"I used to empty the studio out and throw stuff away. I now don't. There will be a whole series of dead ends that a year or two down the line I'll come back to"
About this Quote
Kapoor is confessing to a quiet heresy in the mythology of genius: the idea that serious artists are ruthless editors, purging anything that doesn’t immediately “work.” His pivot from throwing things away to keeping them reframes failure as infrastructure. The studio stops being a site of constant purification and becomes an archive of almosts, mistakes, and half-formed instincts that might ripen later.
The intent here is practical, but the subtext is philosophical. Kapoor isn’t just talking about storage; he’s arguing for time as a medium. A “dead end” only looks terminal when you’re trapped in the tempo of productivity and premiere culture. Step back a year or two and the same abandoned form can read differently: as a solution to a new problem, as a missing link between bodies of work, as evidence that your earlier self already knew something your present self is still trying to articulate.
Context matters because Kapoor’s sculptures often feel inevitable, like they arrived fully formed. This quote demystifies that inevitability. The finish may be immaculate, but the path is messy, iterative, and full of private wrong turns. There’s also an ethics of attention embedded in it: not every idea deserves the violence of disposal. Keeping “dead ends” is a refusal to let the market’s demand for clean narratives and continuous novelty dictate what counts as valuable labor.
It’s a mature artist’s view of process: less romantic about inspiration, more honest about how meaning accrues through accumulation and return.
The intent here is practical, but the subtext is philosophical. Kapoor isn’t just talking about storage; he’s arguing for time as a medium. A “dead end” only looks terminal when you’re trapped in the tempo of productivity and premiere culture. Step back a year or two and the same abandoned form can read differently: as a solution to a new problem, as a missing link between bodies of work, as evidence that your earlier self already knew something your present self is still trying to articulate.
Context matters because Kapoor’s sculptures often feel inevitable, like they arrived fully formed. This quote demystifies that inevitability. The finish may be immaculate, but the path is messy, iterative, and full of private wrong turns. There’s also an ethics of attention embedded in it: not every idea deserves the violence of disposal. Keeping “dead ends” is a refusal to let the market’s demand for clean narratives and continuous novelty dictate what counts as valuable labor.
It’s a mature artist’s view of process: less romantic about inspiration, more honest about how meaning accrues through accumulation and return.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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