Care to worship at the altar of Chicago architecture?
A new exhibit by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman has just the thing for you: kneelers, like the ones churchgoers use to pay homage to the Lord.
But the ”gods” being worshiped in this show are Louis Sullivan, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other greats of Chicago`s celebrated architecture.
”It`s a cult,” said Tigerman, who added votive candles and specially designed pillows to the display lest anyone miss his half-serious, half-sacrilegious point.
Titled ”Halftime,” the show opened Wednesday at The Arts Club of Chicago and is destined to provoke controversy among anyone captivated by the art of building in Chicago.
The reason is that Tigerman has taken the risky step of grouping the work of his colleagues into four stylistic periods spanning from 1916 to 1991.
Most of those colleagues are still alive, and some-such as Adrian Smith, designer of the NBC and AT&T towers-were in attendance Wednesday as Tigerman reviewed their work, gently skewering it along the way.
”This show should be subtitled `A Test of Friendship,` ” Tigerman cracked at an Arts Club lecture attended by more than 200 people.
The show`s time frame parallels the lifespan of The Arts Club, which introduced avant-garde European art to Chicago in the early 20th Century and is now celebrating its 75th anniversary.
Each stylistic period in the show is half as long as the one before it-thus the title ”Halftime.”
The periods are:
– ”40 Years of Evolving Modernism (1916-1956),” ranging from Mies van der Rohe`s apartment towers at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive to William Pereira`s Esquire Theater on Oak Street.
– ”20 years of Neo-Miesianism (1956-76),” which takes in works by Mies` followers, such as the John Hancock Center and the Inland Steel Building, both designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
– ”10 years of Post-Modernism (1976-1986),” with examples like Thomas Beeby`s Conrad Sulzer Regional Library and Ralph Johnson`s office building at 123 N. Wacker Drive.
– ”5 Years of Deconstructivism (1986-1991),” including the new Playboy headquarters interior by Darcy Bonner and the AGI Industries Inc. Showroom by Eva Maddox.
Black-and-white photographs portraying examples from each period are displayed on four free-standing walls in The Arts Club, whose interior Mies designed in 1950.
Reproductions of the photographs get progressively smaller as the show goes from style to style.
That is Tigerman`s way of saying that, as the length of stylistic periods has shortened, the enduring quality of architecture has diminished too.
”It`s the 15 minutes of fame” idea, he said in an interview. ”Only now, you get 2 1/2 minutes.”
To some observers, ”Halftime” may represent a tortured, if devilishly clever, numbers game that does little to shed new light on Chicago
architecture.
Tigerman, who is Jewish, acknowledges that the show is a ”cabalistic misreading” of Chicago architecture, a reference to the cabala, a strain of Jewish mysticism that incorporates numerology.
But Tigerman thinks the show is valuable because it recognizes the lasting contribution of architects (particularly Modernists such as Mies, Sullivan and Wright) who didn`t cave in and design according to the rigid order of the corporate spreadsheet or the weepy nostalgia of the gingerbread house.
To lionize (or perhaps deify) those architects, Tigerman plays the trick of not placing wall text below photographs in the show.
Instead, he forces the viewer who wants to know exactly what he`s looking at to walk behind each of the four walls on which the photographs are displayed.
There, the viewer finds a table top, a book open to pages that identify the photographs, two votive candles and a kneeler.
Those forms follow the function of forcing the viewer (as well as Tigerman) to pay proper respect to the heroes of Chicago architecture.
The exhibition runs through March 11 at The Arts Club, 109 E. Ontario St.
