John Lanzendorf’s Gold Coast apartment is decorated in the Jurassic period. He did it all himself. It would have taken a nightmare-proof interior designer to even cross the threshold. All the artwork has teeth. Rows and rows of glistening, serrated teeth.
Lanzendorf is the most important collector of dinosaur art in the country, if not the world, according to John W. McCarter Jr., president and chief executive officer of the Field Museum of Natural History, where 77 pieces from the Lanzendorf collection-Tyrannosaurus rex depictions in original paintings, drawings, sculptures and toys-will be on exhibit to celebrate the unveiling Wednesday of “Sue,” the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered.
That still leaves 423 dinosaur depictions at home, a rare assemblage the public would never see but for our expedition there.
First impression is of stepping back into what paleontologists call “deep time,” when humongous reptiles ruled the earth.
A visitor is awe-struck, just as McCarter was when he first saw Lanzendorf’s collection. “Every nook and cranny, every wall and countertop in his apartment was covered in dinosauriana,” he says.
It still is, with most paintings and sculptures showing multiple dinosaurs.
Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist famous for his expeditions to dinosaur bone yards of the Sahara, whose work led to an exhibit of replicated skeletons of two plant-eating Jobarias and one carnivorous Afrovenator at Navy Pier earlier this year, says each dinosaur has 60 teeth.
That’s a lot of daily grind, although not all dinosaurs are meat-eaters. Their dietary preferences are revealed by tooth shape, says Sereno. “The carnivores have blade-shaped and recurved teeth with tiny little serrations like a steak knife. The herbivores have spoon-shaped teeth that don’t recurve backward for hooking and puncturing like a predatory dinosaur.”
Still, one can’t help noting the ones with recurved teeth are generally shown finishing off those with spoon-shaped teeth.
Few distractions from the art exist in this space. Furnishings include one chair and a bed with leopard-print linens. It may be superfluous to say the dominant color is lizard green, with occasional departure, such as the blue jay-colored Allosaurus head. (Dinosaurs and birds branched off from the same family tree eons ago.)
One might think it difficult to live with so many jaws opened in primal savagery, typified in the beautiful but terrifying bronze by Stephen Czerkas of three American Velociraptors named Deinonychus on a fast-paced patrol for prey. But this collector sees dinosaurs as the most beautiful group of animals that ever existed.
He came to focus on them in a fateful way. As a kid in the 1950s and ’60s, he kept the dinosaur toys that came in cereal boxes. His late mother, Ruth, supported his interest by buying him a new dinosaur every week at five-and-dime stores.
That was about the extent of it. By the 1970s and early ’80s, Lanzendorf had become the preferred hairstylist of Chicago’s society ladies and did all the hairstyling for photographer Victor Skrebneski’s studio. (He closed his Oak Street salon, Lanzendorf & Blankenship, 13 years ago and now works at Timothy Paul salon.)
Then, in 1991, diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, he was told he would not live past three months. Defying the odds, he did nine months of chemotherapy and radiation, losing 46 pounds in one month.
He also contacted a Florida ministry, Life Fellowship Church, crediting the path of daily meditation and positive thinking upon which they led him as aiding his recovery. “The moment I started doing what they told me, I knew I was going to be OK. And here I am, nine years later. There are miracles that happen.”
A month after treatment ended, he vowed to do only what he liked doing if he survived. Dinosaurs were his first love, and his career as extreme collector of dinosauriana began.
Among artists whose work he owns: Michael Skrepnick, commissioned by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to do the mural in its Dinosaur Hall; David Krentz, an animator for Walt Disney Feature Animation; James Gurney, author of the series of books, “Dinotopia;” Michael Trcic, key sculptor and puppeteer for the Tyrannosaurus rex in the film “Jurassic Park.”
Dinosaur or paleo-art is a field only 150 years old, says Sereno. In the mid-1800s, dinosaur fossils were believed to be dragon remains. Charles Knight, who worked from the late 1800s to the 1940s, was the founder of dinosaur art. Scientists who found a fossil hired an artist like Knight to show what it looked like.
“John’s collection highlights how far the field has come,” says Sereno. Eventually, Lanzendorf plans to leave his entire collection to an institution, where it can contribute to the understanding of this lost world. “It’s a vibrant field where artists and scientists are interacting like never before.”
Illustrating their teamwork is the book “Dinosaur Imagery, The Lanzendorf Collection, The Science of Lost Worlds and Jurassic Art.” The book, with foreword by Philip J. Currie (Academic Press, $49.95), was released this month.
A limited number of well-chosen works from the collection are shown–artistic renderings of rampant reptiles like Pentaceratops, Dimetrodon, Triceratops, Gorgosaurus, Majungatholus, Albertosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex and others. High visual impact is combined with commentaries by 28 of the world’s leading paleontologists, allowing the dinophile to enjoy the best art as well as the latest science regarding the biology, behavior, ecology and distribution of dinosaurs.
How did Lanzendorf acquire such singular works? “John has special relationships with these artists. There’s no one like him in the field. Eventually as an artist you want to be part of this,” says Sereno, whose drawings also are in the book.
A recent acquisition is the final color sketch of Sue for a mural in Stanley Field Hall by John Gurchee, “the most famous man in paleo-art,” says Lanzendorf. Gurchee’s work, seen in the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic magazine, is unaffordable to the general public.
“I’m the only one who has a Gurchee in the world,” says Lanzendorf.
Along with the serious art, he also has some nifty collectibles–a batik of a Jobaria brought back from Africa by Sereno, stacks of boxed dinosaur toys, a CAT scan of Sue’s head, a T. rex made of coat hangers, to name a few.
Lanzendorf, who works four days a week as a hair stylist, finds his museum exhibit “the thrill of a lifetime.” On a deeper level, he recognizes his collecting gave him a purpose in life.
He is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists from which he has received three awards for his contributions to paleo-art. He goes on digs in Canada and finds it “very exciting to find something human eyes have never seen before.”
There isn’t a city where he doesn’t have a dinophile friend to visit. He gets seven to eight phone calls a day on dinosaur matters.
His passion for paleo-art gives him a future. “I’ll always collect,” he says, “till the day I die.”
