Anish Kapoor: ‘Humbled’

June 14: Anish Kapoor, who is Britain’s most successful sculptor, has been given a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, it will be formally announced tomorrow.

Kapoor, 59, who was born in Bombay but has lived in London since the early 1970s, is the co-designer with Sri Lankan Cecil Balmond of the Arcelor-Mittal Orbit — the 115-metre-high steel tower in the Olympic Park, Stratford.

He said: “I am honoured and humbled to receive this honour and I want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have helped me during my career. I would like to thank them all for making it possible.”

Kapoor will go to Buckingham Palace where the Queen will tap him on the shoulders with a sword and utter the magic words: “Arise, Sir Anish.”

Kapoor, who studied at the Hornsey College of Art and the Chelsea School of Art and Design, won the Turner Prize in 1991. His work, often based on geometric sculptures made from materials including stainless steel, granite, limestone and marble, is shown around the world.

In 2011, he dedicated his work Leviathan, which was on show at the Grand Palais in Paris, to artist Ai Weiwei after he was arrested by the Chinese government.

He described his Orbit tower as beautiful but “awkward”. Kapoor said: “It has its elbows sticking out. In a way it refuses any singular capture. It refuses to be an emblem. It is unsettling and I think that is part of this thing of beauty.”

Kapoor represented Britain in the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, when he was awarded the Premio Duemila Prize. In 2002 he received the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.

His notable public sculptures include Cloud Gate, Millennium Park, Chicago, Sky Mirror exhibited at the Rockefeller Centre, New York, in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in 2010, Temenos, at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough, Leviathan at the Grand Palais in 2011 and ArcelorMittal Orbit commissioned as a permanent artwork for the Olympic Park and completed in 2012.

He has steadily climbed into the upper reaches of British society. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1999 and in 2003 he was made a Commander of the British Empire. In 2011 he was made a Commander in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and was awarded the Japanese Praemium Imperiale.

Kapoor was born to a Hindu father and a Jewish mother whose family emigrated from Baghdad when he was a few months old. Eight years ago Kapoor was appointed a trustee of the Tate Gallery by the British Prime Minister.

According to the Tate announcement, “the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery was established by the Museums and Galleries Act, 1992 as the governing body of Tate. The board consists of twelve members, three of whom are practising artists and one of whom is a National Gallery Trustee.

Board members are appointed by the Prime Minister and the chairman of the board is appointed by the trustees from amongst themselves.”

The statement said: “Appointments to the board are for four years and trustees are eligible for one further re-appointment after that time; current policy is for artist trustees only to serve for one term.”

A spokeswoman for the Tate said that the trustees are responsible for all four Tates, namely “Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives”.

It was pointed out that “many of these have been internationally recognised artists, including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Victor Pasmore and Anthony Caro. Their contribution to the development of Tate has been inestimable.”

As one of the trustees, Kapoor will have a say over purchasing policy but he cannot fill the galleries with either his own or his friends’ works. There is a register to ensure there is no conflict.

Born in what was Bombay in 1954 to a Hindu Punjabi father and an Iraqi Jewish mother, Kapoor has had a complicated relationship with India.

He acknowledges he is of Indian origin but he has always gone out of his way to stress he is an artist, not an Indian artist or even a British Asian artist.

The Tate said today: “After studying at Hornsey College of Art and then the Chelsea School of Art, he went on to teach at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. His first solo exhibition was in Paris in 1980, and from that point he rapidly gained an international reputation, with a succession of one-man shows held annually throughout the world.

“He has represented Britain at the Paris and Venice Biennales, and won the Turner Prize in 1991. Examples of his work are seen in many public and private collections. He served on the board of Arts Council England from 1998 to 2002, and was elected Royal Academician in 1999. He lives and works in London.”

Kapoor betrayed his Indian origins in his earlier works by experimenting with rich, vivid, earthen-coloured pigments.