British artist objects to unauthorized imagery of Cloud Gate in provocative video, but says he will not pursue legal action

Anish Kapoor, the celebrated British artist, has blasted the National Rifle Association for its “nightmarish, intolerant, divisive vision” after the group used a clip of one of his works in a promotional video.

Kapoor said the use of footage of his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millenium Park by the NRA “perverts everything that Cloud Gate – and America – stands for”.

The ad featuring the offending clip first aired months ago, but Kapoor told the Guardian on Tuesday that the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, earlier this month pushed him to comment now.

“I felt that a public letter, a public declaration was appropriate and perhaps even necessary,” Kapoor said.

Known colloquially in Chicago as “the bean”, Cloud Gate is a three-storey high arcing, metallic-mirrored form that has been the visual centerpiece of the park, and a major tourist attraction, since its dedication in 2006. The NRA showed it for a brief, second-long cut in a provocative video released last August titled the Clinched Fist of Truth, which was widely criticised for directing violent language at media outlets like the New York Times, and generally, anyone perceived as a political opponent of the association.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The NRA video Kapoor objected to.

“The only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of [media] lies with the clenched fist of truth,” NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch said in the minute-long spot.

Play Video 2:47 Why is the NRA so powerful? – video

Kapoor said in his statement that the use of the image by the NRA “plays to the basest and most primal impulses of paranoia, conflict and violence, and uses them in an effort to create a schism to justify its most regressive attitudes”.

The ad’s use of Cloud Gate, and other public sculptures, seems to be aimed at making public urban spaces – those situated in liberal cities especially – seem ominous and foreboding.

Speaking with the Guardian Kapoor said the interpretive questions about why the NRA used his work the way they did are of interest to him, but added bluntly: “it’s also that, as a matter of fact I hold copyright, this is an advertisement, I disagree with what it’s saying, and they did not ask that my permission.”

Kapoor’s statement came as he announced that he was not going to pursue legal action against the NRA for the use of Cloud Gate after weighing his legal options, and the financial and emotional cost of a protracted fight against the “extremely aggressive, legalistic” association.



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“I decided it wasn’t worth the effort, much to my shame, because one does want to defend the ethical integrity of the work,” Kapoor said in the statement.

Kapoor is no stranger to controversy regarding his work, nor to using his platform for politics. Last February he was one of more than 200 artists at the vanguard of a global art coalition promising to stage exhibitions and events confronting the rise of rightwing populism. The same month he donated his entire $1m award for the Genesis prize to assist refugees.

As is typical after high-profile mass shootings, the NRA has been under increased scrutiny since a gunman killed 17 at a Florida high school earlier this month. The association has attempted to block all attempts by politicians, including conservative ones like Florida Governor Rick Scott, at introducing or enforcing new gun control legislation.

Thousands of students across the US will protest for gun control reform on Wednesday by walking out of class.