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| "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" by Gerhard Richter |
Hotels are not famous for fine art. Just the opposite. Once showcases for generic mass-produced canvases ranging from kitsch to trash, lately they lean toward cutesy black-and-white photos echoing the visual cliche of the moment. Vintage cars. Soda signs. Cowboys.
So you are forgiven for missing the fact that, for years, what would become the most expensive painting ever sold by a living artist hung largely unnoticed in a Downtown Chicago hotel lobby.
It was "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" by Gerhard Richter, who is still alive. In fact, Monday, Feb. 9 is his 94th birthday. Richter is having a banner year, with a big show in Paris, and since my going is out of the question, the second best thing is to tell how one of his major works ended up next to the front desk at the Park Hyatt Chicago on Michigan Avenue, and why it is now gone.
The Pritzker family — the clan of Illinois' courageous governor — runs the Hyatt chain of over 1,000 hotels. In 2000, wanting something to jazz up its new crown jewel, the Park Hyatt Chicago, a 70-story edifice at the corner of Michigan and Chicago, the Pritzkers decided to dig deep.
Richter is an abstract German artist whose work is something of the love child of impressionism and photo realism. "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" was commissioned in 1968 by the Siemens Corp., the German technology conglomerate, for its Milan headquarters and shows a blurry black-and-white image of the Cathedral Square there.
Hyatt bought the painting in London for $3.6 million — not exactly cheap to begin with — and hung it in the Park Hyatt.
I could pretend I know about the painting because my thumb is pressed on the pulse of all things cultural. Though the truth may be actually even cooler, in a lunch bucket vibe way. I've never stayed at the Park Hyatt. The only reason the hotel is on my radar is because it was erected during the late-1990s building boom. Tower cranes were everywhere and, curious guy that I am, I started wondering about the cranes — how do they get up there? — so I took a closer look.
In 1999, crackerjack photographer Robert A. Davis and I visited the crane atop the nearly-completed Park Hyatt. That adventure bonded me to the place — being at the tip of the crane boom as it swung out 600 feet over Michigan Avenue will do that — and I made a point of circling back to see what it looked like when finished.
The Richter caught my eye; it's hard to miss being 9 feet square. Guiding out-of-town guests through their Magnificent Mile window shopping, I'd detour into the hotel to check it out.
The painting hung in the lobby for 15 years, except during 2002, when the hotel lent it to the Museum of Modern Art for a traveling retrospective of 40 years of Richter's work that included the Art Institute of Chicago.
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I do think society was better when we invested in art instead of in "pure" profits.
ReplyDeleteYes I understand there is much more to it than simply buying piece of art, but I truly believe that there was a point in time where the two ideas danced perfectly and elevated everyone's joy (and understanding) of art.
Lovely to think so.
DeleteLearned something new. Thanks
ReplyDeleteThanks for another fine column, but I'm saddened to see your apt description of our governor as "courageous" was edited out of the paper's version.
ReplyDeleteThe newspaper version removed the adjective "courageous" from "Illinois' governor"
ReplyDeleteYeah, I saw that. We're a 501(c)3 charity, and terrified of making "endorsements." Sad, really.
DeleteI knew that was it. It just plain sucks.
Delete$3.6 million for an out of focus, blurred photo?
ReplyDeleteI don't care what anyone says, that ain't art!
That's why we normal people laugh at the utter idiocy of modern art!
God Clark St., I wish I had the skill to make you understand how you sound. They said the same thing about the Impressionists whose work, as I point out, Richter's resembles. You know — or probably don't — that students burned Matisse in effigy on the steps of the Art Institute. At least their judgment could be written off, being young. What's your excuse?
DeleteI'm wondering how Richter painted the buildings. Did he take a photo, as many modern artists do, or obtain an existing photo, and then apply the paint directly on the surface, blurring it up a bit to get the Impressionist look? Or did he do it the hard way, setting up his easel across the street, and working on it little by little over many months? A little laborious and awkward I think. Any way you look at it, he created images that people, people with lots of money, appreciated well beyond mere compensation for his workmanship and good taste commensurate with the standards of the day, assuming that some of those extravagant profits landed in his lap.
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Wrong Neil!
Deletei can recognize what is going on in any of the impressionist's paintings! They are beautiful!
And I don't care what the dimbulb Art Institute students did aver 100 years ago.
This is an absurdity!
I forgot to add, that if you or I took that blurry photo & displayed it, we would be laughed at unmercifully by our own families!
DeleteIt's garbage!
Clark Street you do understand this is a painting not a photograph a painting.
DeleteThe only thing about it that's a photograph is that it's a photograph of a painting
The source after which Richter executed Domplatz, Mailand was a newspaper photograph that was in focus, from which Richter clipped a section and modified it.
DeleteDoesn't matter, it's blurry mess & has no business being called art!
DeleteBut Clark… impressionism was literarily the start of blurry art works
DeleteEver noticed the windmill on clark st. ? And the old man yelling and shakings fist out in front of it? Our friend
DeleteOh poor Clark St. I feel sorry for you that you are living in the past without realizing that the artists of our time are moving forward. To pass judgement as a critic means being knowledgeable about the past and the present. This painting by Richter is the culmination of a century of evolving manifestos that followed Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Duchamp, Pollack, Warhol, and a host of others, all of whom advanced the questions, what is art and what does it mean to be human? As an artist, graduate of SAIC, and former professor of art history, I encourage you to look deeper into the significant role art plays in the history of human expression. What saddens me the most in reading your comments is that they come from a place of ignorance about art. That, to me, is not much different than the people who support the orange man in the White House who want to take us backwards.
ReplyDeleteI did a little searching. The painting was commissioned by Siemens in 1968. In hung their office until Pritzker bought it. It is unknown who paid 37 million.
ReplyDeleteA very little research, Sanford. I mention Siemens commissioning it in 1968 in the column you supposedly read before reacting to. And it is not unknown who bought it — I cut it out of the column, for space.
DeleteI'm going to parse my words very carefully here, because obviously just announcing that you don't like someone's artistic effort can quickly blow back on you as being someone who Doesn't Appreciate Art and Doesn't Understand It.
ReplyDeleteSo. When I first saw the image, my first thought was that it was one of those early-1800s images when photography was a new miracle and capturing any image at all was amazing, until I noticed the cars at the lower corners. Okay, so... this is a newer photograph... of what? What is the significance that merits showing us this view? Why is it not only blurred (from either motion or bad focus) but also lopsided? What is your message to us?
So at this point I'm homing in on what it seems to be, but still haven't discovered that it's a painting rather than a photo. I'll need to read the column before learning that. That revelation (it's a painting?!) takes me in two different directions at once: I'm very impressed by the technical achievement of painting it to resemble a photo (I have always been impressed by photorealism in painting), but I'm taken aback by the choice of image, which doesn't seem to convey anything to me.
I'm more of an engineer than an artist, in that I can appreciate effort even if the results don't appeal to me, so if I was standing in a gallery with my glass of white wine, admiring the details of this painting, and Gerhard Richter wandered up, I would compliment him on his achievement, snork back the rest of my wine, and say, "What is the significance that merits showing us this view? Why is it not only blurred but also lopsided? What is your message to us?"
Contemporary art can be challenging.
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