Hoopla and Bewilderment in Chicago for Picasso’s Gift

                            Unveiling the Picasso in Daley Center Plaza in 1967 drew a crowd of gawkers.

The Chicago Picasso—it has no other name—turns 57 years old this August with a little less hurrah  than in a milestone year but remains it is a big deal.  How big a deal it is might mystify non-Chicagoans who underestimate the Toddlin’ Town’s municipal vanity.   Aspirations to be lauded as a World Class City and center of the fine arts meets common Babbitt boosterism. 

The original dedication was held on August 15, 1967 during a summer that had been in the news mostly for the riots that swept the South and West Sides.  Mayor Richard J. Daley, whose crown as Boss of the City that Works had been tarnished, was mighty glad for the opportunity to show off just how highbrow the Hog Butcher to the World could really be.

Today the Picasso is a—mostly—beloved Chicago icon.  Back in 1967 many of the city’s elite cultural gatekeepers, some of whom had never gotten over the shock of the 1913 Armory Show and were widely looked down upon as mere provincials by Manhattan sophisticates, and the blue collar lunch box proletariat were united in despising and being mystified by the Spanish artist’s gift to a city he had never seen.  Many suspected a commie plot or foresaw a fall into decadence and corruption.  Others just thought it was ugly and dumb.

Classic Chicago chroniclers Studs Terkel and Mike Royko were both on hand to document the Picasso dedication.

Count Chicago’s keenest observer, Daily News columnist Mike Royko in the latter category.  He called it “big, homely metal thing …[with] a long stupid face…[that] looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect. It has eyes that are pitiless, cold, mean.”  Which meant it was perfect for the city. “Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible.”

That other tireless chronicler of Chicago voices, Studs Terkel was on hand lugging around his heavy old reel-to-reel semi-portable tape recorder to capture the wisdom of the hoi polloi. Quotes from that tape litter almost all of the stories about the original dedication.  You can almost hear the hard bitten accents of some.  From Rick Hogan’s magazine piece from the 50th anniversary:

“A pelvic structure of a prehistoric monster,” “A politician because it’s got so many faces,” “A bird, “A big butterfly.” Some people were befuddled (“Is that the front view?”) and one was obviously a loyal Democrat (“If Daley says it’s good, it’s good enough for me”).

And from Neil Steinberg, the younger Chicago Sun-times columnist the same year:

“At first glance, it looks rather grotesque…” said one. “You got something like this, 99 percent of the people don’t know what it resembles,” observed another. “A nightmare,” added a third. “A woman!?” marveled another. “A woman, yes, definitely, now it makes some sense. At first, when they had no idea what it was, I didn’t think too much of it. But now I like the idea of a woman being placed at the civic center. It seems like the woman has to do with everything in life, and this has to do with the good things in life. This is a civic center and the goodness of a woman. That’s my idea.”

Which reminds us of the huge controversy about just what the hell the thing was, anyway, much of it fueled by the media.  There were many theories put forward—a vulture, the artist’s pet Afghan hound, a baboon, a starving lion, a woman of course, and just a big practical joke on the city.  As for me, youthful as I was at the time, I never had any doubt it was a woman.  Despite attempts to revive the controversy, it turned out that I was right.

                                            Picasso's Head of a Woman sketch from 1962 is pretty definitive in confirming the artist's subject.

Art scholars have found doodles and sketches of similar forms dating back to Picasso’s halcyon days in Paris back in 1913.  Somewhat definitive is a 1962 sketch of a nearly identical form that the artist clearly labeled Head of a Woman.  Hard to argue with that.  And we even know pretty certainly which woman—a teen age girl actually. 

Sylvette David was about 17 or 18 when Picasso spotted her in the company of her boyfriend walking by his studio in 1954.  The old satyr was smitten, as he often was.  He was able to get the girl with the long swan-like neck and the high pony tail that spread out behind it to pose for him for several studies, including a realistic profile and several cubist deconstructions.  Unlike many of his other muses he was never able to bed girl and in fact named one of his 40 compositions of her was called The One Who Said No.  That pony tail not only became the “wings” of the Chicago statue, but it also inspired the signature casual look for Brigit Bardot.  Sylvette went on to her own successful career as a painter and artist now known as Lydia Corbett.  She lived a lively 80+ years and recently said of Picasso, “I never thanked him enough. He immortalized me. I’m like the Mona Lisa. Amazing, don’t you think?”

Silvet David in 1954 with one of dozens of studies Picasso did of her.  That high pony tail that splayed out behind her head and neck would be echoed in a monumental sculpture more than a decade later.

Back in 1957, I was not at the unveiling.  I had graduated from Niles West High School in Skokie that spring and was spending the summer washing dishes at a Howard Johnson and getting ready to start Shimer College in Mt. Caroll, Illinois that fall.  I read all about the controversy in the papers, and undoubtedly devoured Royko’s sour take on it. I first saw it in person a few months later at an anti-war rally in the Plaza.  As a matter of fact all of my early encounters were at rallies and marches where the towering sculpture dominated the wide open space. 

I remember being impressed by its size and how its rust brown surface echoed the cladding of the Dailey Center itself.  I was pretty sure that Picasso was not an art-to-match-the-sofa kind of guy.  I was right, he had not dictated a color.  That came from the supplier of the steel to construct it, the American Bridge Company division of the United States Steel Corporation which used naturally oxidizing COR-TEN steel, the same material as used in the building.  Over the years both have darkened to what is now a grey with only hints of reddish brown.

Picasso was hands down the most famous artist in the world when he was visited by a committee of Chicago boosters bringing tacky gifts from Hizzoner with a request for him to create a monumental art work for otherwise desolate plaza of the new monument that the Mayor was erecting to himself.  The artist was amused, flattered, and skeptical.  But among the gifts was a photo of Oak Park’s native son Ernest Hemingway.  Picasso excitedly exclaimed, “My friend! I taught him everything he knew about bullfighting. Was he from Chicago?”  His visitors may have been a little vague in their reply.  At any rate he agreed—and more over agreed to make his creation a gift to the city.

                                      Picasso hastily sketching out his intention.

He started work in May, 1964 basing his design on sketches he had already made, including the Head of a Woman mentioned before.  He translated those two dimensional images into a three dimensional by making sketches on plywood, cutting out the parts, and assembling them with glue and wire.  He had been using a similar process to make smaller scale painted-on-sheet metal sculptures from his cubist reflections since Sylvette had posed for him.  But this time he proposed to leave the surface of the finished work raw, rather than painted in order to emphasize the shapes that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles.

Picasso, with few revisions translated this first model into a 42 inch high maquette that was first displayed to the public in London during a major retrospective exhibit.  It drew raves from the British art cognisante.  Then the excited city hall put the model on display at the Art Institute where it remains to this day.  So Chicagoans, at least the museum visiting slice of the population knew what the pig in the poke was going to look like.  Some shared an excitement of being in the avant garde, but many were furious on both esthetic and political grounds—the artist was a known leftist and had recently been glad to accept a Lenin Prize, the Soviet Union’s answer to the Nobel Prize.  There was loose talk in some captive nation taverns in the city’s ethnic neighborhoods of blowing the damn thing to smithereens.  

The Woods Charitable Fund, Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, and the Field Foundation ponied up the roughly $352,000 cost of erecting the 50 foot high sculpture that would weigh 147 tons.  American Bridge created a final 12 high model for Picasso to approve that included some structural reinforcements to support the enormous weight.  The artist agreed and fabrication work began at the U.S. Steel rolling mills in Gary, Indiana.

The parts were delivered by truck and installation began on a re-enforced pedestal on May 2. 1967.  As it rose it was shrouded in scaffolding and canvas.  Work was completed in early August and final touches were put on dedication plans.

                            Gwendolyn Brooks looks as conflicted as she felt getting ready to read a poem before the unveiling of the statue.

On the big day the Plaza was filled with the curious. Mayor Daley and every other politico with enough clout crowded the dais along with all of the accredited art lovers.  Gwendolyn Brooks was asked to compose and read a new work for the occasion. Chances were strong that Daley had never read the works of the Black woman with strong opinions about race relations in the city, urban renewal, rampant police brutality, and the rising voice of Black Power.  On the other hand the poet had scored Pulitzer Prize and someone had named her Chicago’s Poet Laureate, so she was just what the doctor called for in a program meant to buck-up the city’s cultural credentials.  For her part Brooks was flattered to be asked and aware that this sort of thing was just what was expected of the Poet Laureate.  But she was conflicted.  She hardly knew what to think of what she had seen of the sculpture and wasn’t sure she liked it or approved.  “Man visits Art, but squirms...” was as much enthusiasm as she could muster that day just before the canvas shroud dropped.

The ever vigilant Royko took note, however, of the symbolism of Brooks’ prominent presence.  “When [Aldermen] Keane and Cullerton sit behind a lady poet, things are changing.”

By the time the 25th anniversary rolled around in 1982 and Brooks was invited back for another crack at it, she had grown used to and fond of the Picasso.  She could be more honestly effusive.

Set,
seasoned,
sardonic still,
I continue royal among you.
I astonish you still.
You never knew what I am.
That did not matter and does not.

When the drapery finally dropped that first day some observers thought they observed a scowl on the Mayor’s face.  Others thought it was more of a bemused smirk as if he was pleased as punch at getting away with a world class con.  Likewise there are conflicting reports on the crowd reaction.  Loyal machine partisans in the media reported cheers and applause.  Others described stunned silence giving way gradually to the kind of polite pro-forma clapping you would give to a third rate singer.

Whatever the immediate reaction, the Picasso quickly became a Chicago icon.  As critic Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, had predicted in defiance of the chorus nay sayers, the sculpture would “become an art landmark, one of the most famous sites in the world.”

                                Sometimes the Picasso was crudely rendered and hardly recognizable in souvenirs like this bracelet charm.

And thanks to city Law Department faux pas Chicago lost the copyright on the monument’s image by publicly displaying it at the Art Institute without protection.  Souvenir stands were soon awash in post cards, posters, t-shirts, jewelry, snow-globes, bronze trinkets of all sizes, and high-end collector edition art models.  Something for every budget.  No one could come home from a Windy City visit without some kind of Picasso memorabilia.

On the cultural front the statue was the first monumental outdoor modern public art in the country.  It immediately blew heroic bronzes and classical motifs out of the water. Within a decade it seemed that no public project could go up without a head scratching set piece from downtown plazas and government buildings to modest village halls, suburban shopping malls, and even office and factory campuses.  This trend was accelerated with a Federal Government policy of 2% of the cost of new construction set aside for the arts and state and local policies that aped it.  A lot of sculptors got work, not all of them creative genius like Picasso.

The Picasso has weathered to gray with just hints of the former rust brown.  Children continue to use it as the world's most expensive piece of playground equipment.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Chicago’s Loop where Alexander Calder’s Stabile adorns the Dirksen Federal Building, Claus Oldenburg’s ironic Bat Column rises,  Marc Chagall’s mosaic covered monolith graced the First National Bank of Chicago Plaza, as well  works by Joan Miro and Henry Moore.  But so does mediocre stuff not to mention the hideous Snoopy in Blender outside the white elephant former James R. Thompson State of Illinois building.

The Windy City's new cultural landmark Cloud Gate a/k/a The Bean serenely reflects a shining city.  Compare and contrast to the edgy and raw urban drama of the Picasso.

Today Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate a/k/a The Bean in Millennium Park may have taken the title of Chicago’s most famous and photographed work of public art, just as the Picasso once upstaged the former leading icon, Buckingham Fountain.  But tourists still snap the old girl in Dailey Plaza and, yes, marches, rallies and demonstrations still swirl around her. She will always have a gritty edge that the serene Bean can never match. 

 

The Seed and I a Murfin Memoir —On the Staff Day by Day

The Seed didn't let up on its antiwar and antiauthoritarian politics.

After that first Seed staff meeting, I plunged right in.  For the first of my Labor Pains columns, I decided to head down to the U.S. Steel South Works on Lake Michigan and the mouth of the Little Calumet River.  Even then the once robust industry was under pressure from steel imported from more modern plants built after World War II in Japan and elsewhere.  The massive aging mill was already becoming a symbol of what would be called the Rust Belt.  Dissident United Steel Workers (USW) were organizing to challenge both the company and the union leadership which was making concessions on wages, benefits, and even safety to “save jobs.”

I had to reserve tickets for a tour. It was a long ride south on the CTA to downtown and then on South Shore Electric Line.  I made the tour with a large group that included some high school teachers and not a few Japanese tourists as well as grandparents showing their grandchildren where they had worked.  I tried to record what I saw on a simple Kodak Instamatic pocket camera and took cramped notes in a shirt pocket notebook. In my cowboy hat, long hair, and hippie beads I attracted some attention—and suspicion.  Naturally the great blast furnaces and rolling mills were awesomely impressive—and more than a little frightening.  The resulting feature was different than anything else than the Seed had ever run.  Some staffers predicted no one would read it. 

I began my tour of the U.S. Steel South Works crossing that bridge just as thousands of workers did for decades,

The second piece, a trip to the Fritzy Englestein Free Clinic in Lake View required a much briefer expedition.  Inspired by the Black Panther clinics on the South and West Sides, it was founded by folks from Rising Up Angry the Uptown group for poor white youth as part of Fred Hampton’s original Rainbow coalition.  They were treating both the local hardscrabble poor and street people who had no money or health care.  They operated with a handful of dedicated volunteer doctors and nurses on a shoe-string budget.   Our readers needed service, especially for sexually transmitted diseases, drug overdoses and side effects as well as not infrequent injuries from street assaults. 

Those set the pattern for my contributions—a Labor Pains column and a major feature each issue plus occasional shorts and reviews.  That made Wobbly Murf one of the leading contributors, at least in column inches.

Also I learned the real terms of my status as a member of the staff collective.  For every issue we were paid I believe $50 dolled straight out of the office cash box from sales revenue. There was no tax or Social Security withholding and no benefits of any kind.  It was certainly not based on hours or really a salary, it was more of stipend.  We also were given 100 copies to sell on the street, which if we sold completely would earn us a cool $35 and could buy more for the standard vendor price. 

You could live cheap in those days, especially if you doubled or tripled up in a rundown apartment, lived in a commune, or couch surfed and hit the crash pads.  But no matter how you sliced it, it was not enough to live on.  Staffers supplemented in various ways—some did advertising work, others did some freelance writing.  Some sold dope.  Others had a variety of what we now call side hustles.  Some got benefits like food stamps, General Assistance, or Unemployment.  A few may even have still gotten an allowance or rent paid by parents. 

I was never clear on what the business arrangements for the Seed were or even who the official owners were.  Clearly somebody did, but I was clueless.  As far as the IWW was concerned it was a worker-owned co-op but that may not have been legally the case at all.

Besides working on the Seed I was still extremely busy, if unpaid, at the IWW Hall up Lincoln where I was still Chicago Branch Secretary and a leading member with Carlos Cortez and Fred Thompson of the Industrial Worker collective.  And I continued to help around the General Administration as needed.  I spent three to four hours a day there—up to twelve during IW lay-out and paste-up and for mailings.

Tribune Tower, right, where I sold the Seed and the  Wrigley Building across Michigan Ave.

I generally only got out selling my copies one time, the first day the Seed hit the streets.  My chosen spot was right in front of Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue.  Believe it or not, big city dailies then had big newsrooms filed with reporters, editors, photographers and such.  If I timed it right I would be right there when they came rolling out the big revolving doors at shift end.  The younger reporters who often sported safari jackets in the warm weather and trench coats like Joel McCrea in Foreign Correspondent and who had modishly long hair over their ears and trim moustaches snapped up copies as did young women in neat, appropriate business wear and heels, and the rumpled old time reporters in cheap off-the-rack suits, stained ties, and balding heads.  On a good day I could sell thirty copies, sometimes even 50 with a great cover in a couple of hours.

Then I would take my earnings and go down to the Billy Goat Tavern on Lower Wacker under the Wriggly Building for a cheeseburger, beer on tap and maybe  a shot or two of bourbon. In the late afternoon/early evening most of those crowding the bar were ink stained pressmen.  But sometime Mike Royko took his favored stool at the end of the bar and held court before moving on to other saloons.  I tried to soak up the old-time newspaper aura of the place.

Of course I was broke most of the time, but eked by.  Down at Johnny Weise’s tavern friends would often stand me to drinks all evening.  I hit the Other Cheek Commune’s free feed once a week and IWW Fellow Workers invited me for dinner.  I could get five hamburgers in a bag from the Salt and Pepper Grill to wash down with those four Blatz quarts for a dollar of from Consumer’s tap.  Jeff and Betty who ran a small café at the corner of Wrightwood and Sheffield took a shine for some reason to scruffy Seedlings and sometimes served up a plate of free ravioli.  I didn’t own a car and got most places on foot or on the CTA.  Somehow I eked an existence, although it was the only time in my life when I was truly skinny.

The staff shared several other duties.  One of them was staffing the front desk.  That could be hectic when a new issue was coming out and you had to handle sales to street vendors.  You counted out copies and collected cash, most of it in singles and change to put in the cash box.  Toward the end of issue’s time, there was a lighter rush buying returns.  In between those at the desk reviewed Liberation News Service packets and underground press exchanges for possible items and worked on their own stories or copy edited others.

We also handled phone calls.  We were warned that the phone was surely tapped by the Chicago Red Squad, FBI, or both and to be careful what we said.  We would field random calls, many from suburban kids looking for Chicago action. There were always calls about dope and where to get it which had to be handled gingerly.  There were advertising inquiries—very important to get those to the right people.  But there were also prank calls and fairly frequently harassment and threats.  Of course there were always calls for staff members, many of who had no home phones to be transferred if they were in the office or carefully noted.

Mike Royko holding court at the Billy Goat with owner Sam Sianis behind the bar.

My most memorable call was from Mike Royko from his desk at the Chicago Daily News.  He identified himself right away and I was thrilled, I thought maybe I could remind him that we had met however briefly at the Billy Goat and at the writers’ hang-out O’Rourke’s Pub on North Avenue.  But before I could get a word in edgewise he was screaming at me.  The object of his wrath was a short piece we ran about George Washington growing hemp at Mt. Vernon.  He was sure that it was a slur.  When I tried to explain that we had picked up the story form LNS, much like his paper would run something from the Associated Press he just yelled louder. Nor would he hear that there were plenty of historical records to affirm that he grew the crop mostly for his own rope production.  The rant went on for a good ten minutes before he slammed the phone down.

We all pitched in for lay-out and paste up.  If we had featured article, we generally did our own pages.  We would have to be aware what colors were being used.  My skills were more limited than others and my pages tended to be laid out in blocks with fancy stuff at a minimum.  I used clip-art, photos, and once in a while some original art from the staff alternating with blocks of texts.  Sometime light screens were used behind the text but I made sure that the type face was dark enough and easily readable.  Sometime on other pages the text was almost unreadable.  As a word guy, I was determined it would not happen to me.  Headlines were created with Press Type like they were for the Industrial Worker.  But my hands were not steady and sometimes they letters were not perfectly aligned or the whole head was pasted at an off angle.

We pasted our text with rubber spray cement.  Most pages had two unjustified columns, but nothing was ever standard on the Seed and there were all sorts of other arrangements.   Evening things out often required snipping a line or two and relocating them.  I often got those crooked too.  Needless to say, I was not used on our signature high graphic pages.  But did help out with some of the more mundane inner pages.  Lay out often lasted all night, the space around the light table shrouded in cigarette and other smoke, beverage cans and bottles or coffee cups perched here and there with some inevitable spills.  Type would have to be reset and sometimes irreplaceable graphics were lost.  Every lay-out session had its high drama and turn-on-a-dime improvisation.  Once in a while we even had some sort of breaking news which required us to reset a whole page.

After the paper was finally put to bed, the flats and color separations had to be taken to the printer. The Seed lost one or more early printers due to pressure from the authorities.  Now we were taking it across the border to Wisconsin to Newsweb, a small press operated by young Fred Eychaner who was printing small town weeklies, and school papers on an antiquated web press.  But he had taken on both the Seed and the Industrial Worker and other left publications including Rising Up Angry.

On each issue one or two of us would accompany our graphic designer Peter Solt on the trip to the shop.  We usually found Eychaner, long-haired and bearded smeared with ink and crawling over and around his noisy press moistening plates and attending ink fountains.  He and Peter would go over the requirements for the new issue in detail.  They were not simple.   The 36 page paper was divided into four sections printed on both sides.  The eight resulting pages had to share the same colors.  Peter often preferred split colors and fades.  Fred became a master at managing the ink fountains.  The press had to be completely cleaned before the next sections with their own color mixes could be run.  It was a laborious process and the press run, folding, slitting, and bailing took all day.  Peter would help out where he could and sometime those of us less skilled helped muscle web rolls into place.  When it was all done we loaded the old van we came in and paid Fred with a check signed by somebody.

The reclusive Fred Eychaner, hippie printer turned media mogul, LBGTQ icon and Democratic Party deep pocket.

For Eychaner it was the unlikely beginning of what would become a billion dollar media empire.  He was one of the first to realize that computers would revolutionize both newspapers and the printing business.  Soon desk-top publishing linked to smart presses would completely replace the laborious hands-on methods we used at the Seed while greatly reducing costs.  His printing business rapidly expanded as he bought up small companies.  With his printing empire well established in the early ‘80s he branched out founding Chicago TV station WPWR-TV Channel 50 and an early sports channel with Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf.  He eventually sold both for millions of dollars.  He also bought and sold radio stations and founded WCPT AM in 2005 as a liberal talk radio alternative.

But now the reclusive Eychaner is best known for his charity especially to support the LGBTQ community and to fight HIV/AIDES and for the preservation of historic buildings.  He is also a Democratic Party mega-donor mover and shaker in Chicago, Illinois, and nationally.  He was a major donor and fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

Tomorrow—Incidents in the life of a Seedling.