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My immense pride in
seeing Kapoor's Tate masterpiece
THERE are some things which belong to me because I watched
them being made. I feel as if I own them: even though I was
only a bystander, I played a part in their creation.
I realise this wouldn't get me far in a law court: ''Your
honour, the defendant Mr Geller insists that because he stood
over the jeweller while this diamond ring was set, he therefore
automatically became the owner of the piece and was fully
entitled to stuff it into his pocket and scarper.''
And it's not something I feel when I watch mundane construction
work. When a new office warehouse is pieced together from
girders and concrete slabs on the industrial estate beyond
our village, I might walk the dogs up there and enjoy the
rumble of the earth-movers and the vast cranes.
But I don't want to live in the finished building, or ever
step inside it for that matter.
Let me see a piece of pottery painted and glazed, though,
or watch a bubble of coloured glass blown and turned inside
an oven, or hear a song evolve in the studio from a line of
melody into a chart-topping CD track - and I won't be satisfied
until I'm eating off the pottery, and drinking from the glass,
and playing the CD to death at maximum volume on my car music
system.
So when I read a newspaper interview with Anish Kapoor, I
was seized with a sudden proprietorial pride, because I watched
the assembly of his greatest work, Marsyas.
My pride is not even slightly dampened by the admission that,
at the time, I hadn't the faintest idea what I was witnessing.
I had gone to the Tate Modern, on London's South Bank, to
visit the Barnett Newman show. Newman was a Bronx Jew whose
abstract canvases of sheer sheets of colour form a stunning
exhibition on the fourth floor.
I love the Tate Modern, not least because you reach it from
the St Paul's side of the Thames via the 'Bendy Bridge'. Sadly,
the architectural quirk which made this bridge twang and wobble
whenever crowds walked over it has been fixed.
I had hoped they'd rename it the Geller Bridge, and leave
it bendy. In the immense turbine hall of the former power
station which is now the Tate's most dramatic gallery, workmen
were clambering over scaffolding.
By the time I reached the fourth floor, maybe 150 feet above
the bottom of the hall, I was level with two hard-hatted men
wielding spanners the size of cricket bats.
They were shoulder to shoulder, taking it in turns to give
half-twists to a series of bolts as big as my fist, arranged
around a vast circular frame. With each turn, the bolts drew
a membrane of dark red leather tighter. I watched, fascinated,
as tension pulled at the huge funnel.
Its mouth was the frame, and its neck stretched down into
the bowels of the hall. It felt as if I and the workmen were
fleas, on the brink of a dog's earhole. I know that's a strange
metaphor but you have to remember that I was at the Tate.
The red leather represents the skin of a human being who
has been flayed alive by an angry god.
I learned this from the interview with Anish Kapoor, but
what sent me rushing back to the Tate, to study his sculpture
'Marsyas' with fresh comprehension, was the discovery that
Kapoor, an Indian born in the early Fifties, is Jewish.
His father was a pro-English, sophisticated naval man, from
a Hindu family. But Anish's mother was an Iraqi Jew, and ''we
were very conscious of our Jewishness. It was quite important
to us as a matter of community.
''Also, when we were growing up, the state of Israel was
being formed. When the Israeli consulate opened in Bombay,
there was huge activity and then gradually the Jews vanished
and went to Israel.
''A Hindu identity was definitely not part of my upbringing.''
He came to England in 1973, to study at Hornsey School of
Art, and discovered that London Jews regarded him as an Indian.
I know exactly how this feels: you travel halfway around the
world to be with people who will accept you for what you are
. . . and when you get there, you're as much an outsider as
ever.
With this thought I returned to Marsyas last week, and was
able to walk out onto a bridge spanning the hall, to gain
some extraordinary perspectives on the work.
It fills the whole space, stretched from end to end like
a body with its head in one land and its roots in another.
But at the centre, the funnel does half a barrel-roll and
gapes open, so you can stand under the canopy of its bowels
and gaze inside.
Marsyas in Greek myth was an arrogant musician who challenged
Apollo to a test of talent. It's an enduring legend, and country-and-western
singers keep it alive with the tale of a fiddler who threw
down the gauntlet to Satan, in The Devil Went Down To Georgia.
But the Greeks always did enjoy a tragedy, and so their version
has the saucy human losing his bet and being flayed as a punishment.
Some historians think the story is an echo of how strident
Western music wiped out the delicate flute music of the Middle
East.
Marsyas, they say, would have used the Phrygian mode. If
you want to play a Phrygian scale, start on E on a piano keyboard
and work up an octave, on the white notes only.
It's an eerie sound, and one which might easily form the
soundtrack for a tour of Anish Kapoor's masterpiece. If you
want to see it for yourself, six webcams give contrasting
views at www.tate.org.uk
Email
him at urigeller@compuserve.com
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