Welcome home, this time to glory and groupies

She stood there, transfixed, in one of those skin-sculpting little black dresses, admiring herself like a, well, latter day female avatar of Narcissus.

Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel curvilinear “S-curve” sculpture, polished to beyond perfection, threw back an image of a lithe body with a pert bum. “Hey, move over,” her friend standing alongside said, nudging her, “I want to stand in the very same spot so that my bum looks as taut as yours.”

Don’t blame the ladies. Or the spiffily turned out young men preening before the uncannily distorting surfaces of sculptures, when not networking: the reality in most cases was far less flattering than the illusion, sleight-of-eye, of Kapoor’s uncannily distorting surfaces.
Le tout Mumbai turned up, many of them branded from tip to toe, at the inauguration of Anish Kapoor’s exciting exhibition in the cavernous and imposing Mehboob Studio in Bandra this week.

Actually, quite a bit of Delhi’s beau monde hopped over for the Mumbai opening. Not the least of all for the series of parties held for the Mumbai-born and London-based artist who was being feted as a British monarch visiting India might have been when the sun had not yet set on the British Empire.

In Delhi, the ladies (and the odd gent) who lunch and crunch and tear the less “with-it” apart — scrambled to host a dinner for Mr Kapoor. The halo round his lovely silver hair shone even stronger after Sonia Gandhi’s glowing words about him at the opening of his show at the NGMA in New Delhi.

The grande dames of Mumbai were as quick off the mark to try and get the Turner-prize winning artist home. It matters not if few of the fresh adherents of the new glitter-arty brigade probably think Modigliani is a place in Italy.

Well, if you could not get Mr Kapoor to your salon, the next best thing was to get invited to an after-party. At one of these — in the Bandra home of a collector, in a private disco to be precise — the Beautiful People danced, presumably inspired by Anish Kapoor’s huge stainless steel sculpture given pride of place there. Let’s just hope that they don’t “colour” the work with strobe lights next time.

The gilded collectors are now buying Anish Kapoors; apparently, a savvy dealer has managed to sell four in Mumbai.

I have a little problem with this. When Mr Kapoor came to India about 10 years ago looking for sponsors to help bring a significant show to India, he met a few of industrialists. Not one opened his or her purse. Today, the Louis Vuitton bag ladies behave like Anish Kapoor groupies —hopping on to the Mumbai-Delhi shuttle as if they could not get enough time basking in the aura of the artist.

Apropos, Louis Vuitton managed to steal a lot of the thunder and get their money’s worth: at the private preview in Mumbai there was an elegant dinner spilling over with the Page3s, starlets, stars, fashionistas and the Malabar Hill lot.

Certainly, LV is one of the sponsors of this exhibition, but Lisson, Gallery (Mr Kapoor’s gallery) really bankrolled this, with a little help from the government and the Tatas.

One small confession: I went to the Mehboob Studios expecting to be underwhelmed.

I came out stunned and truly engaged. I had never heard an Indian artist say that he/she was a fan of another artist. It is amazing how many told me they were Anish Kapoor fans.

Welcome home, Mr Kapoor.