A man filmed himself walking up to the sculpture, muttering something as he did so, then played back the footage and, seemingly unsatisfied with it, shot it all over again. He’s crafted something that seems to suck in its surroundings and spit them back out, warped and stranger than they once were.īut no one I observed seemed much interested in any of that. Standing before it, staring at the distorted images of Tribeca stretching across its surface, I began to wonder if the sidewalk below was caving a little, buckling beneath its weight. I must give Kapoor this: his mini-Bean does mess with the mind a little. Regardless, the niche that shelters the mini-Bean provides viewers less access than those who visit Cloud Gate, which stands free for visitors to circumambulate as they please. It’s not clear whether they’ll be there permanently. These blockades were makeshift-they seem to be crafted from plastic construction materials crudely placed around it-and they accidentally interrupt the glossiness Kapoor meant to evoke. On Thursday, portions of the mini-Bean were barricaded, possibly so that troublemakers can’t slip under or around it and get into its crevices. According to the Tribeca Citizen, the sculpture is “suspended with a system of cables and spring members so that it will be able to move slightly with changes of temperature and wind and snow loads.” Yet the other day, as frigid gusts blew past, Kapoor’s sculpture hardly budged in a noticeable way. The technical fetishism even extends to the area around the mini-Bean. One of them got to work, then let the soap dry, only to find, minutes later, that the suds hadn’t left the work spotless after all. The steel plates are already flecked with water stains (will they survive a winter blizzard or a summer downpour?), and on a recent afternoon, I watched as a small group of workers studied how best to squeegee the sculpture to keep it clean. In renderings, this new Kapoor sculpture gleams like a freshly buffed car. A close look reveals several long, thin slits running across the piece only from afar do they disappear, making the sculpture come off as the tacky fast-fashion cousin of its couture Chicago counterpart. With the mini-Bean, however, the edges of some of the plates are nakedly visible. Photo Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesĬloud Gate was fabricated from enormous steel plates that are welded seamlessly together, making the sculpture appear endless and smooth, even otherworldly. There’s little to fawn over with this new mini-Bean, however, which is nowhere near as elegantly fashioned as the rest of Kapoor’s work.Īnish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (2004–06), the work on which the mini-Bean is based, has proven a popular attraction in Chicago. Much has been made of this new work’s technical qualities-a typical focal point when discussing Kapoor’s art, which has previously included a permanently churning whirlpool and pieces made from the world’s blackest black. In 2021 Curbed New York made a plea for the piece to remain that way, arguing that Chicago’s Bean should be allowed to retain its glory, but alas, that was not to be. (The building itself was completed more than five years ago.) Manufacturing difficulties and the pandemic caused the piece’s years-long delay, and for a while, the mini-Bean existed only as a partially empty shell New Yorkers could see from the street. This new sculpture, which may have cost as much as $10 million to fabricate, had always been a part of the building plan, appearing in reporting on the Herzog & de Meuron building as early as 2008. (Kapoor bought one of those units for more than $13.5 million.) The tower rises so high, you can’t see its uppermost floors from the street, but if you were in an airplane, you’d notice that portions of them jut out like unevenly laid blocks. Designed by the starchitect firm Herzog & de Meuron, the building, known as the Jenga Tower, contains 60 stories of luxury condominiums, some of which even overlook the mini-Bean. In some ways, it feels like a mistake to call Kapoor’s sculpture public art, however, since the structure above it is about as private as it gets. Kapoor’s latest is a big, shiny, reflective object that feels like the final boss of ugly public art in New York-not that that will stop people from flocking to it. Yet this sculpture is no Cloud Gate, and personally, I wouldn’t mind if the building above it made good on its promise and crushed the thing altogether. Anish Kapoor's Bean Sculpture in New York Is Finally Here
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