ART + ARCHITECTURE
public was outraged. One public relations firm who had Pickle Packers
International as a client erected an
enormous pickle on the plaza where
The Picasso was to stand. The piece
was presented to the city of Chicago
as the “Picklecasso”.
Further frustration erupted when
Picasso refused to name the piece (to
this day it is simply referred to as The
Picasso) and would not comment on
its inspiration. When asked what the
piece meant, Picasso simply shrugged.
He could have borrowed a line from
Kapoor, who feels it is absurd to ask
about the meaning of an artwork: “As
an artist I really have nothing to say.
Otherwise I would have become a journalist.” Still the public could not resist
conjecture about The Picasso’s inspiration, and speculations ranged from the
artist’s pet Afghan hound to a baboon
head. But Picasso’s grandson believes
the work reflected the artist’s obsession
with Lydia Corbett, a young French
woman who sat for him on numerous
occasions in the 1950s and 1960s.
The installation of The Picasso may
have initially caused a bit of a flap, but
the maelstrom eventually subsided.
Time softened the public’s misgivings
and wholesale skepticism somehow
morphed into full-blown adulation.
In 1999 the temporary public art project, Cows
on Parade, brought a herd of fiberglass bovines
to the streets of Chicago. At the termination of
the project, the cows were sold at auction with
proceeds donated to charity. Photo by Koston
Photography. Via Flickr.
The fetching Picasso soon became a
beloved symbol of the city and even
captivated Hollywood, having cameos
in The Blues Brothers, The Fugitive and
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Prior to The
Picasso, public sculpture in Chicago was
most often a practice in monumental
verisimilitude—capturing an historical
figure in a moment of grandeur or
reflective repose, and presenting that
figure in a literal manner. The Picasso,
with its modernist ambiguity, initially
flummoxed a city in the nascent stages of
its arts program, but over time the piece
helped the city mature in its consideration
of what makes a piece of public art truly
remarkable. The success of the work
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