The Easel

23rd June 2026

Anish Kapoor disorientates, delights and disturbs at the Hayward Gallery

Kapoor likes his art big – think Chicago’s highly reflective “Bean” sculpture – and his new London show follows suit. One installation appears alarmingly like guts and there’s a monumental, “mysterious” upside-down mountain. Some objects are coated with non-reflective black that creates “a space full of what doesn’t exist”. This is vintage Kapoor, messing around with our perceptions. Says he, “Apollinaire’s notion was to take the viewers to the edge and push them over – and that remains fundamental.”

16th June 2026

A Curator’s View

Hepworth felt that her use of colour was “accepted but not understood”. It first appeared in her pre-war painted wood and plaster sculptures. After meeting Mondrian, she brought it into drawings as well as some bronze sculptures. Using colour so extensively underlines her view that colour and form together “achieve a new power & experience”. Not all critics feel this was as novel as she claimed, but does it matter? Hepworth remains “British art’s nature goddess”.