LONDON, May 11 (Reuters) - Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor said on Friday that Britons would grow to love his spiralling red tower on London's Olympic Park, just as people had come to appreciate other structures initially loathed, including the Eiffel Tower.
The 115-metre tall structure, higher than London's Big Ben and New York's Statue of Liberty has divided opinion, with some describing it as resembling a carnival slide or a water pipe.
But the artist, dressed in a blue labourer's style suit with zips on the legs, told reporters the tower, consisting of giant entwined steel lattice figures of eight, would win over the public.
"I think controversy is okay, it's part of the deal whether you like it or not," he said. When asked whether he thought it was beautiful, he said "yes".
"It's awkward, it has its elbows sticking out."
He said it was experimental and unsettling, and "I think that unsettling is part of this curious word 'beauty.'"
He noted the Eiffel Tower in Paris had been referred to as the most horrendously ugly structure when it was built.
"We do not think of it as such any longer do we? These things are to do with how one comes to see them," he said.
The 22 million pound ($35.41 million) tower, or orbit, is Britain's biggest piece of public art, and some critics have said it is a waste of money at a time when the country faces severe spending cuts and has just returned to recession.
The bulk of the funding has come from ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel manufacturer, after a brief discussion in a cloakroom at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in 2009, between the company's chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal and Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
"I am glad we could build it because it is a great piece of art, it is the largest sculpture, and this is a great thing to have in this part of London," Mittal, one of Britain's richest men, told Reuters. "The Olympics will be over in a couple of months but this is going to stay here for generations to come."
The Olympic Park has been built in a previously run-down part of east London and lawmakers hope it will act as a catalyst for a much broader regeneration of the area.
Mayor Johnson described the orbit as a "calling card for investment ... a symbol of prosperity and growth."
London-based Kapoor worked with structural designer Cecil Balmond, famous for his CCTV building in Beijing, to create the orbit, beating competition from around the world. |
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