An air-powered cannon soon will blast blood-red gobs of wax into the corner of a Bollywood landmark and ARTKABINETT social network of fine art collectors hopes to be there to get "blobbed".
Artist Anish Kapoor is storming his birthplace Mumbai with an exhibition at the Mehboob Film Studios (Nov. 30-Jan. 16, 2011). Two days earlier, he opens another show at New Delhi's National Gallery of Modern Art (through Feb. 27, 2011).
They're the first in his native India, where he isn't a household name.
Kapoor gets plenty of recognition elsewhere. He has public sculptures in Chicago (Cloud Gate, featured on today's homepage video)) and New York (Sky Mirrorî). Heís designing subway stops in Naples, Italy, and a twisted red steel tower for the 2012 London Olympics. 
As masked assistants in overalls weld and buff his work, he shows the media around his India maquettes. Heís trailed by art dealers, corporate sponsors and well-dressed collectors with designer handbags draped over their forearms.
Luxury Saris
Present in Kapoorís atelier is Yves Carcelle, head of fashion and leather goods at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the sponsor of both shows. LVMH, which has just designed a sari-inspired collection, is thinking India: The luxury-goods market there may grow as much as 5 percent to 900 million euros ($1.26 million) this year, according to Bain & Co.
Vuitton later hosts a luncheon for Kapoor in a top-floor suite of its New Bond Street store. Works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Prince hang over cappuccino-toned divans; waiters serve mini dishes of lobster and beef with vintage champagne. The worlds of art and money overlap. 
With regard to London Vuitton (seen right), Kapoor knows his work serves as a status symbol for some.
"Look, one has to be fairly mature and sophisticated about so-called fame and money and whatever else,î he says. Pointing to an unglamorous work made of worm-shaped spurts of concrete, he says, ìReally, it allows all this stuff!"
Career-wise, Kapoor is in a good place. His 2009 show at the Royal Academy of Arts drew 275,000 visitors, a record for a living artist. He had the loud cannon there, and a train of red wax that slowly lumbered its way through arched doorways.
Tons of Fabric
From May to June, the sculptor will show a commissioned work in Paris's domed Grand Palais (after Anselm Kiefer and Richard Serra): 15 tons of fabric that he hopes will inflate and stand up on opening day.
Fear of failure is always present.
"That is the whole definition of a creative life, is that it is at risk," he says. "It is that complicated process of saying, -- I don't know what I'm doing, I'm going to do it anyway."
For the London Olympics park, Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond are putting up a 115-meter (337 feet) tower -- taller than Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty -- costing 19.1 million pounds ($31 million) and funded mostly by ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steelmaker. It looks like a red oil rig twirling around itself.
He says towers usually have two symmetrical sides that hold each other up. "Cecil and I came up with this notion that maybe we could make a 21st-century tower that isnít doing that in that way, thatís irrational, that looks like itís about to fall over,î he says. ìAs you move around it, the whole thing changes."
Auction Record
Kapoor's record auction price (pictured here, courtesy Life) -- 1.94 million pounds, set in July 2008 -- is a fraction of the 12.92 million pound artist record that Jeff Koons hit in June 2008.
Kapoor has resisted turning his studio into an art assembly line, though some of his sculptures come in multiples, and he does employ assistants.
"I'm not interested in art that is about the market: I find that small, small-minded," he says. Money is "a tool in looking": Work worth tens of millions takes on an ìemotional quality" it lacks when worth 10 pounds, he says.
Beyond that, "all artists are after the idea that the work endures," he says. "Monetary value is part of the test of endurance." When asked how heíd like to be remembered, he laughs out loud. "Oh God, I don't know, Iím still making the work," he says. "Come on, I'm young, give me a break!"
courtesy, Farah Nayeri in London/Bloomberg
