Our goal was to explore the Millennial Park area. After riding the subway downtown, we walked a route that would take us by noted statues in the Chicago Downtown area and other sites. I have marked the places we visited, though the walking path we took may be slight different from the turquoise dotted path on the map. We saw
- Chicago's Picasso
- Miro's Statue
- Macy's on State Street
- Chicago Cultural Center
- Cloud Gate
- Crown Fountain
- The Art Institute of Chicago.
Their prevalence in Chicago is evidenced by the specialized traffic lights at some intersections. Look closely at the silhouetted shape within the rightmost traffic signal. It is a bicycle icon. Far in the distance is the vertical marquis for the Cadillac Palace Theatre.
The Cadillac Palace Theatre is an ornate theatre that hosts Broadway Shows. We did not attend any shows while we were there but it would have been impressive to see the interior in person.
Chicago Picasso
The first statue we came upon was by Pablo Picasso and simply titled Chicago Picasso or The Picasso. It is located in Daly Plaza. Per Wikipedia, newspaper columnist Mike Royko, covering the unveiling of the sculpture, wrote: "Interesting design, I’m sure. But the fact is, it has a long stupid face and looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect." That was not my initial interpretation but I can certainly see the merit in the description. Picasso's style is strange anyway in my opinion.
Miró's Chicago
Diagonally across the street from The Picasso is Miró's Chicago, is a sculpture by Joan Miró, originally and more descriptively called The Sun, the Moon and One Star. It is 39 feet tall, and is made of steel, wire mesh, concrete, bronze, and ceramic tile. I have to admit I have trouble understanding it and had to read up on its meaning. It represents a woman standing with arms outstretched. Why the black gash and the red cavity? I do not know. The bell shaped bottom is meant to be symbolic of stability. Personally, think it is more symbolic of the pear shaped body type of many women.
Macy's
Before we all forged ahead to Millennial Park we decided to make a pit stop to use the rest rooms at Macy's on State Street and to check off seeing the historic clock outside. We entered on the first floor in the cosmetics area and caught a peek at the domed ceiling. I learned later from reading the previous Macy's link that "The dome ceiling was designed by renowned glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany (it’s the largest Tiffany mosaic in existence) and crafted by a group of 50 artisans who worked atop scaffolds for over 18 months to complete the project." Had I known that then, I would have looked longer and gone up to an upper floor for a closer look.
Going up the escalator we had target fixation on finding a rest room and so we did not do much more than glimpse at the interior architecture; but some of the wood working on the walls was extremely impressive. I also learned that every Friday at 11:30 am Macy's gives a 60 minute tour for $12 focusing on the mosaic ceiling, an elegant dining room, and a grandiose fountain. Had timing worked out better I think I might have sprung for that. If you are in Chicago during the holidays the tour "includes the history of Macy’s holiday traditions from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, animated store window displays, the 2-story Great Tree in the soaring Walnut Room restaurant." Here is Frank, my "model husband" waiting for me as I take pictures.
Outdoors, even the clock has a history. The "clock is made of 7¾ tons of cast bronze and hangs from ornamental ironwork." It is a landmark often used by folks as a meeting place, "under the clock". Read more about its legacy in The Fascinating History of Macy’s on State Street in Chicago.
Chicago Cultural Center
There are all sorts of treasures hidden about Chicago. Macy's had not been a planned stop but the craftsmanship in its architecture made it well worth the detour. The Chicago Cultural Center was not a planned stop either, but when we passed right by it on our way to Millennial Park, we decided to duck in.
It too, has a beautiful domed glass ceiling, ornate ceiling rosette carvings, and detailed mosaic tile inlays.
Google's translator converted Voltaire's quote from the French to English as "Mortals are equal is not the birth is the only virtue that makes the difference". I still am a bit confused. I think a subtlety in interpretation may have gotten lost in the word for word translation. I can still appreciate the beautiful inlay work though.
I took a picture of this floor because I thought it would make an interesting quilting pattern. The photo had another unexpected benefit. After touring some displays on the upper floors, I got separated from the rest of my friends. I came downstairs by a different stair case and into a different lobby. I was able to get directions to the correct lobby by showing a security guard my cell phone photo and asking "Can you please direct me to the lobby with this floor?" It worked!
The upper levels had rooms with model cityscapes, very austere in white.
Some rooms had very weird structures in riotous colors and Seussian type interiors, in vibrant contrast to the stark futuristic scale model. Some creative right brained "works of art" were so far beyond our predominantly left brain comprehension, we realized the impedance match between them and us was too much. We moved on.
Cloud Gate
The sculpture I was most interested in seeing in Millennial Park was affectionately nicknamed by Chicagoans as "the Bean" since it resembled a kidney bean in shape. The best overall photo I could find illustrating this highly reflective structure I got from the Wikipedia article on Cloud Gate. The Indian-born British artist Sir Anish Kapoor initially called the bean nickname "completely stupid" but eventually grew to accept it. The design was inspired by the concept of liquid mercury. This view shows the arched central area with the underside equally reflective and in a spoon-like contour. I thought this sculpture was awesome when I saw it on a Wheel of Fortune promotion for Chicago as a travel destination; it influenced my preference for where the six of us would convene for our annual get together.
Here we are looking up into the reflective concave surface beneath. The arch is 12 ft high but the central apex is 27 feet high. We tagged along on the tail end of a tour where the guide flung a quarter up into the highest point to illustrate its height. The highest point is called the "omphalos" – a Greek word for naval. There is a deceptive nature to its height due to all multiple reflections. Here is the crew looking up into the belly button and me taking a picture of our reflection.
The soaring internal cavity is more obvious in this photo I took of Margaret taking a photo. Also note, directly above Frank's head is a rear view reflection of the five of them.
I asked a passerby to take a photo so all six of us could be in it. Note the Chicago skyline reflected in the top of the photo. Can you find the reflection of us from the back?
The structure is made of stainless steel plates, welded, and polished. They are polished to the 98% level at the manufacturing site but the final highly reflective surface is buffed and polished to a mirror finish once in place. No seams are visible. It truly does look like liquid mercury. About one third of the plates, along with the entire interior structure, were fabricated in Oakland – the city Frank and I fly out of. They were transported by truck from California. This photo with Frank in the foreground is at 90° from the arched view and shows some more of the extent of AT&T Plaza, home to "the Bean". We then moved on from the plaza to see our next sculpture/fountain.
Crown Fountain
Crown Fountain is a pair of 50 ft tall rectangular, glass brick towers. The glass brick allows for light and video displays so the faces are ever moving and changing. At the base of the towers is a black granite reflecting pool. Water either cascades down the side of the towers or shoots out a spout from a surface facing the opposite tower. This overview photo comes from the Crown Fountain Wikipedia article. The first few episodes of the first season of the television show Prison Break featured shots of the Crown Fountain.
Our next stop was The Art Institute of Chicago, across one street and one block over from Millennial Park. That is Frank, making his way there, in the next photo.
We pulled out discount coupons from our CityPass booklets and got our tickets. Ticket price included headphones to wear for explanations of some, but not all, of the displays, paintings, and sculptures.
We picked up our guide containing maps and an overview of the institute, featuring on the back cover highlights of what items were not to be missed. The museum consists of several buildings but they only connect through the first level. I found this very confusing since the pages of the brochure were printed by levels, not by building, as would be logical. When you spotted something you wanted to see you had to go down to the first level across to whatever building it was in and go back up to the level you wanted – if, by that time, you even remembered what level it had been. Yes, I could have traveled my route by buildings, not levels, but then why not print the brochure with multiple levels of the same building on one page so you do not have to keep flipping through pages? Grrr. Yes, I was grumpy. I grumbled that artists, not engineers, must have designed this pamphlet.
There were twelve recommended highlights. Our percentage completion was not high. We saw two, maybe three of them: #7 Grant Wood's American Gothic, #9 Marc Chagell's America Windows, and #12 Andy Warhol's Liz #3. I am not sure if we saw the Any Warhol work or not which tells you something about how impressed I was or was not.
We did see American Gothic in person. I learned that the image was not of husband and wife as I mistakenly assumed, but rather of the artist's sister and the artist's dentist. No such scene exists but was rather a composite of a house and the two people posed individually with a fabricated barn inserted in the upper right corner. I did look up an article describing the symbolism in American Gothic and reading it made the painting more intriguing to me, a puzzle of sorts – like those hidden figures activity games. For exampled there is a repetition of shapes in the cathedral shaped window of the house gable, the inverted shape of the pitchfork and the repeated design on the man's overalls that extends into the stripes of his shirt. Also the pattern in the window curtains is echoed on the trim on the woman's apron. See http://www.americangothichouse.net/about/the-painting/ for a more complete discussion.
Lest you think I am too serious-thinking and deep about this painting I would like to share a parody of it we have hanging on the wall in our home.
Perhaps it was because this was our fifth day of touring, or perhaps because I'd had only a few hours of sleep the previous night, but in contrast to the Cloud Gate and Crown Fountain, I found this museum my least favorite activity of the day. I could not make peace with the organizational style of the museum and, despite Frank's repeated admonition to "let it go", it affected my experience. I mean, really, when was the last time you saw signage with the YOU ARE HERE annotation, not tell you where you were per a floor plan of a building, but rather instead tell you where you were on a staircase? Duh... I know I can either go up or down from this landing.
John & Sue and Joe & Margaret were getting more out of the experience than Frank and I – mainly me – were, so we left earlier than they did. I wanted to see an exhibit on glass paperweights and miniatures near the exit and grand staircase, before we left. I was impressed with the detail of these half globes.
This super size paper weight is manufactured from multi-colored glass rods cut and gathered in bouquet fashion. The technique to make these was called "millefiori" which translates as "a thousand flowers". Glass rods are heated, fused together, and stretched out to miniaturize the design. The glass potting acts as a magnifying glass and enhances the cross-sectional view of each of those cut edges. More detail can be found in a 2012 post from the blog of the Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/blog/2012/10/02/now-on-view-paperweights.
In terms of miniaturization, next to the paperweights display was a series of small scale dioramas. This one in particular caught my eye. It is an exact tiny reproduction of the plantation Tara's drawing room from the movie Gone With the Wind, detailed down to the ornate gilded mirror, the mantel over the fireplace, and the drapes in the background.
As we left, I enjoyed a last look at the long staircase at the Michigan Avenue entrance. The bright green and white tiles on the risers made a whimsical statement that made me smile. Somehow, though, they seemed in contrast to many of the more sombre, serious, and sophisticated exhibit halls within. I preferred the stairs to a Picasso or an Andy Warhol. Sigh. I guess I just don't got no culture in me.
The Evening
We had dinner at a restaurant which is a historic Chicago legend called Nookies. The food was great and plentiful. As excerpted from its website:
"Situated in the Heart of Chicago’s Old Town, Nookies Restaurant first opened its doors as Nookies Snack Shop, in 1973. Two co-workers, Spiros Alexopoulos, a recent immigrant from Greece, who used to work as a server in a Lincoln Park restaurant, and Ralph Fisher, a cook, joined forces to open what was to become one of Chicago’s favorite diners. Spiros and Ralph named it Nookies as in a breakfast nook, although the innuendos of the name where not lost on passersby and local patrons. Nookies became the home of many Chicago politicians, actors, TV and radio personalities, and local artists, who would mingle with locals and out-of-town visitors to create a true Chicago original."
On our way home from the Art Institute of Chicago, Frank and I had stopped off at a shop a couple doors down from our home base and bought a 300 large-piece format jigsaw puzzle, the theme being classic book titles. With the unique fonts and colors of each book cover, the assembly was enjoyable and not at all taxing. Many hands make light work and we completed it in less than an hour's time. It was fun chatting away about the different titles and comparing how many of them we had each read and what we remembered about them.
These are the many hands that made the work light. Clockwise from 9:00 o'clock are John, Sue, Frank, Margaret, and Joe. I helped too, but the photographer's hand is absent from the photo. How many of these have you read?
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