All Fall Down."

I’m no art critic (feel free to disagree in the comments), but there are a few problems with Kapoor’s work.

First, the big chasm blends into Britain’s hinterlands in a surreal foggy vagueness. Frankly, it looks like it was put together as part of a transition year Photoshop project by a sullen teenager phoning it in. (Although, political reality has become so skewed in recent months, it’s possible we’ll find out later today that this is actually an aerial photograph).

Second, it’s a little on the nose. “Hey! What can I do to depict the vast divide that’s currently exercising the British people? Hey! What about a literal vast divide?!”

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“Brilliant. Have some money Anish Kapoor, you big hack.”

Third, if some of the wags of Twitter are to be believed, it resembles a vulva. Now, If I've learned anything from the past few decades of feminist activism it's that there is nothing wrong or shameful about female genitalia and that sex-based shame has no place in our culture (The author Lynn Enright recently wrote an excellent book on the subject).

Therefore, if the landmass of Britain wishes to generate a vulva, more power to it. And if Anish Kapoor actually meant his artwork to resemble a vulva then what he was, I assume, trying to say, is that Brexit is a beautiful thing.

That doesn’t seem like a very on-message sentiment about Brexit coming from the Guardian. So perhaps the work is unfinished. Perhaps Kapoor meant, as a final touch, to clad Britain’s nethers in pants as a way of saying “Brexit is pants” but then it was nearly deadline time and he hit the send button while sighing, which is also a very “Brexit” thing to do.

I guess we will never know and there is no way to find out, as, at the time of writing, Anish Kapoor has disappeared up his great divide.

Lynn Enright