Chicago Tribune Architecture Critic Blair Kamin reports that Xinjiang, China, will soon unveil of what is clearly a rip-off of Chicago’s own Cloud Gate, better known to folks as The Bean.
Here is what Kamin had to say:
Already the target of ridicule for its knockoffs of the Eiffel Tower and other world landmarks, China’s latest exercise in copycat design has a distinctly Chicago flavor: It bears a striking resemblance to The Bean sculpture in Millennium Park.
Located in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, the stainless steel sculpture will open at the end of August, the online version of the state-run People’s Daily reported Monday. A headline says the sculpture was made in the shape of a “big oil bubble.”
The piece has been under construction since 2013 at the site of the first oil well in the western Chinese city of Karamay, according to the People’s Daily account.
Photos accompanying the story showed something The Bean doesn’t have: a grid of LED lights on the ground beneath the sculpture. They bounced jagged blue and green reflections off its mirrored underside. A caption praised the “gorgeous light effect.”
But the sculpture, whose artist has not been identified, drew fire in China and Chicago.
“It’s such an obvious copy. Our designers are embarrassing us,” read one comment on a Chinese microblog, according to The Wall Street Journal.
