The Chicago Picasso—it has no other name—turns 59 years old this August with a little less hurrah than in a milestone year. How big a deal it is remains a might mystifying to 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 was 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.
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.
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 ponytail 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 ponytail 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?”
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 depending on the light.
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 artwork for the 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.
He started work in May, 1964 basing his design on sketches he had already made, including the Head of a Woman. He translated those two-dimensional images into three dimensions 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 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 Chicago 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.
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 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 scored Pulitzer Prize and someone 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, predicted in defiance of the chorus nay sayers, the sculpture would “become an art landmark, one of the most famous sites in the world.”
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 a creative genius like Picasso.
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 as 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.
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.
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