Sky Sentinels

Sky Sentinels, 1976

Louise Nevelson

University of Chicago

Smart Museum of Art

5550 South Greenwood Avenue

            Born in Kiev in 1899, Leah Berliawsky emigrated with her family from Russia to Maine in 1905. A cousin helped the family to Anglicize their names, thus she became Louise, and she later married wealthy businessman Charles Nevelson and settled in New York City. In addition to studying at the Art Students League, in 1931 she traveled to Munich to work with legendary teacher, painter and catalyst of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Hans Hofmann. Famous for his emphasis on the “push and pull” necessary to create a balanced abstract composition, Hofmann’s influence helped Nevelson to find her signature style, characterized by the use of found objects and architectural elements, joined together into a grid-like formation and painted a uniform color, typically black but sometimes white or gold. While her wooden wall pieces are usually displayed indoors, this work demonstrates her ability to translate her approach into an outdoor work, utilizing pieces of scrap and cut aluminum, welded together and given a monochromatic finish. The Madison Plaza Building in the Loop once featured another outdoor Nevelson piece, but it has since been moved into the lobby and photography is not allowed. 

Construction in Space in the Third and Fourth Dimensions

Construction in Space in the Third and Fourth Dimensions, 1959 (installed          

1964)

Antoine Pevsner

University of Chicago Law School

Laird Bell Quadrangle

1111 East 60^th Street

            Antoine Pevsner (1884-1962) was one of the leaders, along with younger brother Naum Gabo, of the Russian Constructivists. Both experimented with new materials and industrial processes while in France, stating that “to realize our creative life in terms of space and time is the unique objective of our art.” Although Pevsner was known for works consisting of welded strips of metal held on delicate frameworks, this construction was cast in bronze and features striated surfaces and curvilinear forms. Rejecting traditional notions of sculptural volume in favor of forms that interact with the space and imply movement, Pevsner’s piece allows the network of lines and forms to interplay differently with light and shade as the viewer shifts position, thus allowing a shared existence within the “space-time continuum.”

            Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect known for the St. Louis Arch and Dulles airport, designed the law school buildings at the site and advocated for a work by Pevsner to be placed within the 90 x 120 foot shallow reflecting pool. Saarinen died in 1961, before the project was implemented. After art collector Alex Hillman donated this work by Pevsner, there was disagreement regarding the precise placement of the work in the pool. Eminent architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was consulted. He pointed to a spot with his cane, declaring that his choice would be obvious to any architect. The piece was placed where lines drawn from the western edge of the library and the northern edge of the classroom building would intersect. Subsequently, a letter written by Saarinen was discovered and it indicated the exact same spot.

Untitled

Untitled, 1980

Amir Nour

4^th District Police Station

2255 East 103^rd Street

            Commissioned for the 4^th District Police Station under Chicago’s Percent-for-art program, this untitled work is a linear arrangement of five semi-spherical forms. The pieces were fashioned from cold-rolled steel and painted matte black and the configuration of the components implies interdependence, in that they could be put together to form two complete spheres measuring six-feet in diameter. Imposing but still human in scale, the work juxtaposes simple geometric shapes in a manner that suggests a variety of potential meanings.

            Amir Nour was born in Sudan in 1939 and he studied art in Khartoum and London before coming to the United States in the 1960s. He earned an M.F.A from Yale University in 1969 and began teaching in Chicago in 1970. Although his work overlaps with some of the formal interests of Minimalism, such as the repetition of particular shapes in a series, his geometric forms move easily between different spheres of reference. As a site-specific abstract sculpture, the piece exists within a specific situation, perhaps asking the viewer to consider the relationship between the police and the surrounding neighborhood.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Memorial

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Memorial, 1941

(cast 1949; dedicated 1955)

Albin Polášek

Midway Plaisance, east of Blackstone Avenue

            Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) was founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, serving in that position from 1918 to 1935. Educated in Vienna and Leipzig, Masaryk served as a Visiting Professor in Slavic Studies at the University of Chicago in 1902. During the First World War, he worked to encourage Allied support for the founding of a Czech state following the war and he was recognized as the head of the new state of Czechoslovakia in November 1918 following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.          

            In the years immediately following Masaryk’s death, a group of Americans of Czechoslovakian descent approached sculptor Albin Polášek, a native of Czechoslovakia and head of the sculpture department at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, to submit a proposal for a monument honoring Masaryk. In an attempt to please as many of the patrons as possible, Polášek offered a proposal for an equestrian portrait of Masaryk, although the artist would have preferred a symbolic representation. Fortunately for Polášek, a Chicago park district committee ruled against allowing any more “portrait statues” to be installed in city parks. Subsequently, Polášek crafted a memorial that features an 18-foot bronze equestrian statue of a “Blanik knight,” referring to the legend of Saint Wencelaus, leader of a band of knights who slept under the Blanik mountain in Bohemia waiting for the opportunity to deliver their people from oppression. Placed atop a 20-foot granite plinth and 64 x 84 foot base, the bearded, barrel-chested figure strikes a commanding pose on the east end of the Midway Plaisance.

           

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller Monument

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller Monument, 1886

Ernst Bilhauer Rau

Lincoln Park

Conservatory Garden

East of North Stockton Drive on axis with West Webster Avenue

            Chicago public sculpture includes many examples of donations made by immigrant groups to honor important figures from their homelands. This monument to the German playwright and poet Schiller is a replica of an original bronze that stands in Marbach, his birthplace in southwest Germany. A committee of German citizens hired William Pelargus, an artist from Stuttgart, to recast the original monument designed by Ernst Rau. The granite base was carved by Lake View stonecutter John Gall. Schiller wrote about human freedom and the capacity for moral action and his poem “Ode to Joy” was used as the chorale finale of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.