Art-centric Chicago

An untitled work commissioned in 1963 that looks like an African mask, sits in the middle of Daley Plaza. One of the first public art pieces in the city of Chicago — a work of none other than the great Pablo Picasso himself.

They say when Picasso was around 82 years old, the authorities approached him for an art installation for the City Civic Centre. He created a sculpture fabricated in steel which looks like a tin can, a ship or a monster, depending on your point of view!

It provoked a lot of controversy initially and invited a lot of speculation whether it was an interpretation of the artist’s hound or an Egyptian deity! Picasso was offered a payment of $100,000 but he refused, stating that he wanted to make his work a gift to the city. Today it serves like a jungle gym with children clambering all over it, and has become a well-known meeting spot and a symbol of the city. It also marked the beginning of the city’s love affair with contemporary art.

An open canvas

Today, Chicago, which is known for its brilliant cutting edge architecture, is also a great city for public art with quirky installations in parks, lobbies of buildings and streets. Locals say that the city is ‘a museum without walls’. During my stay, I saw works of art strewn across the city which engage, enthrall and confuse passersby. As part of a pioneering programme begun in 1978, Percent for Art, the city sets aside 1.33 per cent of the budget for every public building project to pay for new works of art.

Grant Park is a public park sprawling over 300 acres in the city’s Central Business District. This park was made long ago by sandbars, landfill and debris from the Great Chicago Fire. Walking near the south end of the park, I came across a legion of 106 headless and armless cast iron figures. The figures called ‘Agora’ (derived from the Greek word for meeting place) were designed by a Polish lady Magdalena Abakanowicz, who survived the Holocaust.

Each figure, different in details, was handcrafted in Poznan, Poland, over a period of two years, and shipped to Chicago. Each figure is made from a hollow piece of iron that has been allowed to rust, creating a reddish appearance and a rough texture. Some figures look at each other, while others look away. The whopping cost of $3 million was funded by donors including late comedian-actor Robin Williams.

Further away in the Park, I chanced upon ‘Borders’ — life-sized androgynous sculptures made of aluminium and cast iron, arranged in 13 pairs — one aluminium and one cast iron sculpture looking at each other, as if in silent conversation. My guide told me that it is a temporary art installation by Iceland artist Steinunn Thorarinsdottir and part of a movement to make public art accessible to all.

Wondrous sights

From the top of my trolley tour bus, I caught a glimpse of Marc Chagall’s brilliant ‘Mosaic of Seasons’ that wraps around a 70-foot-long rectangular block in the courtyard of the Chase Bank building. This stunning piece of art is made up of inlaid mosaic pieces of more than 200 colours, with six scenes depicting the four seasons.

I loved the bold, hand-drawn style with images of cloud-strewn skies, birds, fish and flowers. My guide told me that it was created in France and then transferred onto panels and installed here. As I walked around the downtown area, I discovered Alexander Calder’s whimsical vermillion ‘Flamingo’, inspired by a woman’s legs, that enlivens the Federal Plaza. Its curvy contours offered a dramatic counterpoint to the angular steel and glass buildings that surround it.

Calder is known for his stabiles — a static form of mobiles, and his bold work of art really stands out. Next, I headed over to the Aon Center and listened carefully to the sounding sculptures by Henry Bertoia. These beautiful musical sculptures made of granite bases supporting brass plates, from which rise rows of flexible rods of thin copper are designed to look like enormous stalks of wheat, and when the wind blows through them they produce a strange noise of their own.

At the leafy Millennium Park, which was actually completed four years after the Millennium, is where I found ‘The Cloud Gate’, portrayed as a popular mascot of the city on a zillion postcards — a giant, silvery bean-like sculpture that represents a blob of mercury and reflects the city and its residents.

With distorted reflections, ‘the Bean’, as locals affectionately refer to it, was a flurry of activity… with couples jumping in front of it and kids crawling below for killer photo-ops from every angle. A walk under its nine-foot-tall arch can be a mind-blowing experience. The reflective surfaces offer a variety of experiences, and play tricks with the light and sky, depending upon one’s perspective, the weather and the time of day. “Come back in the night for a totally different experience,” said a friendly local.

Designed by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, 68 stainless steel plates were used to construct the surface that required 2,200 lineal feet of continuous welding. The artist wanted to create something that would ‘engage the Chicago skyline’. And how do the reflecting surfaces remain sparkling? Cloud Gate is washed twice a year in 40 gallons of Liquid Tide!

On my last day in the city, I came across a brilliant red art installation by artist Orly Genger, made of knotted and recycled lobster rope wrapped around trees bordering the azure Lake Michigan, painted with 100 gallons of paint and layered on metal tubes. Called the Hot Rod, it’s a happy temporary art installation that certainly provokes thought and engages passersby!