Art & Creativity Quote by Anish Kapoor

“I, in the end, make art for myself” sounds like a retreat from the market, the museum, the audience. Coming from Anish Kapoor, it’s also a provocation. Kapoor’s work has always engineered encounters that feel public and communal: the reflective lure of Cloud Gate, the vertigo of voids and cavities, the way his pigment seems to swallow light. He makes objects that need you there. So why insist on “myself”?

Because it’s a claim of sovereignty in a culture that constantly tries to annex artists: collectors want assets, institutions want foot traffic, cities want icons, critics want positions you can hashtag. Kapoor’s line draws a boundary around intention. “In the end” is a tell: he knows art is negotiated in public, mediated by budgets and commissions, and still he’s asserting that the final authority isn’t the crowd but the maker’s internal necessity.

The subtext isn’t selfishness; it’s an ethics of attention. Kapoor’s practice circles the unnameable - the void, the sublime, the bodily and the cosmic - experiences that get flattened when art is treated as content or civic branding. Making “for myself” is a refusal to pre-chew meaning, a commitment to risk confusion, even to risk displeasing. It also quietly repositions the viewer: you’re not a customer being catered to, you’re a witness invited to meet the work on its terms.

In an era where artists are urged to be legible, virtuous, and instantly communicative, Kapoor’s statement argues for opacity as a form of honesty. The most public work can still originate in private compulsion. That tension is exactly why it lands.