Calling for Culpability: Anish Kapoor's Dirty Corner

Beginning in 2008, The Château of Versailles has hosted temporary exhibitions by contemporary artists. This paper looks at the backlash incurred against the exhibition by British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor, specifically his sculpture Dirty Corner. After Dirty Corner was vandalized with antisemitic hate speech, the artist pushed back against removing the graffiti, which only compounded the already antagonistic relationship between Kapoor, Versailles, and the public. This paper posits that Kapoor’s refusal to cleanse Dirty Corner of its anti-Semitic defacement confronts France’s lingering denial of responsibility in both the Holocaust during WWII, and the nation’s burgeoning xenophobia in the wake of the European Refugee Crisis.