I’ve read most of the back and forth regarding the newly installed Cloud Column in Houston as compared to the Cloud Gate in Chicago – both sculptures by Sir Anish Kapoor.
Some have written that the only difference between the two is that Houston’s is vertical while Chicago’s is horizontal. In fact that is only where the dissimilarities begin.
Gate was a site specific piece selected in a competition and fabricated by computer aided machinery. The reflected images in it are distorted, at times like a fun house mirror.
Column was a commissioned piece fabricated by hand and never installed by the original patron. Its creation predates Gate but its unveiling supersedes it. The convex section behaves like Gate. The concave section turns the reflected images upside down – an effect Kapoor explored in Sky Mirror, one version of which is installed at Texas Stadium in Arlington (which is not Dallas!).
At some point Gate was dubbed Bean – I suppose because it actually looks like a bean. Column does not look like a bean regardless of how many allegedly informed writers call it a bean or exploit every permutation of a bean pun in their headlines and proses.
What is common in both is a reflective piece of art in which the artist invokes Cloud – perhaps an attempt to connect the viewer to something above and beyond oneself – a self that is apparently consumed with taking selfies for the foreseeable future.
By the way, when I was your age, a selfie was the mirror one looked at once before leaving the house in the morning.
Hopefully someone will come up with a clever nickname for Cloud Column – my favorite right now is Rocket.
And as one who has been fortunate to see both in person (as opposed to some of the critics), in my view, pictured here, Cloud Column is beautiful.
the City 