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Starting With Picasso Chicago's Finest Art Isn't All in the Art Institute |
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By Hal Higdon
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iss Vincent would have been proud. Jean Anne Vincent taught Art History when I attended Carleton College many years ago. As an Art Major at that Northfield, Minnesota institution, my main focus was studio art--but to get a degree, those of us who wore paint-stained jeans also needed to study Art History. Miss Vincent introduced me to Egyptian temple art, Greek vase painting and Roman aqueducts, as well as numerous painters from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso.
Thus, as I stood before the Picasso Statue about to lead a tour of the Outdoor Art of Chicago, I knew that Miss Vincent would have been proud of her former pupil. My tour group featured members of my class of 1953. We were planning our 50th reunion. Because many came from out of town, I had volunteered to show them Chicago's Outdoor Art. When you say "art" in Chicago, most people think of the Art Institute, or skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe, but Chicago--as much as London or Paris or Rome--has an amazing display of outdoor statues, starting with Picasso.
For my classmates, I had carefully planned an itinerary featuring five statues within five blocks of each other, plus another five statues three blocks further away. I began my lecture: "This is 'The Picasso.' Chicagoans call it that. The artist never gave his work a name, nor has anybody come up with anything appropriate, although some say it looks like a bird, or the head of a woman, or a pile of rusty iron. It is all those things. Given Picasso's great ego, he probably was quite happy that the statue is known only by his name."
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Picasso's Picasso is
known only by the artist's name.
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The first five statues (the most impressive ones) were created respectively by: Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet, Marc Chagall and Alexander Calder. All are in the central Loop, that area defined by circling Elevated tracks. Five more grace the grounds of the Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue, sculpted by: Edward Kenneys, Lorado Taft, Henry Moore, David Smith and (again) Alexander Calder. Of course, there are dozens of other sculptures listed in a booklet titled Loop Sculpture Guide, that I had picked up at a gift shop in the Chicago Cultural Center on the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. But time and aging legs dictated how much we could see in the few hours available.
Art for youngsters and oldsters
In exploring the Outdoor Art of Chicago with classmates, I was stealing a page from my wife Rose, who did the same for her students when she taught school in Long Beach, Indiana. For most of her teaching career, Rose brought her sixth-grade classes into Chicago on field trips revolving around art. Now she joined me as co-leader. "A lot of people think you can't teach Art Appreciation to twelve-year-olds," Rose explained to my classmates, "but that's not true." (Miss Vincent would have been proud of Rose too.)
It was not just a one-day visit; Rose's sixth-grade classes studied art through the school year. She introduced them to the art of many civilizations. Toward the end of the year, they prepared for their climactic trip to Chicago and a visit to the Art Institute. Over her years as a teacher, Rose had accumulated prints and books featuring the work of many artists whose work appeared in the Art Institute. Her pupils rummaged through this collection and selected an artist that interested them, then wrote a biography of that individual.
With parents accompanying, Rose and her class would take the South Shore Line into Chicago, a "first" for many of the youngsters. The 8:45 train arrived at the Van Buren Street station at 10:22. They walked the short distance to the museum. A docent, previously arranged, led the students through several of the galleries. They ate lunch. Afterwards, they broke into small groups to locate their artists. Sitting before each artist's painting, the students would write either a Haiku or a Diamante poem. (Writing poetry was another part of their curriculum.) Catching a 4:00 train allowed everybody to be back in Michigan City before dinner. The students later produced booklets featuring their poetry. Rose still has copies of those booklets up in our attic.
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Poetry
written by |
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Pierre Auguste Renoir's On The Terrace (Haiku) Sisters are roses So delicate and gentle Oh, how very sweet --Jenise Wiencik |
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Jackson Pollock's Grayed Rainbow (Diamante) Colors Clumped together As messy as my bedroom Mixed --Eric Gardner |
After several annual visits, Rose attended a Teachers Workshop that inspired her to add outdoor art to the day's activities as a prelude to entering the Art Institute. Between train station and museum, her students viewed a bronze Indian on horseback, Abraham Lincoln and, her favorite, Lorado Taft's fountain statue of the Great Lakes overlooking the Art Institute's south garden. Because of time limitations, Rose couldn't show them many of the statues in the central Loop, including the Picasso, the planned starting point for my classmates.
Since our reunion committee was meeting at the Radisson Hotel on North Michigan Avenue, I thought at least a few might like to walk from the hotel to the Picasso via the Miracle Mile. On a scouting trip before our meeting, I determined that such a journey would cover thirteen blocks. That's not far for someone like me who runs marathons, but I worried it might be a bridge too far for my classmates. In describing the tour in a letter before we met, I suggested two options: walking from the hotel, or taking a taxicab to the Picasso. At age seventy, I figured most would choose the second option.
Very Fit Seniors
At noon on a Friday, two dozen of us met for lunch at the Becco D'Oro, an Italian restaurant off the lobby of the Radisson. Like marathoners, I thought our tour group might need some pasta to fuel their walking muscles. We had been meeting for nearly two years planning the reunion and had become even closer friends than during our four years on campus. Between the minestrone and the pasta, I asked for a show of hands for those planning to walk and those going by taxicab. Surprisingly, everyone chose to walk except one classmate recovering from a hip replacement. Our meeting time at the Picasso had been predetermined at 2:00 for several doing other tours or rushing in from the airport. From the hotel, we started around 1:30, figuring it would take half an hour to cover the distance. I had walked the thirteen blocks in twenty minutes during my scouting trip, but with the group, ever the attentive tour guide, I planned to pause at points along the way. All I needed to look like I just stepped off the Gray Line Tour was an unopened umbrella to wave overhead when I wanted everyone to follow or pay attention.
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Beside the Picasso, Hal
instructs his group.
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After several blocks, I pointed out frieze sculptures on the side of the McGraw-Hill Building at 520 North Michigan. Several years after graduating from college, I had worked in that Art Deco building, being barely aware of its exterior art. The frieze was the work of Gwen Lux, unique as a sculptor in that she was a woman. Across the street was the Inter-Continental Hotel (built originally as the Medinah Athletic Club), also decorated on three sides by elegant frieze sculptures. Alas, in the short time I had to prepare for the tour, I had not yet identified the sculpture, and none of the books or booklets I accumulated provided any help. (A call later to the hotel uncovered no information on the identity of the sculptor.)
Though architecture not art, I couldn't resist showing my classmates the Tribune Tower and the Wrigley Building at the foot of Michigan Avenue. The Tribune Tower has artifacts from around the world embedded in its side. Dozens of stories above the ground, the Tower is capped by Gothic arches similar to those on European cathedrals. As a boy attending cartooning classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, I sometimes visited editorial cartoonists, whose studios were clustered inside those arches. Beside Tribune Tower stands a bust statue of broadcaster Jack Brickhouse, hardly High Art, but art should be for all people, not just the intelligentsia. Across Michigan Avenue, the ivory-white Wrigley Building would never make any list of 100 Best Designs, but it certainly is popular on picture postcards.
At the Chicago River, we paused to regard relief sculptures on the four corner bridgehouses. My copy of Loop Sculpture Guide identified them as the work of James Earl Fraser and Henry Heuring. The bridge was built in 1920, the sculptures added eight years later at a time of major construction along Michigan Avenue. "Fraser was from South Dakota," I told my classmates, "He was the one who designed the famous Buffalo nickel." (It helps to have a booklet in hand.)
Rose, meanwhile, had arrived at the Picasso by taxicab and encountered those meeting us there. We carried cellular phones in case we missed each other in the crowded city, but I spotted them waving at us through the plate glass windows of the Civic Center at the corner of Randolph and Dearborn
A stampede of sculpture
The Civic Center is a functional though unremarkable skyscraper adjacent to City Hall and in front of an outdoor plaza that might have gone unnoticed by art historians had it not been for Pablo Picasso. During construction of the skyscraper, architect William Hartmann visited France and invited Picasso to design a monumental work of art for the plaza. The challenge intrigued the artist, who produced a 42-inch model as a gift to the city. The statue, weighing 162 tons, was pre-assembled out of Cor-Ten steel (the same material used for the Civic Center) at U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana. It was then disassembled and reassembled for its unveiling on August 15, 1967. Picasso did not attend and never saw his work.
Local critics at first disparaged the work as ugly, but Chicagoans came to love their Picasso, as did a succession over the years of tourists wielding cameras. "The Picasso has become to Chicago what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris," boasts Loop Sculpture Guide. That may be a reach, but certainly the Picasso started a stampede of sculpture construction in and around the Loop. In the same camera lens, you can capture a photo not only of the Picasso, but also works by Joan Miró and Jean Dubuffet.
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| Miró's woman is tucked in an alcove. |
After viewing the Picasso, I invited my classmates to turn and regard Miró's "The Sun, The Moon and One Star," located across Washington Street. Alas, instead of having its own plaza, the Miró remains almost hidden in an alcove next to The Brunswick Building. Thirty-nine feet tall and made of steel wire mesh, concrete, bronze and ceramic tiles, it is softer and in many ways more elegant than its more famous neighbor. "It probably deserves a space of its own," Rose told my classmates.
Standing beside the Miró, you can look down Clark Street and spot Jean Dubuffet's "Monument with Standing Beast" only a block away. It is positioned on the corner of Randolph and Clark in front of the Thompson Center, a shimmering, glass-wall building designed by Helmut Jahn, who also designed the United Airlines Terminal at O'Hare Field. Dubuffet practiced as an artist while young, but in 1925 withdrew to manage his father's wine business. He reemerged two decades later after he visited several mental institutions and viewed the work of the insane. Coining the term art brut ("raw art"), he began to imitate their primitive images. Many of his paintings were assemblages of common objects, presented in a three-dimensional form on canvas. Some of them resembled jigsaw puzzles.
It was an easy jump, thus, for Dubuffet to turn to sculpture. His "Beast" in front of the Thompson Center, starkly black and white, is an assemblage of fiberglass forms that you can wander through, and my classmates and I did just that. Rose and I were alternating as lectors, so it was my turn. I offered my tour group some facts: "The Dubuffet stands 29 feet, half the height of the Picasso, but being fiberglass weighs only 10 tons vs. 162 tons for the other."
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Dubuffet specialized
in art brut.
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In the foyer of the Thompson Center is "Bridgeport," a painted aluminum sculpture by John Henry. Fourteen other works of art by local artists are scattered through the building on various floors. A brochure describing the art is available at the Information Desk. The atrium lobby of the building is worth at least a quick trip through revolving doors and an upward look.
Scenes of Chicago
But our focus was outdoor art, so we headed back through the revolving doors and walked three blocks south to the First National Bank Plaza on Monroe between Clark and Dearborn. There we regarded "The Four Seasons" by Marc Chagall. Technically, the work is a mosaic, not a sculpture. The mosaic wraps around all four sides of a boxcar-sized block, 70 feet long by 14 feet high by 10 feet wide. Coming from the Dearborn side, Rose halted our group so we could regard the Chagall from a distance. "It looks like graffiti," commented one of my classmates. Only after crossing the Plaza and regarding the work up close did we appreciate its delicateness. Catering to his audience, Chagall had pictured scenes of Chicago while borrowing images from his previous paintings. "The mosaic contains thousands of tiny inlaid chips and over 250 colors," Rose explained. "Chagall continued to modify his mosaic after it arrived in Chicago, even adding bits of Chicago brick."
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Chagall mosaic.
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From the Chagall, it was only a block's walk to the corner of Dearborn and Adams to see "Flamingo," a stabile by Alexander Calder. The only American-born artist among the five featured in the first half of our tour, Calder was famous for creating mobiles and stabiles. Mobiles are bits of brightly-colored metal hung by wire from the ceiling, so that they move with air currents. Stabiles are anchored to the ground. I first encountered mobiles as a student at Carleton College. A small mobile, not by Calder, hung in the lobby in Boliou Hall, the art building opened in 1949, the year I arrived on campus.
Calder painted Flamingo a bright vermillion color so it stood in contrast to three dark Mies van der Rohe buildings surrounding it. One of those buildings was the Post Office. While scouting my tour a month earlier, I had ducked into the Post Office lobby to stay warm while making some notes and discovered the model used in constructing Flamingo. Calder designed his stabiles by cutting sheet medal with scissors, fitting the pieces together. If the stabile proved unstable, he would brace it where needed. The braces, thus, became part of the abstract design. He called his work Flamingo, because "it was sort of pink and has a long neck." Fifty-three feet tall, it was completed the same time as a mobile titled "Universe" hanging in the lobby of the Sears Tower. I had asked a classmate who planned to visit that building that she look for the Calder mobile so she could offer a report, but she decided later to ascend the John Hancock Building because it was nearer our hotel.
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Calder's Flamingo.
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I would have liked to detour our group past the Sears Tower and perhaps journey further west along Madison Avenue to view the Batcolumn by Claes Oldenburg. One hundred feet tall and shaped like a bat that Ernie Banks might have swung in his prime, Batcolumn might be classified as Pop Art, a genre art form I admire, but we did not have time to see it.
Before departing Calder's Flamingo, since it was my turn to talk, I mentioned one discomforting fact of twenty-first century life. Marring the Post Office plaza were ugly concrete blocks, plopped unceremoniously on the sidewalk to discourage car bombers. "Someone should commission another sculptor to design concrete barricades with some artistic integrity," I suggested.
A cacophony of sounds
Our tour of the five major sculptures gracing the central Loop ended. Several in our reunion group, grabbed cabs back to the hotel for early meetings. Most walked three more blocks east along Adams to the Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue. Not all of the art in the Art Institute is on the inside; some of it is in gardens outside the building. In addition to another Calder stabile in the north garden, there is a statue by Henry Moore and another by David Smith, titled "Cubi VII." The latter is stainless steel. While planning our tour, I saw a young woman approach leading two young children. Her eyes lit up on spotting the Smith. "Watch this!" she cried and began pounding the various sides of the statue like a drum. Her children clambered onto the statue and joined in providing a cacophony of sounds that I'm sure would have pleased the artist. Too much outdoor art gets overlooked by people rushing to or from work.
Unfortunately, access to south garden and The Fountain of the Great Lakes by Lorado Taft had been blocked by construction. That's one of Rose's favorite statues, and I studied in Taft's former studio on the Midway when I attended the University of Chicago the year after graduation from Carleton. We did take time to view the twin bronze lions that frame the stairs leading up into the museum.
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Rose teaches her class.
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The lions were created by Edward Kemeys , born in Georgia, but raised in New York where he was first employed cutting trees in Central Park. Noticing a sculptor making models of animals at the zoo, Kemeys did the same. As much as anything, Kemeys' lions, created at the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, serve as a symbol of the museum. The lions stand 10-foot tall, larger than life, but then the Art Institute of Chicago is larger than life.
Our tour was almost finished, but having watched the young woman use the Smith statue as a percussive instrument during my scouting trip, I had vowed to do the same. Moving across the grass to the side of Cubi VII, I began beating it like a tom-tom. Alas, none of my classmates chose to join me in this combination musical-artistic exhibition, but I knew at least Miss Vincent would have been proud.
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Hal Higdon's latest book is Marathoning A to Z. More information on his art can be found elsewhere on this web site: www.halhigdon.com. |
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