Creativity Quote by Anish Kapoor

For an artist of Anish Kapoor's scale, a "bad review" is never just a note in the margins; it's part of the weather system around the work. "Take that in your stride" is deliberately unromantic language - athletic, almost bored - and that's the point. Kapoor frames criticism as movement, not verdict: something you absorb without breaking pace. The phrasing rejects the romantic myth of the artist as a raw nerve, forever wounded by reception. Instead, it sketches professionalism as emotional discipline.

The intent is partly protective, partly strategic. Kapoor has built a career on objects that insist on physical encounter - voids, mirrors, monumental forms that swallow your body and give it back distorted. That kind of work invites grand claims and, inevitably, backlash: accusations of spectacle, of market-friendly scale, of public art as branding. By refusing to dramatize the bad review, he denies critics the power to make the conversation about his sensitivity rather than his choices. It's a quiet power move: you can judge the work, but you don't get to narrate my interior life.

The subtext also nods to the ecosystem of contemporary art, where press, institutions, and collectors can turn reviews into currency. "In your stride" signals long game. Kapoor isn't saying criticism is meaningless; he's saying it's not governance. The artist keeps walking, and the work keeps accruing meanings, long after the headline cools.