Outside our Sleepwalking by Carlo Rovelli

Let me be frank. When I got the invitation to write something about Anish Kapoor’s art, my reaction was what do I know about art? I know nothing about sculpture: I fell in love with Michelangelo at a young age and stayed dully monogamous. I am a scientist, already talking about too many things I do not understand, why add one more? Also, a couple of recent works by Kapoor I saw had something dark in them that I could not relate to. So, I hesitated, then ended up saying no. Liberated by the burden, I started looking at Kapoor with a lighter heart. Got curious. More curious. I watched him in a few long video sequences, and his incessant smile touched and intrigued me. So again, I immersed myself into looking at his art. And it captivated me. Entirely. I am not sure why. Maybe for the same reason it has captivated millions. Maybe for a different one, since we are all different. So, I decided, after all, to try to write something, as an homage to Anish Kapoor, who’s greatness I think I am beginning to perceive. But the last thing I can write about is why his art is captivating. Art critics are already very good in trying (or failing) to explain this (has anybody really successfully explained Michelangelo?). Rather, I want to try saying a few words about how the trail Anish has been following resonates for me as a scientist. Because maybe it is here that I have been fascinated by something as a hidden affinity. Kapoor, from this perspective, is simple: he dares to go. He dares to go where nobody has been, on the edge of what is known, hoping to take the rest of us with him. He tries new spaces, gives us new perspectives, new scales, colours, materials, balanced on a razor edge between what we recognize and what we do not. This is his magic. And this search is precisely what the best science does: daring to go. Where nobody has been, on the edge of what is known, hoping this would make sense and redraw the way we understand the world. Give us new spaces, new perspectives, new scales, balanced on a razor edge between what we recognize and what we do not. This is also science’s magic.

Now, what is this space where art is trying to go? Where is this space that lies beyond what we have accessed already? I think that calling it “spiritual” is just to declare that we are not even marginally interested in understanding what it is, and calling it “emotional” is to demean it. I think it is in fact much closer to the space that science aims to explore, although of course with radically different means. I look at one of the works by Kapoor. It is an object, it has a shape, it has a colour, that reflects light in this or that manner, it has a texture, maybe there is even something moving. But what I see is not the object in itself and it is not the passing clouds in the sky, as in many of his mirrored surfaces. Even the colour that reaches me is determined by the structure of my retina more than by the object itself. A shape, a texture, is something that our brain interprets, connects. Something that resonates. Everything we see resonates. If we see a chair, we know it is a chair, it resonates with its function, with innumerable memories related to similar or different chairs in our experience; we read it in light of a complex structuring of our world vision. There are no brute objects out there. There are only interpreted objects, constructed by the kaleidoscopic network of interactions that ties them with what is around them, with us, and with the vast complexity of what happens in our brain. But most objects are easily recognized and archived as known stuff in our brain. We pass by so many of them daily without paying attention, because they have already been understood. Until, that is, something resonates stronger, or until something takes our hand and leads us to question our categorizations, because it triggers some new connection, a new way of looking at things. I think this is the best art: it gently suggests to us a new way of looking at things. Which is exactly what science does, with other means. This is why it is rare, it is at the edge, it borders the unknowable and the ineffable. Because it plays with meaning itself. It reminds us of something we too often forget: that reality is far richer than the dull categorization of it on which we daily sleepwalk.

And Anish Kapoor does so. Oh, how much he does so. We got lost in his holes, bewitched by his pure colour – materials and shapes, disoriented by his
scales, confused by his mirrors, we lose track of what is inside and what is outside, we get fascinated by
skin that reveals and hides the matter. As it was for the renaissance artist, his craftsmanship is at the service of opening our eyes to new readings. What happens when we perceive a piece of art is of course not in the object itself, and even less in some mysterious spiritual world: it is in the vast complexity of our brain, in the kaleidoscopic complexity of the network of the relations that make for us what we call meaning. We are deeply engaged, because it takes us a bit outside our sleepwalking, and restarts the joy of seeing something anew in the world. The same joy that science gives me. I have heard Anish saying, with his unmistakable smile, “I have nothing to say”. Yes, of course, if we knew upfront what to say, why would we need art? If we knew it already, why would we need science to search?