On Monumentality…
Forgive me for starting our blog posts with something that leans a bit esoteric, but this is our website so I get to talk about what I want! And today that topic is monumentality. Specifically, the thoughts that I had after getting to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition in London a few weeks ago.
A Little Background
Anish Kapoor is a British-Indian contemporary sculptor. His most recognizable work to American audiences is Cloud Gate (2006), Chicago, more generally known as The Bean.
British and European audiences might recognize him from his work Sky Mirror, (2006/2010), which was displayed in various locations throughout England and the EU. [insert image of sky mirror]. For Dutch readers, the Voorlinden museum has a piece by Kapoor titled Pregnant White Within Me (2022).
Hayward Gallery Exhibition
Last week I was in London and got to see the self-titled exhibition of Kapoor’s work at Hayward Gallery in London. Kapoor is known for his large-scale installations, usually of metal, but he also works in stone, plaster, paint and other media. One aspect that is particularly integral to Kapoor’s work is that for the majority of his works the experience of the work itself is part of the art. For an artist working at large scale, this is often the case. However, Kapoor weaves in elements of liminality, perception, reality and religion in a way that pushes the viewer to be slightly (or in some cases, very) uncomfortable.
While the exhibition at Hayward Gallery encompasses a range of Kapoor’s works, including paintings and sculptures, I’m trying (and failing) to keep this brief but I want to focus on 3 of the artist’s pieces and the question that kept popping up in my head while looking at these particular: where on earth do you store works of monumental art?
For some of Kapoor’s work, the storage question has an easy answer. Take Tsunami (2025), a mind-bending metal sculpture on one of the Hayward’s outdoor terraces. With a bit of maintenance, pieces like this become part of the landscape. Another example is All of Nothing (2026), the massive red PVC inflatable that greets you as you walk in. Deflate it and it can be packed away into almost nothing.
But easy for a gallery isn’t easy for the rest of us. Even these two need space, either to install permanently or to store, and that’s the question every art lover eventually hits: do you have the room and the money for work this size? For most of us, the answer is no.
Ha Makom
The third work is the one I haven’t stopped thinking about. Ha Makom (2026) is built from wood chips, fiberglass, and resin, shaped and textured, then coated in a deep red pigment. Before you enter the exhibition, a docent warns you not to brush against it, because the color will come off on your clothes. I was, of course, wearing white that day, so while the temptation to get as close as possible was there I was also highly aware of the pigment and took more care than usual.
I have to wonder if the warning is in itself part of the work. The pigment makes you aware of your own body in the space, and it makes the piece feel slightly dangerous, as if it might leave a mark on you. Plenty of artists build immersive work, but Kapoor makes the experience a little uncomfortable on purpose. This is heightened by the fact that color is red. Almost any other color would not put our senses on alert in the same way, but to modern Western audiences red screams danger.
Ha Makom is Hebrew for “the place.” It’s also a traditional way of referring to God. Humans have a history of associating a specific place with the divine, as though trying to grasp divinity is too hard for us to manage, so we must make it corporeal by locating it within a physical space. Ha Makom explores this concept in more ways than I’m going to get into in this article, but for a work named after god, that fills a space in a way that makes you uncomfortable it’s doing the work well. However, the meaning of the divine is not actually what this post is about.
So I come back to the question I couldn’t shake: what happens to Ha Makom when the show ends?
The answer is that it doesn’t survive. The sculpture was destroyed when the exhibition closed. Kapoor and his studio retain the blueprints, so if a collector or museum wants it, it can be rebuilt in a new location at new dimensions, with the same core idea. The object is temporary, but the work isn’t. (Again, we have a lot of religious themes repeating within this work.)
This isn’t new. There are a number of artists who work this way: Sol LeWitt, Felix Gonzalez-Torres or Tino Sehgal are some examples if you want to go down the rabbit hole. But it’s easy to forget how radical it is for someone to own a work that way. What you’re acquiring isn’t a thing you can store, but a set of decisions about color, material, and presence that can take whatever shape your space allows.
So What Does This Mean for the Rest of Us?
So why have I been rambling on about monumentality? Here’s where I’m going to contradict myself. Monumentality, by definition, is about size. But I don’t think it has to be about square footage. Take what Kapoor is doing with Ha Makom and keep the spirit of it: a work that commits so fully to being what it is that you can’t ignore it. That spirit can live in a one-bedroom apartment just as well as in a gallery.
Sometimes that means going bigger in the literal sense. If you’ve been hanging the safe, medium-sized piece, maybe this is the year you buy the one that makes you rearrange the room. And while 99.9999999999% of us will never have to worry about storing work at this scale, I do think that the majority of us can go bigger in our own homes.
It also doesn’t have to be size. It could be color: the red that makes you careful about what you wear, or the saturated blue in a room full of cream. It could be subject matter, the work that’s a little uncomfortable or that people ask about at dinner. Kapoor’s piece makes you aware of your own body in the room, and any work in your home can do some version of that if you choose boldly.
For me, and I hope for you, that’s the lesson of Ha Makom. The monumental part was never just the size of the object. It was the commitment to the idea, and that doesn’t depend on how much room you have.
I wouldn’t be a decent entrepreneur if I didn’t link this back to Tiny Museum. So here’s the pitch. At Tiny Museum, we are working to connect emerging artists with collectors, and this is the conversation we want to have: not just “what fits on your wall,” but “what would you take a risk on?” So, if you’re ready to take a risk please reach out!