August 23, 2018

"Someone fell into artist Anish Kapoor’s bottomless pit sculpture/Or, an accounting of the most absurd art-world accidents in recent history."

My Google alert on "artist" turned up that Fast Company article:
On view as part of museum Fundação de Serralves‘s survey exhibition on Kapoor’s work, the eight-foot-deep hole is located inside a free-standing 20-foot concrete cube, which helps create the optical illusion that it’s either an infinite void or just a black circle painted on the ground, depending on your perspective. In reality, the work is actually just a pit covered in black paint.

It’s not clear exactly how the man fell in, given that the museum posted signs and had a security guard present....  Kapoor’s black holes have landed him at the heart of art world controversy before, particularly surrounding his exclusive rights to make art with Vantablack, a material developed by Surrey Nanosystems that absorbs 99.9% of light and is considered the blackest substance currently known. Descent Into Limbo is more than two decades old and far predates Kapoor’s use of Vantablack, which, coincidentally, is frequently likened to a black hole. 
It's really cool that a product was invented that creates the illusion of what the artist had previously constructed in 3-D and perhaps a bit disturbing — as I wrote about earlier this year — that the artist possesses a particular unique paint. But given the artist's connection to Vantablack, it's easy to see how the falling-into-the-hole man may have arrived at the idea that he should step "onto" the "hole." If he did not know that the artwork predated Kapoor's acquisition of Vantablack, he may have believed that he'd prove the hole was merely an illusion.

I've seen other bloggers linking to this story, but it came to me via my Google alert, which brings me all manner of junk every day and maybe 1 in 100 is, like this one, worth blogging. But it seems all those other bloggers see fit to put up a Warner Brothers cartoon that has an actually painted black circle that some of the time is a hole. In deference to all that has gone before, then, I give you this fancier iteration of the idea:

24 comments:

My name goes here. said...

I think it's sad that Wile E. Coyote is only remembered for his violence and not for his brilliantly realistic paintings of tunnels.

Michael K said...

We have a couple of roadrunners in our yard. It's nice because they eat rattlesnakes.

Michael K said...

They even climb trees.

Bob Boyd said...

Demagogutoonery - When a politician or political agitator creates a cartoonish public spectacle to incite the passions and prejudices of another party causing them to rush into the cartoon only to find the joke is on them.

Ex-prosecutor said...

I need a good personal injury case, Would the museum let me scatter some cards around the attractive nuisance, as we in the ambulance-chasing biz like to call it?

Marc in Eugene said...

"That Kapoor, whom I have written about previously, would presume to claim that his empty, meaningless work is comparable to the sublime, powerful imagery of Mantegna is of a piece with Kapoor’s career overall." From attorney/critic William Newton's observations about the incident at his blog the other day.

Bill Peschel said...

Thanks for the clip. I'm reminded just how well they did animation and how terrible Hanna-Barbera and other studios did using the same techniques.

tim in vermont said...

In a somewhat related matter, Einstein taunts climate science from beyond the grave.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/star-orbiting-black-hole-einstein-gravity-general-relativity

Picture of actual black hole is pretty cool, well, a picture of the actual effects of one.

Bob Boyd said...

The first rule of holes should be, "Don't fall in the hole."

Dave in Tucson said...

The definitive Looney Tunes for this is a 1955 short called The Hole Idea, about a guy who invents "portable holes", upon which hi-jinks ensues.

bagoh20 said...

Artist: "You see that void over there? That's where my artwork would be if I had any talent."

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Now you're thinking with portals!

Fernandinande said...

"Don't fall in the hole."

What happens in the hole stays in the hole.

WK said...

The article did not name the man that fell into the hole. Ironic if it was Stanley Yelnats.

Darrell said...

Don't fall in the hole.

This is where "front hole" and "back hole" labels become especially useful.

Ralph L said...

I got stuck on "pit covered in black paint." If the pit is covered, no wonder he fell in.
It's a trap!

Darrell said...

There is a long-running TV show in Japan whose name translates as People Falling Into Holes. That's the whole concept. They set up traps for regular people and celebrities to fall into covered traps. The trick is getting it to fit into the rest of the surroundings. The traps always had been filled with water, but they seem to go dry recently. I bet there is a reason.

rehajm said...

-What does it say to you?
-It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.
-What are you doing Saturday night?
-Committing suicide.
-What about Friday night?

J Lee said...

Wile E's holes were horizontal. You had to go elsewhere in the Warners cartoon world to find the first holes that were vertical....

Ralph L said...

I bet there is a reason.

They want Japan to have more lawyers.

D 2 said...

Roadrunner - Coyote /// Tweety - Sylvester /// Bugs - Elmer Fudd

Kids today, some analogies are lost on them.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

like stupidity, this type of art should be painful

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

What is this, Sparta?

Tom T. said...

Maybe it's because the artist's name is "Anish," but the crack in the wall with the hole below makes it look like he fell into someone's giant buttocks.