Gargoyles and Eccentricity
When I first arrived here in Chicago a couple of years back, I managed to offend one of my new colleague’s sensibilities. We were walking across campus together when this respected scholar asked me if I didn’t simply love the architecture of the university’s buildings. Without thinking, I replied that I thought it was a little silly. Here in Hyde Park, a neighborhood studded with masterpieces of Prairie School and other early-twentieth-century styles of American design, why had the Rockefellers and the university administration decided to build in the Gothic style, as if Hyde Park were thirteenth-century Cambridge or Oxford? It reminded me a little of the Magic Kingdom in Disneyland.
I could tell by my colleague’s facial response that I’d said the wrong thing — I have practice in recognizing that look, given the number of times I put my foot in my mouth in the average day.
Since then, I’ve come to appreciate the campus’s beauty a bit more, especially in summer when everything is in bloom. Most of all, I like the gargoyles that keep watch over us from the turrets and arches of the buildings on the main quad.
Yesterday, my daughter and I trekked over to Rockefeller Chapel — the most Gothic of all the campus buildings — for the opening reception for “That Gargoyle on My Shoulder.” The exhibit brings together gargoyle-related works by local and national artists, including paintings, photography, and sculpture, all of which look remarkably at home in the looming chancels of the chapel. One inventive piece pairs two small paintings in round frames, one of a conventional gargoyle mounted on a cathedral tower, the other depicting a modern video surveillance camera in the same position. We’re still being watched from on high, the piece reminds us.
The exhibit also includes some thirty papier-mâché gargoyles produced over the past five or six years by sixth graders at the University of Chicago Lab Schools–including one done a couple of years back by my daughter Sonia, pictured above. Here’s the planning sketch she did for it, which now hangs in a prominent position on our walls at home.
A review of the exhibit in the Chicago Maroon newspaper praises the student works as “impressive” and concludes
Sixty beady eyes observing your every move certainly has the potential to be unnerving, but That Gargoyle on My Shoulder manages to unite the grotesque with the whimsical for an overall experience that is quite positive. The elephant-eared, tentacled, long-snouted beasts that adorn the inner walls of the chapel make the space a little eccentric, quite inventive, and very exemplary of the U of C.
That’s the word I should have used two years ago: not “silly,” but “eccentric.” It would have reduced the awkwardness of the moment, and it also would have been more precise.
The show runs through March 19, and they promise to serve hot chocolate to visitors. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by and check out the eccentric vibe.
A Weekend in the Life
I read the news today, oh boy. Actually, I didn’t, as I was traveling most of the day. We just got home this evening from Beloit, Wisconsin, where it was Family Weekend at Beloit College. Our oldest is three months into his freshman year at the school, and given his relative silence since leaving home, we decided to investigate in person to see whether he was still breathing. (The answer: barely, thanks to a nasty cold virus that has had the poor boy in its grips the past two weeks, but now at least seems to be easing up).
While there, we visited the Beloit Farmers Market and loaded up our trunk with apples, cheese, bread, etc. We also visited the famous Logan Museum of Anthropology and the Wright Museum of Art on campus. The latter features a remarkable collection of plaster casts of classical Greek sculptures. They were sent by the Greek government to its pavilion at the 1893 Colombian Exposition here in Hyde Park, and Beloit College bought them up after the fair closed down. It reminded me of the Temple of Zeus at Cornell, a student coffeehouse decorated with Cornell’s own collection of plaster replicas, acquired about the same time as Beloit’s.
I’ve also managed finally to make my way into volume two of Murakami Haruki’s latest novel, 1Q84. It took forever for me to wade through the 550 pages of volume one, a sign to me at least that the work is not one of his best. I’m also currently reading Dennis Washburn’s translation of Yokomitsu Riichi’s 1929 novel, Shanghai, as well as Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, both for my graduate seminar.
Can it be that tomorrow is already Monday?
An Afternoon with my Daughter
Sonia and I took the Metra downtown today for her orthodontist appointment. We arrived early and so killed some time at the coffee shop in the Chicago Cultural Center, my favorite building in the whole city. We checked out a few of the temporary art installations there, as well, then walked down the street to Daley Plaza where we watched pigeons engage in remarkably complex bathing rituals in the fountain by the Picasso statue. Finally, it was time to make our way to the clinic office.
After getting her braces adjusted, we headed over to the Art Institute. I used a trick I learned on our recent London trip: when touring an art gallery with a teenager, pick out in advance a handful of paintings you want to see, spend a few minutes in front of each, and then cash in your chips while you are still ahead. Since you haven’t burned out the kid’s short attention span, you might even be able to look at a few more works on your way to the exit. It worked like a charm again today. We saw three or four of my favorite pieces from the special exhibit on Japanese screens that I wrote about here earlier, then checked out “American Gothic” and “Nighthawks.” Sonia was still into it, so we headed for the Impressionism rooms and then strolled through some of the earlier European collection. We spent a good deal of time looking at a fifteenth century painting of St. George killing the dragon as well as at several striking El Grecos before we made our way out.
Outside, as we waited for the traffic light to turn green, a homeless man tried to sell us a copy of Streetwise. When we didn’t bite, he offered us instead a couple of jokes.
1). What’s the difference between a school teacher and a train? When you’ve got a piece of gum in your mouth, the teacher says “Spit it out,” but the train says “Chew chew.”
2). What do you call a school teacher who won’t fart in public? A private tooter.
Not bad, I thought.
We ate pizza for lunch and took the train home to Hyde Park. On board, Sonia told me about the funny look the lady at Borders gave her recently when she asked where their Lou Reed CDs were. (I’d asked for a couple of titles for my birthday). Apparently, thirteen-year-old girls aren’t part of the expected audience for Uncle Lou.
Later, back at home, when we were supposed to be doing our work, I instead used the wonders of YouTube to introduce Sonia to a new art form: ventriloquism. We watched footage of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Jay Marshall and Leno, and Dan Horn and Orsen.
There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.
This and That
Yesterday afternoon, I stopped in at the Art Institute of Chicago to take in “Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum” (on display through September 27). It’s a nice collection of about thirty pieces, and one of the nicest things about it is that it treats screen painting as a living tradition, including a number of fascinating twentieth-century pieces. I was struck in particular by Yamakawa Shuho’s 1933 Relaxing in the Shade, a portrait of two moga (modern girls) relaxing at the beach. There is also a panel containing a dozen characteristically warped images of hens and roosters attributed to the always surreal Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). Many of the works on display integrate calligraphy with visual image, sometimes breaking down the distinction between the two modes.
I also took in the Cy Twombly exhibit (on through October 11) in the museum’s new modern art wing. It includes a number of paintings that integrate written script, including meditations on a haiku by Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707), a poet who has long fascinated me.
Over at Japan Focus, there is a marvelous new translation (from German) of an article by Tawada Yoko, the poet, novelist and essayist who works between Japanese, German, and English. “The Letter as Literature’s Poetic and Political Body” is a thoughtful, imaginative meditation on the status of written script in this age of graphic novels, cell phones, and Internet. Even translations of classic literature are metamorphosing before our eyes, growing insect legs and acquiring hard paragraph breaks. Tawada writes,
The letters lie there like delicate, dangerous fish bones long after the reader has consumed and digested the contents of the text. The useless bones should probably be thrown away, but somehow they look significant. I stare at a letter on the page I’ve just read and wonder: what are these strange figures here before my eyes? Are they shadows or footprints? They gaze back at me wordlessly, as if they wanted me to remember something. It’s no longer the meaning of the text that’s at stake. The question, rather, is how to respond to the unsettling presence of the bodies of these letters.
I’m not sure what this has to do with writing and visual images, but last weekend in London Amy Winehouse made a guest appearance in concert with the grand old ska band The Specials. I’ll be in London for most of next week. I promise to keep my eyes peeled for any similar cameo appearances–and, for that matter, for any imaginative couplings of written script with visual iconry.
