This is not a vagina: Kapoor sets fire to Versailles – The Obs

Well, still a controversy at Versailles. It has become a habit: every spring, when contemporary artists are invited to exhibit there, the veterans out their carabiners. This year, the writer shows her Christian Combaz Blaster in the columns of “Figaro”. His target? The sculptures and installations that the British Anish Kapoor placed in the castle gardens and in the hall of the Tennis Court. For him, the matter is clear. All of this is:

a sly and lucrative financial speculation operation “

And to clarify that the already famous” vagina of the Queen “(the title of the work is. made “Dirty Corner” and in the press conference he gave on Friday, Anish Kapoor has denied -vaguement- have used his words against a journalist of “Sunday Journal”) was obviously not installed “on shopping mall parking lot Quatre Temps “to the defense. Combaz sees evidence that Kapoor wished to” shoot his mouth conch “to Versailles to realize somehow” a big selfie ten million. “What Combaz does not know is that this piece has already been exposed in Milan in 2011, in a former workshop reserved for trams The public-contrary to what happens in Versailles -. could enter this long cornucopia of sixty meters. And there is not the shadow of a controversy …

A Chicago, London …

Combaz still evokes the financial aspect, indicating that any This operation is in fact intended only to advance the odds of Kapoor. Problem: has he really need? On the auction market, a work by Kapoor is at most one and half million euros. Can a single exposure sufficient to boost this rating? Certainly not

Especially since Kapoor has exhibited large format works in public spaces. Chicago, tourists are photographed in front of his “Cloud”, imposing cloud polished steel; in London, he had installed a gigantic tower “ArcelorMittal Orbit”, funded by Arcelor Mittal, before the Olympic city. Certainly these installations in public spaces increase its notoriety. But a rating is not built only with notoriety.

A target for traditionalists

Two councilors from Versailles, Valerie and Aubigny Fabien Bouglé belonging to the opposition “Versailles Family Future” have meanwhile sent Saturday, June 6th a letter to the President of the castle and estate of Versailles, Catherine Pégard to denounce “the serious infringement of the historical and cultural heritage” and these “provocative and systematically orientated exhibitions.” It is not clear why the exhibitions should not have “sexual nature”, in which case it should dump half museums -and even move some of the sculptures of the castle of Versailles. Beyond these attacks is contemporary art that, once again, suffered the wrath of traditionalists for whom the establishment must comply with aesthetic criteria defined once and for all.

Anish Kapoor -who complained in the columns of the newspaper “Le Monde” of having to find himself the money necessary to fund the show – is in any case not an enemy of ancient times. He bought recently for several million euros, an old English mansion surrounded by a field of 54 acres in the county of Oxfordshire. So why throw stones at those who obviously loves the old stones?

Bernard Géniès