Wrigley Building Plaza: Where Perfect People meet the Rest of Us

click images for larger view (recommended)

If you're wondering about the mix at Wrigley Plaza - people bundled in fall sweaters sharing the sidewalk with young women in summer dresses - step back.

Originally, the plywood barricades that went up for the rehab of the plaza between the Wrigley Building and its northern annex got a rather desultory paint job, but now the one along Michigan Avenue has become an idealized trompe-l'œil duplicate of the actual facade behind it, complete with its own highly selective group of exceptionally attractive and stylish pedestrians blending in with the more realistically imperfect stream of actual passersby.

The plaza and its substructure is owned by the City of Chicago, which built it in 1957, when it led to what was still a loft district with a distinctive skid row tinge. Now it's the Mag Mile gateway to the Trump Riverwalk and what's become a booming River North. In exchange for paying for the rehab and assuming the cost of maintenance, the developer, 400-410 N. Michigan Real Estate LLC, gets to call the shots on the use of the space for the next 50 years, subject to city approval.

Both the support framing beneath and the plaza itself are undergoing a $2 million rehab, with Goettsch Partners as the project architects for plaza and buildings alike. There's to be new granite pavers, an embedded lighting system.

Already stripped away are the cheesy-looking metal storefronts installed in 2010 after Mars took over the Wrigley Company and its iconic buildings, to be replaced with new terra cotta matching the original. The scope of work for the rehab also specifies two new storefronts and doors on both the north and south elevations of the plaza. The "non-historic" infill at the ground level of the breezeway has been demolished, leaving free-standing columns that look like they belong in the aisle of a Baroque cathedral.

Below is a rendering of the finished design from Goettsch Partners.

For now, you can actually watch for yourself the process unfold. Real people get to stand next to the fake people, and gaze through a fake shop front that's a real window looking onto the real plaza and its rehab.

In Tokoroa...

 ...thinking about Damien Hirst

Hunting in the abstract

The discovery in the US of a $50 Renoir (now valued at $85,000) in a Virginia flea market recently reminded us of the possibility of an NZ-related find for anyone travelling in the States. Back in mid-1963 American businessman E. J. Danziger purchased twenty abstract paintings by Colin McCahon from the IKON Gallery in Auckland. As McCahon’s exhibition that year consisted of landscapes (including the large Landscape theme and variations given by Creative NZ to Te Papa), the Danziger works were probably selected from stock. 

Danziger and his brother had been partners in the movie business producing over 70 B-grade thrillers (including So evil, so young, and the 1957 shocker The depraved – more here) in the 1950s and 1960s. By the time 1958 rolled around - as McCahon was painting his pivotal Northland panels - the Danzigers had shifted focus and taken over the Gordon Hotels group whose operations included the 406-room May Fair Hotel in London. It was to decorate rooms in this hotel that Danziger purchased the works by McCahon in 1963. A year after the purchase the Danzigers stepped out of the hotel business presumably leaving the 20 c.1962 abstract paintings by Colin McCahon in place. The hunt was on. 

Over the years the ‘missing’ Danziger McCahons became a bit of a legend. Every now and then there would be talk of this dealer or that combing their way through the files and travelling to the States to try and track the 20 down. Martin Browne, a dealer based in Sydney, talked with the 81-year old Danziger in 1990 and located eight of the 20. 

Then in 2006 another of the Danziger works turned up. The painting which certainly looks like it is from the Bellini Madonna series was made available on eBay with no reserve from a seller tagged quicksellit-westpalmbeachfl. A winning bid of $US4,500 was posted but the vendor refused to give up the work. The painting is not included in the Colin McCahon online catalogue although an image of it appeared on the eBay auction site at the time. 

By our account that leaves 11 works somewhere out there. OTY. 

Image: The painting put up on eBay as one of Colin McCahon’s Bellini Madonna series in 2006

CORRECTION 1 OCTOBER: It turns out that Renoir was stolen so not quite the bargain we'd bargained on

Her/Moth/Others - spin them all together and they spell . . .

Mothers, by Glaswegian artist Martin Creed, rotates before Josef Paul Kliehaus's Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Part of the exhibition, Martin Creed Plays Chicago, which runs December. See a time-lapse video on the installation of the work here.

By the numbers: Gagosian edition

It's been a Gagosian kind of week so, it being Saturday, why don't you kick back and think of what might have been if you'd only started out your business life selling posters on the street.

1.1       the turnover per year of the Gagosian Gallery in billions of dollars

5.75     the number in millions of dollars that Larry Gagosian paid for his US gallery building

8          the number of cities with a Gagosian Gallery

12        the number of Gagosian spaces around the world

34       the number in years that there has been a Gagosian Gallery

65       the number in millions estimated as the current value of Gagosian’s NY building

67       the age in years of Larry Gagosian

77       the number of artists or artist estates represented by the Gagosian Gallery

150     the number of staff members working for Gagosian Gallery

300     the number of Damien Hirst spot paintings shown in the Gagosian Gallery around the world earlier this year

665     the number of people in thousands who attended the Sydney Biennale this year

1467   the number of people who join the Gagosian Gallery Facebook page per month

14,200     the number of square metres of permanent Gagosian Gallery exhibition space

33,849     the number of Facebook fans of the Gagosian Gallery

103,731    the amount in dollars of the average Gagosian Gallery salary

Image: OTN's Berlin stringer catches Larry Gagosian at the Hamburger Bahnhof

October in Chicago is Crazy Busy: Roggeveen's Go West, Arets, Vinoly, Tigerman, Stern, Gehry, Jahn(x2), Open House Chicago, MAS Context Analog - much, much more

Now up: At well over 60 items already, we're setting a blistering pace for the October 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

click images for larger view

You want architects?  At UIC, there's Daan Roggeveen of the Go West Project on the 8th, and Tom Leader on the 29th.  At IIT, there's new dean Wiel Arets this coming Wednesday, the 3rd, Kevin Daly on the 10th, Felipe Assadi and Ignacio Volante of Chile's Universidad Finis Terrae on the 16th, and Christian Kerez on the 24th.  On Monday, the 8th, Rafael Viñoly is at U of C's new Logan Center for Arts - his huge New Hospital Pavilion opens next year.  On the 17th, Carol Ross Barney talks about Design for Sustainable Transportation at CAF lunchtime, where Mary T. Schaffer talks about Target's rehab of Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott store on the 31st.

You want benefits?  How about Helmut Jahn x2?  On the 3rd, he's being honored at Facets Multimedia's Screen Gems Benefit, while on the 26th, he receives the AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award to Designight 2012 with Victoria Lautman.  And on the 13th, at the Art Institute's Modern Ball, Stanley Tigerman is honored for his lifetime achievements and participates in a dialogue with Frank Gehry and Robert A.M. Stern, moderated by Geoffrey Baer.

For ambition and shear density, nothing matches the 2012 edition of Open House Chicago, Saturday and Sunday the 13th and 14th, offering often rare access to over 150 buildings both downtown and in twelve other Chicago neighborhoods, from Hyde Park to Edgewater.  (Expect to reach me only through Twitter on those days)

We got Chicago Ideas Week 2012, including events with Martin Felsen, Devon Patterson,  Navy Pier,  Gunny Harboe and Tim Samuelson on saving the Rookery, and Steve Wiesenthal and Anthony Shou of Kirkegaard Associates on their new Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at U of C.

We got 111 West Wacker (formerly the stalled Waterview) at the Cultural Center for Friends of Downtown, Ulrich Dangel of Nicholas Grimshaw talking about The Eden Project at AIA Chicago, which is also offering a demo tour of Arup's Experience SoundLab and a talk by Matthew Seymour on The Churches of Edward Dart.  On the 27th, Landmarks Illinois offers up this year's edition of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards.

Then there's SOM's Eric Keune and the State Department's Casey Jones and Lydia Muniz talking about the new U.S embassy in Beijing and State's New Design Excellence Initiative at CAF,  Scott Merrill at the Driehaus, Chris Ware and his new book Building Stories at Unity Temple, an Archi Salon led by Clare Lyster inside the galleries of the Art Institute's Building:  Inside Studio Gang Architects, Richard Pare discusses Soviet Modernist Architecture at the Graham, and William Tyre talks about Glessner House at 125 for Landmarks Illinois at the CCL, while a Halloween tradition continues as Glessner House again offers up Edgar Allan Poe readings, and Haunted Tours of Historic Prairie Avenue.

I've never seen so many conferences in a single month, and we're still adding.MAS Context is presenting Analog - Second edition, an all day event with speakers from Jimenez Lai to MCA's Dieter Roelstraete and more at Marsha target="_blank"ll Brown's NewProjects "urbanism studio" on South State. The Architects Newspaper is hosting a day-two symposium, Facades+Innovation, at IIT, with a free keynote by Fernando Romero.  SEAOI offers up symposiums on Structures, learning from the Indiana State Fair Collapse Incident,and Concrete Mix Design

OK, I'm exhausted just talking about it all.  To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, she who is tired of Architecture in Chicago in October is tired of life.  Start filling out your own dance cards by checking out the cornucopic October Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Photo op

“I am painting the one picture all the time. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, I am trying to perfect the one thing I was meant to do, to perfect it to my satisfaction. It is an unattainable thing, but you have it there right in front of you, all the time. And when you get close you don’t turn away, even if it makes your life and your acceptance as an artist harder.”   
Gordon Walters talking to Keith Stewart in the December 1994 issue of Quote Unquote. 

Image: (JB&MB) taken in Gordon Walters’s Christchurch studio 1979

Eventful

Auckland Art Gallery has a new Deputy Director thanks to a major restructure earlier this year that was initially going to remove director Chris Saines and then backedoff. She is Viv Beck who comes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade who are also restructuring. 

Beck was Director of Communications there for a couple of years and before that ran a print management agency. She has also been NZ Post’s General Manager of stamps. 

At the AAG one of her key tasks will be to make the Gallery 'more commercially focused.'

And Beck’s involvement in the art biz? For two years she was Director of the WellingtonMuseums Trust that she later went on to chair for two years until 2010.

The appointment of a new Principal Curator is still to be announced.

Today- 200 Years of Sitting: The Chair - learn with Achilles, buy at Wright

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Tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Room and Board, 55 East Ohio, in an event co-sponsored by the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation, SAIC professor Rolf Achilles will talk up Chair, an overview of the last 200 years in devices for sitting, from Rietveld,  to Wright, to Eames to Starck. "No other design creation better expresses our ever-changing mood."  The event is free; no ticket required.

And if that's not enough, head over to Wright on Hubbard for a noon auction today, (Thursday, September 27th) , Living Contemporary,  "a unique mix of art and design from the 20th and 21st centuries", including, from 1980. the A-Chair, the first furniture designed by architect Steven Holl.

In addition to art from the likes of Robert Motherwell and Ed Paschke, there's a wealth of design items going up for auction, including these Ron Arad rocking chairs . . .

Paolo Buffa armchairs from the Hotel Bristol,  Merano . . .

Gaetano Pesce's  dining set . .  .

Marcel Wanders' Knotted Rouge . . . 

and Pedro Friedeberg's Hand Foot Chair . . .

Sorry for the late notice, but probably if you're a buyer, you're already there.

Also today, there's Tristan Sterk at AIA Chicago, and Les Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes, with Freaks Freearchitects and A + R Salles at Alliance Française de Chicago.  Check it all out - and a number of other events still to come -  on the September calendar here.

Art is where you find it

The art. Where we found it.

When Ron and Larry got unmarried

The world of art dealers and their clients is not often thrown open as it has been in the recent flurry of suits in the New York Supreme Court, so let's make the most of it. Larry Gagosian and long-time collector and client billionaire Ron Perelman are about to duke it out over a Jeff Koons sculpture that isn’t even finished. The depositions have been filled and contain encouraging phrases like “clouding the title”. 

The pending cases also demonstrate the immense power mega-artists like Koons wield over their market. Essentially Koons had a deal with Gagosian over his yet-to-be-completed $US4 million granite sculpture of Popeye that if it was on-sold at any time in the future he (Koons) would get 70 percent of anything above the original sale price. It’s the artist’s resale fee on steroids. And just in case anyone thought there would be some wriggle room, Koons also insisted on 80 percent of any resale profit should the sculpture come back into Gagosian’s hands before it was completed. That’s a seriously powerful player at work. 

Welcome to the world of dealer/artist/collector relations where collectors not only purchase works from art dealers but also consign them back for resale, exchange them for other works and sell back direct. Tons of room for confusion and misunderstanding there. As one US attorney put it, “There’s a certain level of informality in the art market that is not helpful to any of the parties.” 

The court papers filed by Ron Perelman (you can get them here) claim that as the already paid for Popeye sculpture was running seven months late, it was decided to add it to some other art works as part payment for yet another, grander acquisition. All the pieces went back and forward with Larry Gagosian receiving the returned Perelman’s works and Perelman getting his new painting. 

Then all hell broke loose as Perelman claimed Gagosian “Fraudulantly induced [Perelman] to purchase Popeye a sculpture by Jeff Koons and forced [him] to accept an exchange rate significantly below its fair market value”. Gagosian responded in kind accusing Perelman of engaging in “a series of sham settlements and deceptive maneuvers”. 

Put simply, Larry reckoned that Ron hadn’t paid for Popeye so obviously he wasn't going to get the full price back for it but Perelman found out about Jeff's 70 percent so he figured that Larry wasn’t going to offer him very much at all because he wasn’t going to make any profit so Ron decided to sue which really really upset Larry who thought Ron was a friend and anyway he hadn’t ever sued one of his clients before but what the hell you have to make a start somewhere besides so far as Larry was concerned Ron didn’t even own the damn Popeye work because he hadn’t paid for it duh not that Ron was having anything to do with that as an idea because he had copies of his cheques. It’s complicated. 

You can read the whole amazing story here in the Huffington Post and in even more juicy detail here via Bloomberg. 

Image: Jeff Kons's Granite Popeye (simulation only)

The Ninotchka of River North: George Schipporeit's IBM Self-Park

click images for larger view

Sam Jacob is in town.   The brilliant British architect,  a founding director of London's FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste), is hot off his trip to Venice, poor man, where his Museum of Copying was one of the hits of the 2012 Biennale.  It would be nice to think his visit to Chicago might include the idea of bringing Museum to Chicago.

Judging from Jacob's Instagram pictures, his visit to Chicago has been somewhat constricted in scope.  There are photos of the river skyline, Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott ornament, Marina City at night, and also of MCA's just-closed Skyscraper show.  He posted pics both of Mies's IBM, and the adjacent IBM Self-Park, captioned "Super massive black urban hole."

Jacob is surely not the first observer to draw the same conclusion.  On a cloudy day, with flat light, the IBM Self-Park truly takes the form of a dark prison, sucking up all available light into the depths of its monolithic black form.  There are many, I'm sure, who hate it for that.  If it was the Self-Park's only trick, I might be among them.

But it's not, and the longer I live downtown the more I love this structure.   I don't think I'm alone.

When IBM acquired the large parcel at Wabash and the river for its new tower, to be designed by Mies van der Rohe, it also acquired a slightly smaller parcel across Kinzie street, just to the north.
When the IBM opened in 1972, three years after Mies's death, it became an instant landmark, the classic Miesian modernist box.  No barnacle of a bustle like the Seagram, it soars 52 stories atop a raised plinth, on its own  urban island, isolated in an enveloping ether of open space.

Mies's grandson Dirk Lohan has said that the IBM was deliberately sited to block the view from Michigan Avenue of the apostasy of Bertrand Golberg's curving, corn cob cylinders of Marina City.  Like Marina City, however, the IBM was a pioneer in an old loft warehouse district that still often reeked of Skid Row.  Someday, booming IBM would build a second tower and its parcel to the north - just not yet.

As Linda Legner wrote in Inland Architect, May, 1974 . . .

Rather than let its smaller plot lie fallow for the duration, IBM went ahead with the second stage: IBM Self-Park, insisting that the design incorporate provision for the last phase of the project, the future addition of another tower atop the garage.

To design the self-park, IBM turned to young architect George Schipporeit, an even more insidious kind of heretic.  Where Goldberg joyfully broke Mies's right-angled mode, Schipporeit merely bent it.  His Lake Point Tower of 1968, designed with John Henrich, extruded the Miesian box, pulling the edges of the curtain wall out like taffy to form three curve-edged wings around a central core.

The $3.5 million IBM Self-Park would have a reinforced concrete frame, be 12 stories tall, and hold 800 cars.  In deference to the IBM, the exterior would be metal, in this case Corten steel, the same self-oxidizing Corten that is Richard Serra's material of choice for his monumental sculptures. In place of the Miesian I-beam mullions, however, Shipporeit created a facade out of thin strips of vertical steel, very closely placed.  The Corten starts out the color of rust, and then turns dark as it ages. although, as you can see above, the setting sun can bring it all out again. 

The IBM Self-Park is often referred to as "sculptural".  It curves at its southeast corner, mimicking the curve of Wabash itself, first west, then doubling back east, as it reaches Kinzie street.  Descend the slightly scary open metal stair, and you can see how rain on the Corten steel has stained the concrete base of the building, raw and threatening, befitting the former abject character of its neighborhood.

What truly makes the IBM Self-Park sculptural, however, is not so much its form, as the way its steel screen interacts with the light.  It is about as far from a black hole as you can get.

During the day, it plays with the sunlight, becoming a canvas of weird and wonderful patterns.

At night, like a vampire, it really comes to life. 

As one of our readers noted, this is directly related to the form of the steel strips:

When looked at on end they are essentially 'Z' shaped. This has a big impact. The reason why the interior seems to play peek-a-boo as you move around the building is due to this shape. From some angles the shape of the steel completely blocks views into (or out of) the interior and from others they come close to disappearing. It is a deceptively simple building that does not give up its delights quickly. 

 At night, the actual structure of the garage is now clearly expressed.  The screen dissolves into patterns of frame and void.  Close up, viewed obliquely, those voids seem almost ghostly.

Step back, and the effect is astonishing.

The structural grid, hidden in daylight, reveals itself, as strong as bedrock, and those metal ribs, seemingly forming one impenetrable mass during the day, now look as fine as threads of silk.  Within each frame of the grid, a bulb of light hovers, showing up the angled horizontals of the support beams.  As cars move through the garage, their headlights animate the now diaphanous screen.

In the shorter, wider IBM Self-Park, Mie's elegant tower - Webern minimalism crossed with Gershwin swank - finds it perfect backdrop and counterpoint.  Don't be fooled by the sometime dour demeanor;  Schipporeit's IBM Self-Park is the sparkling Ninotchka of River North.

Bathing beauty

"They saw it and said 'oh, that's art'." 

Danu Sefton in the Dominion Post describing the police’s reaction and lack of interest when they came to her house to check on whether or not a photo she took of her daughter in the bath depicted child abuse

Insect art: an overview

Out there on the blurred edges of animal art is the little known and rarely discussed field of art created by, but not necessarily for, insects. We are primarily talking here about spiders, flies, butterflies, and of course the master artists of the insect world, cockroaches. 

Having said that, we admit that we have had a bad run with insect art here at OTN. Yes, we did jump the gun on snail art and, as many OTN readers pointed out, our painting fly post left quite a bit to be desired, most particularly that the flies didn’t actually paint anything themselves but were part of a fly-artist combo that mostly relied on the artist for composition etc. 

But with cockroach art we are on much firmer ground. OK someone has to load them up (with paint that is) and set them down on the paper but from there on it is pure cockroach-inspired creativity that you see on the page. So here are a couple of paintings as a taster. You can see more here and read about how one man has dedicated his life to allowing these disliked insects express themselves.

CTA looking for 7 or so good artists: October 10 deadline for proposals for public art in 7 rehabbed CTA Red Line North stations

CTA rehabbed Granville Red Line station (click images for larger view)

 The question period actually closed yesterday, but artists have until 3:30 p.m., October 10th, to submit proposals for artworks to be installed along seven stations on the north branch of the Chicago Transit Authority's Red Line, which are, in sequence, undergoing at $81 million rehab.

Artwork on the CTA includes everything from, at the Brown Line Western stop, a slice of the Berlin wall . . .

To 50 works of arts from 41 artists on the Pink, Red, and Brown lines, including Jo Hormuth's Canopy Lights at Red Line 47th street . . .

. . . Jason Pickleman's MONT/ROSE: Area at Brown Line Montrose, and . . .

. . . Juan Angel Chávez and Corinne Peterson's Hopes and Dreams at Red/Roosevelt.  (The CTA has published a pdf of all the artworks._

The Red Line Granville stop was the first to shut down, this past June 1st, re-opening July 13th.  The century-old station had already had one gut rehab back in 1980, so the latest fix was a matter of repairing and restoring concrete and masonry, cleaning, repainting, and refurbishing the platform.  The end result is a bright open design, although the granite fascia - leftover from 1980? - is an incongruous element that weighs down the lightness.

More recently, the Argyle stop closed down for its facelift on August 24th.  Will the distinctive Chinese color palette survive?

Unlike the Brown Line stations, where the art was co-ordinated with the reconstruction of the stations, the Red Line project is a bit of an applique.  Artists are given a pre-configured tabula rasa to work with.  According to the press release, "Prior public art experience is not a requirement."  There's a $525,000 budget for the art works, paid for by the feds.  The stations are Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, Thorndale, Granville, Morse and Jarvis.  (You can find full descriptions and histories for each station on Graham Garfield's indispensable Chicago-L website. )

The budget for individual stations will range from $45,000 to $99.000.  There will be two steps to the judging process, with 25 artists selected as finalists, winners announced next February, and all art to be in place by September, 2013. You can read the CTA press release, with a link to the RFP here.