Magdalena Abakanowicz walked through a forest of her headless sculptures in Grant Park on Thursday, sliding her weathered, rust-covered hands over their rugged, cast-iron skin.
The Polish artist, less than waist high to her own creations, gestured freely in the drizzle, examining the postures of the controversial figures and serving up enigmatic bits of explanation along the way.
“Every crowd is like a headless organism,” she said, looking out at the 44 pieces raised this week in a fenced-off area. “People must approach these with their imagination.”
The pieces face–in their faceless way–different directions from their concrete perch. Some of their giant feet point at one another. Others appear to turn away from the group.
Titled “Agora,” Abakanowicz’s work will ultimately include 106 pieces of 9-foot-high sculptures, remaking the look of the premier lakefront stretch yet again–this time in a way that may draw stronger reactions than did the crowd-friendly Bean sculpture and Crown Fountain to the north.
The 76-year-old artist does not apologize for that.
“I’m not making a decoration,” she said, pulling her damp fleece hat down over brown hair and oversized glasses. “I’m making a statement, a statement about nature and our consciousness.”
And that statement is?
“People who never went through war will associate this with a shell, or like a forgotten garment,” she said.
The internationally known artist began to install her pieces in the south end of Grant Park this week. On Thursday, she and the Chicago Park District gave reporters a preview.
She began working on the project about two years ago. It will be unveiled to the public Nov. 16.
Neil Miltonberger, 44, lives a block south of the installation, and walks by the site twice a day.
“I personally don’t like it, especially for that location,” he said. “It’s very stark and cold and not a welcoming entrance to that part of Grant Park.”
But Sara Levinson, who lives across the street from the sculptures, looked on admiringly. “The sculptures take natural and human forms and blend them,” she said.
Abakanowicz’s history may help to explain her art.
She was born into an aristocratic family in Poland. When she was 9, she saw Nazi soldiers shoot her mother’s arm off. She lived in Warsaw under Soviet occupation, designing large assemblages out of hemp-like material, pieces that could be tucked away in her tiny studio.
On Thursday, she came dressed for the press event in black turtleneck, black hat, black pants, black raincoat and black nylon boots. As a crane eased each sculpture onto the concrete slab, Abakanowicz helped align the feet with markings she had made earlier.
“They must be like one body that represents so many different meanings,” she said. “It’s the self against the whole world.”
She said each sculpture is different because they are hand-molded, the texture made to resemble the bark of tree trunks. No two pieces are alike because “nature never repeats twice.” The sculptures, which also are armless, look like shells, or the front of a sarcophagus. Abakanowicz described them as the discarded skin of a snake.
She said she named the installation the Greek word for a place of gathering, pointing out that the Agora of ancient Athens was where art, theater and philosophy began.
