If I win that Banksy, will I own it, or will it own me?

     Who are the most important artists in the world?
     No, this isn't a trick question. Though I wouldn't blame you for sensing a trap and responding: "Nobody. None of them are important." Because if poetry, in the much-quoted phrase of Auden's, "makes nothing happen," that goes double for art, hung in galleries, traded for money, admired and revered, but essentially outside the slipstream of human history, with its wars and hunger and scrabble up the greased pole.
     That stipulated, you could still list those who are a big noise in the art world and thus considered them important: Damien Hirst, with his cows in formaldehyde; Jeffery Koons, of giant chrome inflatable bunny fame (I hope that last phrase is as fun to read as it was to write).
     Had you asked me, I'd have said, "Banksy," the London graffiti artist turned global trickster. But I've been asking everyone I run into if they've heard of Banksy and most haven't. Can you be important if people don't know who you are? Sure, ask Tim Berners-Lee, inventor, in 1989 of something that came to be called the World Wide Web.
     Who is Banksy? An anonymous, more or less, British graffiti artists whose stencil wall paintings hit a sweet spot between spare beauty and pointed social commentary. A dove in a flak vest on a wall in the occupied territories. Security forces going through Dorothy Gale's wicker basket. A masked protester hurling a bouquet of flowers.
     His work is also a running commentary on artistic value, an essential subject in a world where a supposed Da Vinci can draw $450 million at auction. Banksy paints on buildings, mostly, in essence giving his work away. Some building owners paint them over, while others break out concrete saws and cut them out. There's a fascinating documentary, "Saving Banksy" about what happens after the artist does a spate of paintings in San Francisco.

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"Rogers Park without the Heartland seems absurd"

Nicholas Tremulis

     Honestly: we rarely go to the Heartland Cafe as a destination in itself. The groats-and-granola menu put it in a distant orbit in our culinary universe, as did its rough, we-slapped-this-together-the-weekend-before-we-opened decor. 
     But I do have a habit of being called there, either to meet people we're joining for an evening at the nearby, excellent Lifeline Theater or, in the 2009 column below, hunting an elusive Facebook friend.
     So while not exactly a fan, I thought I would acknowledge the sadness felt by aficionados of the place, which Block Club reports is closing at the end of the month, by reposting this encounter with local musician Nicholas Tremulis. The good news is that he is still rocking: he'll do a Christmas show at the Blue Nocturne (the lower level of the Chopin Theater) 1543 W. Division, on Dec. 16. 
     I thought I'd catch up with him, and ask for his thoughts on Heartland closing. He replied:

     Some places, you just equate with the neighborhood they reside in. Rogers Park without the Heartland seems absurd; like your parents getting a divorce. This was a place where radical, pinko-commie hippy/punks could meet to plan a little subversive action back in the day. Those who walked the talk. Another landmark of the left disappears. Seems fitting to me that the only other time I played there was to backup John Sinclair reading poetry. Goodbye to the oldest beatnik in Chicago.

     'I'm looking for a boisterous Norwegian woman," I explained to the maitre d' at the Heartland Cafe.
     "Well, there are a lot of women here," she said, gesturing to the dark, crowded bar, where the clientele did indeed skew female. "Whether they're Norwegian or not . . . "
     Earlier, my wife and I had been downtown, at Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse, where Dutchie Caray, Harry's sposa cara, was given a surprise 80th birthday party Saturday night ("Do you think it's a good idea to surprise an 80-year-old?" I wondered beforehand. "I mean, could it be dangerous?") Dutchie took the shock in stride -- sharp as a tack, she of course knew something was up, but expected a family gathering, not the hundreds of friends who turned out.
     After 90 minutes of coconut crab risotto and conversation, my wife and I couldn't resist the temptation to head north. My earthy Norwegian Facebook pal, Gry Haukland, whom you might recall reading about last spring, is visiting Chicago, a development that initially alarmed my wife, until I explained that she's staying with Lee Klawans, a fellow she met on my Facebook page. The happy couple let me know they'd be listening to music at the Heartland in East Rogers Park, and that seemed reason aplenty to swing by.
     We scanned the bar and saw no one radiating Gry's striking Nordic beauty. We did, however, find Nicholas Tremulis, on the small stage in the back room at the Heartland, playing without a band. His name sparked a flash of recognition, the pale gleam of a WXRT-stoked local celebrity from 25 years ago. "Let's stay," I told my wife. "We're already here. The cover charge is only seven bucks. "
     Tremulis cut a curious figure—his pants a shade of light orange associated with children's aspirin, a brown leather jacket over a well-filled maroon shirt, thin mustache, goatee, dangly ball earrings in both ears and a giant newsboy cap. The get-up would look fey on a trim 20-year-old, but on a guy my age, or maybe a few years older, well, let's say that it put the oft-humbling trade of professional journalism into a more attractive light. There are hells below mine. Tremulis was playing the most beat-up, cheapest-looking nylon-stringed guitar I've ever seen in the hands of a working musician.
     But the songs were good—"I Can't Stand the Rain" by Tina Turner, whom he once opened for, "Sweet Dreams," by Patsy Cline—and we stayed until he ended his set.
     "This is a tune I usually play for really drunk people," he said, scanning the crowd of tea drinkers at the Heartland. "But I don't see any."
     I think it was his battered toy guitar that affected me, coupled with the knowledge that we've both been kicking around Chicago for the past quarter century, playing our modest songs with less success than our fevered dreams of glory might have hoped for. A person could feel bad about that, or a person could feel good, and Saturday night, listening to Nicholas Tremulis, I chose to feel good. Hey, it's a living.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     Nicholas Tremulis reminded me of these stanzas from Emily Dickinson—not quite a joke, but perhaps humorous enough to pass as a chuckle:

     I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there's a pair of us— don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.     How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 4, 2009

Department of Coffee and Social Affairs

     Philip Johnson's 190 South LaSalle is one of my favorite buildings in Chicago, from its funky, post-modern summit to the vast, gold barrel-vaulted lobby.  It's a whimsical shrine to mammon.
     So when I walk by, I can't help glancing inside. And on Friday, I was rewarded by a view of this oddly-named coffee shop: "Department of Coffee and Social Affairs" For one confused second, I thought it was some kind of Kafkaesque goverment bureau, so perfectly is its quasi-official name suited to the vastness of the building. Though actually it's part of a chain started in London in 2010.
     I had time, and a need for caffeine, so sauntered in. I've been trying to get a good cup of espresso lately—prodded by memories of tiny cups of steaming perfection in Italy—and ordered a cup, just to see what they could do. Not much, I'm afraid. With all the money and creativity expended on the location, the decor and the name, they just couldn't get the ball those last few yards and score on the product itself. The espresso had that familiar wrong note—maybe try a finer grind and longer pull; just a suggestion. Not a complete waste: the clerks were friendly, the room grand enough, a pleasant place to stand and ponder why something the humblest snack bar in Florence can manage to serve up for $1.50 eludes the fanciest American coffee shops charging twice as much. It can't be that hard. Can it? Does anyone know anywhere in Chicago to get a decent cup of espresso? Tell me, please.

Flashback 2008: The FBI hauls away Rod Blagojevich

Prison scene, by Francesco Piranesi (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  

     Ten years ago today, FBI agents burst into Rod Blagojevich's Lincoln Park home at dawn and dragged the governor away in handcuffs. He remains in prison, a reminder that refusing to recognize your crime magnifies your punishment. It can be argued that Blagojevich wasn't guilty of anything beyond the vile horse-trading that goes on every day in politics at every level. But that isn't true. He was guilty of hubris, and stupidity: he did his vile horse trading into an open FBI wiretap, one that he knew was there, or at least should have suspected was there, and carried his shake-downs beyond the implied into the unescapable. And I had forgotten about him lashing out at Children's Memorial Hospital because its CEO didn't give him money. He should rot in jail for that alone. 

     I had seen the arrest coming—during the election I wrote that the race was really between Judy Baar Topinka and Pat Quinn, since Rod might end up in prison. But still it came as a shock and I think I processed it fairly well, raising the oft-repeated trope of four out of our past eight governors being in prison. I think it's sweet that I naively ran over to the Thompson Center, expecting some outward sign of our inner rot. I've kept the section headings the column had at the time. 

OPENING SHOT . . .

     As if the Tribune Co. filing for bankruptcy protection on Monday weren't shock enough for one week, today the FBI arrested Gov. Blagojevich and accused him of trying to sell the vacant U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.
     My God.
     The storm clouds were gathering around the self-proclaimed reformer for months. And yet news of the governor's sudden arrest was met with open-mouthed shock.
     I hurried over to the Thompson Center, where the state government offices are located.
     Silly me, I expected that stunned state workers might be congregating in small groups, pressing their palms to their cheeks in alarm.
     No way. Business as usual, in more ways than one. If these charges stick—and the feds do not arrest a sitting governor at dawn unless they feel confident about a case—Blagojevich will be the fourth Illinois governor to go to prison in the past 35 years (for those at home keeping score: George Ryan is in the slammer now for bribery; Dan Walker in the late 1980s for his role in the savings and loan mess, and Otto Kerner in the mid-1970s in the racetrack stock scandal).
     If Blagojevich ends up in a cell next to Ryan, that will mean four of our past eight governors have gone to prison. We're batting .500. That's a lousy average.
     And Blagojevich will be the worst of the bunch, not only because he alone was busted while still in power, but his alleged crime—trying to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate—dwarfs the penny-ante pocket lining of the others.
     There was no commotion at the Thompson Center. People lined up behind the metal detectors—we're better at screening those who would blow up the government from without than those who wreck it from within.
     Near the elevators, a big sign, "HAPPY HOLIDAYS" in red letters, two feet high.
     Underneath, "Governor Rod Blagojevich," written in an unmistakable cash green.

'I WANT TO MAKE MONEY'

     U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said it all when he summed up the governor's "appalling" conduct:
     "Gov. Blagojevich has taken us to truly a new low," said Fitzgerald in his press conference today. "He attempted to sell a Senate seat."
     Nor was that all. Each detail jars more than the next. Blagojevich had a raft of other "pay-for-play" shakedown schemes. He tried to pull back $8 million for Children's Memorial Hospital because its CEO wouldn't contribute to his campaign coffers. He was stealing from sick children. He tried to get members of the Tribune editorial board fired.
     The actions that led to these charges transpired within the past few weeks—that's the most incredible part of all—long after a rational corrupt official would know that the heat is on and he should lie low. Any idiot, any speeding driver with half a brain, at least slows down when he passes a squad car with a radar gun out.
     Blago sped up. What could he have been thinking? And what should we be thinking now?
     "This is a moment of truth in Illinois," said Fitzgerald.
     Indeed it is. What next? We owe it to ourselves and to our children to be shocked, to be embarrassed, to be outraged and to look hard at this obscenity of governance—Blagojevich may be the man going to jail, but many others have a hand in this system. Every time a scandal erupts, we vow this time will be the end. If this doesn't lead to reform, nothing ever will.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times Dec. 9, 2008

The Saturday Snapshot #18

The first time I went to Paris, I was 17. Workers at the Louvre happened to be on strike, and the great museum was closed. This I refused to accept, not until I went up to the museum and tugged on the locked doors with all my teenage might.

Thus I have a pre-existing sympathy to those who visit distant cities and are denied access to artist wonders. I noticed this powerful photograph by my Facebook friend Mia Jung, and asked her if I could repost it here with a few words of hers. She writes:

"The Republic"

     I took my daughter for a college visit and softball camp near Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago. It was going to be a busy week for me and I had an assignment due for a photography class I am taking, so I decided to tackle a part of the assignment while my daughter was at the camp. With only about an hour and a half at my disposal, I did some online research and found that there is a Daniel Chester French sculpture in Philly’s Fairmount Park. Perfect!
      Daniel Chester French is the artist who sculpted the impressive 65-foot tall gilded statue called “The Republic.” The title may not mean anything to you, but if you have seen photos of Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition, then you have seen that beautiful work of art towering over the Great Basin.     
       The sculpture that sits in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park is an earlier work by French entitled “Law, Prosperity, and Power” (1880). It used to sit atop the U.S. Post Office and Federal Building in the City of Brotherly Love until the building was destroyed in 1937, when the statue was moved to its current location. I thought it would be perfect for my assignment, which was to pick a piece of public art and photograph it from varying perspectives (lie down on the ground and shoot up, walk around it, etc.).
     After checking out the park on Google maps and not seeing an actual parking lot in the vicinity of the statue, I called the Association for Public Art in Philadelphia to check on my options. The kind lady I spoke with said I should park at the Mann Music Center and that the art work was a short walk up a hill. Ok, all set!
     When I reached the park, a police officer told me I could park on a through-street and walk anywhere I wanted to. I parked and walked over to the Mann Center, but it was closed. Fencing prevented me from walking up the hill and behind the Center to where the statue is situated. I walked back to my car and drove around the Center and up the hill, parking in a driveway with my hazards on in case anyone came along. I discovered that the statue was enclosed in the fencing that runs around the entire Center and every single gate had a padlock on it. I couldn’t get close enough to shoot the varying perspectives that were required for the assignment, but that’s not what got me steamed. I can always find art work closer to home to shoot.
     What made me angry is that a piece of “public art,” owned by the citizens of Philadelphia, has been made inaccessible. When I got back to Illinois, I hit Google maps again and looked more closely at the aerial views. The fencing could have easily been erected to leave the sculpture exposed, but the decision was made to lock it in on the grounds of the Mann Music Center, rendering it only accessible when the Center is open (it is a summer outdoor concert venue).
     I took this picture of the art work with bars and padlock visible as an expression of my disgust over its inaccessibility. I posted it to the Facebook page of the Association for Public Art, which ironically touts Philadelphia’s “Museum Without Walls” program and they wrote:

     Association for Public Art We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. For a variety of reasons beyond our control, sites and contexts for works of public art can change over time. We worked with the City of Philadelphia to re-install "Law, Prosperity, and Power" in 1937, prior to the Mann Music Center’s construction and a fence was more recently installed as part of their renovations. We are sorry to learn of your disappointment and have updated our website to reflect the variable accessibility of the work. We do hope that you were able to experience some of the other incredible public art throughout the city. Thank you again for reaching out.

Are you eating enough cheesecake?

     Folks, the holiday season is upon us. A time to reflect on what's really important in our lives: our families, the great city of Chicago we live in and around, this marvelous country of ours, the United States of America, and of course, Eli's Cheesecake. 
     I try not to make assumptions about my readers. But my guess is, it might have been a while since you're had a slice of Eli's Cheesecake. Am I right? Nothing to be ashamed of. Life gets busy. People lose perspective, and forget what gives life savor and purpose, overlooking the place in the pantheon of perfection that smooth, creamy cheesecake holds.
     Me, I just had a slice of Eli's Cheesecake after lunch on Thursday, and it was delicious. The hardest part was choosing among the three, count 'em three varieties I have in my freezer. I chose strawberry, its bright red top harmonizing with the red stripes in our beloved American flag. An hour on the counter and it was at cool perfection for eating.
     I'll be honest, I usually save the cheesecake for my oldest boy, who just loves it. That's what cheesecake means to me: family, love, tradition. Home isn't home without cheesecake. 
    But cheesecake is meant to be eaten, and as significant as Eli's Cheesecake is to, say, the economic vitality of the state of Illinois, or the lofty position of Chicago among purveyors of our nation's beloved comestibles, we cannot lose sight of just how soul-shiveringly delicious Eli's Cheesecake truly is.
     That said, friends, let me draw your attention to the photograph. The special Eli's Illinois Bicentennial Cheesecake, star of our state's 200th birthday party on Navy Pier earlier this week. I don't have to identify the gentleman with him: Honest Abe Lincoln, whose affection for cheesecake is well-known.   
     Eli's Cheesecake has become synonymous, not only with love and family, but with Chicago, and with our most cherished values. That is only in part due of the inherent wonderfulness of Eli's Cheesecake, but also thanks to the tireless efforts of my friend, Marc Schulman, owner of Eli's and son of the founder.
       For those few people who don't instantly recognize the superlative nature of Eli's Cheesecake, its 30 varieties, one for every conceivable taste, how other cheesecakes just don't hold up, plus Eli's pantheon of non-cheesecake delights, such as thick, soft, delicious cookies, and those tiny, single serving fruit pies well, Marc is sure to remind them. 
     Sure, cynics might scoff. They could point out that, among Marc's many heroic efforts to bring knowledge of Eli's Cheesecake to those unfortunates who might lack awareness, is the paid advertising that Eli's has always sponsored on this blog. Let them scoff. There is no quality so pure, no democratic ideal so important that naysayers cannot find an argument against it.  I do not believe that financial considerations affect my view of cheesecake in the slightest. I loved it before I ever met Marc, love it during our many years of friendship and mutually-beneficial economic arrangement, and will continue to do so, long after his sponsorship ends, onward to the end of time. He did not ask me to write anything concerning cheesecake, but I was moved by that photograph to pen this spontaneous outpouring of my sincere heart.
     Nor does his sponsorship prevent me from turning my critical judgment about Eli's Cheesecake. Since absolute perfection is reserved for the Supreme Deity, it follows that even Eli's Cheesecake has a flaw, one I was reminded of while my wedge was diminishing before me today. When you are finished eating any given piece of cheesecake, a sign lights up in your head: "More cheesecake!" And it was only with difficulty, with an act of will on my part, to resist defrosting a second slice—another advantage to keeping it frozen, to deter spontaneous consumption. Cheesecake is not exactly a diet food. There, I said it.
     So let no one claim that my critical blade was dulled by commerce. Let complainers carp and dieters doubt, miserably nibbling at their celery. Me, I'm sticking with my family, my city, my country, the flag that represents it, and Eli's Cheesecake. If you do not, as I do, have three flavors in your freezer, then click at the convenient link at left and order one for yourself or for someone you love or, ideally, both. Or two. Or three. You will be glad you did, as will I. Do it now. 

Flashback 1999: Dec. 7, "Everybody was in their own grief"

Marine Cpl. Stanley Stephen Swiontek

     This story stayed with me and 17 years later I followed it up, visiting with Rosemary's brother, Rick.

     Every Dec. 7 for the rest of her life, for years and years, after the war was over and most people turned to other matters, Rosemary Martinotti's mother took out her gold star, the star that meant you had lost a son in the war, and put it in the window.
     Then her mother passed away, and the responsibility for remembering fell to Rosemary. She keeps a picture of her brother, Marine Cpl. Stanley Stephen Swiontek, in her living room. She still has the little pillow, with fringes, and a poem about motherhood, and a picture of the U.S.S. Arizona, that Stanley brought home for Mother's Day, 1941, the last time she ever saw him.
     "What a great guy," remembers Martinotti, who is attending the city's ceremony today at Navy Pier remembering Pearl Harbor and honoring Swiontek and the six other Chicagoans who died aboard the Arizona. "We were thrilled whenever he would come home."
     Swiontek was 26 and a cook aboard the ship, but to the kids in Roseland, he was a big deal. His younger brothers and sisters adored him.
     "My brother Ted and I were the cabooses—the youngest of nine," she says. "We used to fight about who was going to polish the brass buttons on his uniform. We were just thrilled with this tall person. Ted would say, 'I'm going to polish his buttons,' and I would say, 'Then I'm going to polish his shoes.' "
     She was 12 years old when her brother took that last furlough.
     "You know what we loved doing? All the kids in the neighborhood?" she says. "We used to love sitting around in the backyard, and Stanley would tell us all these stories about being in the Marines, on the ship. We'd just sit there, going 'Wow!' We just ate it up."
     When the family heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, it was almost as if they knew something bad had happened to Stanley.
     "All of a sudden, a pall came over the house. Everybody was in their own grief," she says. "We didn't hear anything for days. Then we got the telegram."
     The Arizona had sunk in nine minutes—1,100 men were trapped inside and most are still there, entombed. Stanley's family never even found out the circumstances of his death, only that he had won the right to sleep in that day.
     "He would have been on land otherwise," Martinotti says.
     Nothing was ever the same for her mother.
     "Ted and I often wondered what Christmas was going to be like," she says. "Because every year she went through her son's death on Dec. 7. It was so traumatic. My mother would get physically ill. It was exhausting. She never got a chance to truly and honestly get over it because they showed it, over and over again, every Dec. 7, the Arizona sinking, and she could picture her son, her favorite son, inside of it. It just tore her apart.
     "You see, if a mother's going to have a favorite son, then Stanley was her favorite, simply because he was so gentle. He was so handsome. He was so kind. He was just great.
     Alone among her family, Martinotti has never gone to Hawaii to see his ship.
     "I just couldn't do it," she said. "I still cry."
     But she is making a point of being at the ceremony today.
     "Because he meant so much to me. I was so proud of him. I'd say, 'That's my brother in that uniform.' "
       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 7, 1999