The Bean

Critics called it “The Electric Kidney Bean,” a label its creator, Anish Kapoor, described as “completely stupid.” Chicago disagreed- the public took an instant liking to the sculpture, affectionately referring to it as “The Bean.” The 110-ton artwork, measuring 33 feet high, 42 feet wide and 66 feet long, cost a reported $23 million, making it one of the world’s most expensive public sculptures.

The Bean’s first unveiling occurred in July 2004 at the official opening of Millennium Park, but not all seams had been fully welded and polished. Kapoor was disappointed with the premature unveiling, wanting his work to reach the public eye only after all finishing touches were completed. The steel “navel” underneath Cloud Gate didn’t receive its final polish until October 2006. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its reflective and highly polished exterior has no visible seams.

The Bean reflects everything- which tracks, given Kapoor’s later fascination with controlling the opposite end of the spectrum. In 2016, his studio purchased the exclusive rights to the artistic use of Surrey NanoSystem’s “blackest black”, Vantablack coating, a carbon nanotube-based material that absorbs 99.96% of visible light. The art world did not sit idly by. Artist Christian Furr told one newspaper, “I’ve never heard of an artist monopolizing a material… This black is like dynamite in the art world. We should be able to use it. It isn’t right that it belongs to one man.”

Fellow British artist Stuart Semple launched “Pinkest Pink” and made it available to anyone who wished to buy it, except for Anish Kapoor. Kapoor got his hands on the Pinkest Pink anyway and posted an Instagram photo of his middle finger coated in the pigment. Undeterred, Semple launched a Kickstarter to produce a super dark paint of his own, Black 3.0, with the same Kapoor ban intact.

So Chicago got a shiny kidney bean it insists on calling by the wrong name, and the art world got a reminder that some artists prefer exclusive rights over shared wonder. The Bean weighs as much as a Boeing 757, but Kapoor’s reputation might be carrying more baggage.