When Public Art Goes Bad

...WHO WILL STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND RETIRE IT?

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Some of our readers may be entrenched enough in Hyde Park to remember the Virginio Ferrari* sculpture that was in front of Woodward Court (now the home of the Graduate School of Business's Harper Center). It looked something like this when it was in one piece:

summer, 2004

I searched up and down on the Internet, and I could not find a photo of it in situ in its glory days. Even Virginio Ferrari has decided not to put it in his online portfolio. I did track down the actual sculpture, however, and it's living a modest but comfortable life in a little mechanical graveyard behind the steam plant on 60th and Blackstone. It looks like this:

January, 2008

You see, this sculpture happily served its useful life. It adorned the front of an ugly, squat dorm without upstaging it; over the years it supported thousands of college students reading a book between classes or flirting a bit; it even let a little girl climb on it nearly daily in the late 1970s on her way to the Laboratory Schools (as if she wasn't late enough). When it's useful life was over -- voila! -- the private owner (i.e. the University) simply retired it.

The sculpture below is publicly owned, so apparently, in spite of our pleas, it can't be removed.

And the mural below is not only publicly owned, but heaven help us, local and national organizations are fighting to refurbish it...whether we like it or not.


The Getty Foundation says, "The qualities that make these murals so distinctive -- their outdoor locations and the materials used to create them -- can hasten their disintegration and decay." Well, duh. That's why we should consider them transient art, and either give someone else a shot at the wall (in my opinion, a classically trained artist), or re-think the visual design of our underpasses entirely.

*2019 Edit: It has come to my attention (through an astute reader) that the duct-like sculpture shown at the top of this post was not created by Virginio Ferrari, but by Buky Schwartz. Since this post was originally published, the pieces have been moved to 60th and Cottage Grove (visible on a satellite image). 

Who You Gonna Call?

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Put down your pick axes, pick up the phone!

Just so it doesn't get lost in the comments, here's the contact information for the 4th and 5th ward aldermen, in case you want to call or write to them to request that they remove the sculpture on 55th Street near Harper:

Leslie Hairston: 773-324-5555, lhairston@cityofchicago.org
Toni Preckwinkle: 773-536-8103, tpreckwinkle@cityofchicago.org

If there's something strange
in your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call?
YOUR ALDERMAN!

If there's something weird
and it don't look good
Who ya gonna call?
YOUR ALDERMAN!

Hyde Park Anti-Progress

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Ahh...the 55th Street and Lake Park repaving project is nearly complete: the street is shiny and black, waiting for fresh lines and a new median; the construction barricades are down; the Metra underpass has free-flowing lanes again...



But, hey! What happened? Why is this still here?!


I thought we all agreed that it needed to be hauled out for garbage pick-up? And isn't this the perfect opportunity to do it -- when the crews are preparing to build a fresh median anyway?


So I thought I'd call the appropriate alderman to ask for its removal. But observe the crazy maps of the 4th and 5th wards:

At first I thought the sculpture was halfway between the two wards, but now I think it might be in that little "bump out" that's in Ms. Hairston's domain. Neither office is open on a Saturday, so the burning question will have to wait until Monday.

But maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the two aldermen would have a stronger voice than one alone.

"Ms. Preckwinkle and Ms. Hairston, tear down this sculpture."

Don't make us get our hammers and chisels out, like the Berlin Wall. Just do the right thing.

Hyde Park Anti-Progress: Part II

Take a Deep Breath. It's Time for a Discussion About Murals.

When we talked about this gem, I pointed out a dilemma with public art: who decides when it has served its useful life?

At the risk of being publicly excoriated, I'm going to talk about murals. Murals that some of you may love.

But before we start I want to make sure you understand: I'm not a white wall fanatic. I'm not a gated-community board-member type who likes to tell people what color to paint the trim on their houses.

I LIKE art.

Some of my best friends are artists.

And yet...

I think this puppy should go to mural heaven:

The Chicago Public Art group recommends restoration of Under City Stone, although there is currently no funding for it. (The University of Chicago and the Southeast Chicago Commission have arranged funding to refurbish the murals under the 56th Street viaduct [Childhood is Without Prejudice, and Where We Come From...Where We are Going].) But even if there were thousands of dollars available I just can't see how restoration would work on this one, and whether we should spend money that way. After all, the above section is one of the only ones you can still see.

Most of it looks like this:

And this:


I suppose that professional restorers have found Rembrandts under paintings of dogs playing poker and have successfully, painstakingly brought the masterpiece to life.

But will you flay me for saying this isn't a Rembrandt? I mean, look at that guy's head in the middle of the segment below -- the guy who's tilting his face up, with the underbite (you may click the photo to enlarge). He looks like a cartoon next to everyone else. What's with THAT?


There are entire sections that are blocked out, to cover up tagging, so someone will have to find archived photos to try to reproduce what was there...

On the east end, the metra tracks leak onto the wall, so that the image AND whatever tagging was there are completely obliterated:

Here's what I think, taking as given that there are either public funds or private donations aplenty for public art (which there aren't):

1) We should consider outdoor murals to be temporary in nature. They're not inside the Sistine Chapel, after all -- they're exposed to the elements, to the railway drippings from above, and to taggers who ought to be ashamed.

2) We should periodically paint the slate clean and give another artist a shot at temporary fame.

3) We should subject potential artists to a competition in order to choose folks with genuine talent. If I'm on the panel, I'll vote for representational artists. But I'd better not be on the panel, because it should be professional artists -- not a neighborhood committee -- who do the picking.

4) We should make it clear to the artist that his work is temporary, so that he won't get all huffy when it's time for it to go.

5) We can document the different murals over time through extensive photos. Perhaps the Hyde Park Antiquarian Society would take on this job.

A Little Bit about the Mural:


In all the years Under City Stone has been up I've never read the poem above those poor downtrodden, mostly pregnant folks. To tell you the truth, as a kid I avoided looking at the mural at all, because it seemed to want desperately to disturb me, and I refused to comply. Besides, I always seem to be walking in the wrong direction or on the wrong side to actually read it, or I was in a car going west under the viaduct.

The artist is Caryl Yasko, who (through the ever trusty Google search) seems to be alive and well in Wisconsin.

The text is a poem by James Agee (1909 - 1955), with a fairly grim message about the alienation of commuting by subway -- a message I don't much agree with, after driving around L.A. in my car for a year (that's alienation).

Rapid Transit
(c. 1937)


Squealing under city stone
The millions on the millions run,
Every one a life alone,
Every one a soul undone:


There all the poisons of the heart
Branch and abound like whirling brooks
And there through every useless art
Like spoiled meats on a butcher's hooks


Pour forth upon their frightful kind
The faces of each ruined child:
The wrecked demeanors of the mind
That now is tamed, and once was wild.

Hyde Park Anti-Progress

What is this, and when will it go away?

(location: 55th Street and Harper Ave.)

We all clean our closets once a year -- maybe once every couple of years. Aw, heck, I'm even OK with every three or four years; we lead busy lives after all. So, here's the dilemma when the clutter is "public art": who decides when it has served its useful life?

This wasn't a successful sculpture when it went up. It's disgraceful, now that it has crumbled to bits and is growing tree-sized weeds. Even the steel posts that were installed to protect it are rusting.

If Hyde Park had a metaphorical "husband" somewhere, we'd tell him to drag it out to the alley for garbage pickup.