Anish Kapoor addendum

DICK SAYS: Just to clarify one thing about the works amidst which the Kapoor pieces were installed, most--and perhaps all--of the full-sized sculptures in the Chapelle are plaster copies of famous Italian pieces, including the Medici tombs by Michelangelo from the Medici chapel in Florence. So I think Kapoor is making a multi-leveled pun here. Students at the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux arts study these copies in order to improve their own skills, but of course plaster facsimiles don't resonate the way the marble originals do and cheap copies are, well, just cheap copies. Although, given his budgets, Kapoor could have used stone; instead he employs a relatively cheap material to make his piles of extruded clay. I suppose there's also a comment in here about the utility of Plaster of Pari , but I don't want to put any more words in the sculptor's mouth. I can't remember where in Italy the big equestrian statue of Italian warlord is from, but it's enormous and imposing and the clay forms set it off in way that makes it seem but grand and absurd. Enough of the off-the-cuff criticism. This was a very cool.