Flashback 2009: Art lives! With a little help

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, MCA Chicago—May 1 - Sept. 13, 2009 (Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

    I spoke to a curator at The Art Institute yesterday, for a future column on COVID-19 kneecapping Chicago culture. Which made me think of this piece from 2009, when I benefited from the insight of the director of the MCA. 

     One of the pitfalls of my job is something I call "The Curator Effect," where you are led through an experience by an expert and later undervalue the role of your guide — I guess we could also call it "The Virgil Syndrome." A prime example of this occurred years ago, in Boulder, Colo. My colleague Roger Ebert was showing "La Dolce Vita," stopping the film almost frame by frame to comment on the Fellini masterpiece. 
     It was fascinating, a bravura display of knowledge and passion.
     Later, I rented "La Dolce Vita," excited to see it again, only to be disappointed to find that, without Roger, it seemed flat, a lugubrious black-and-white movie in Italian. I couldn't finish it.    

(Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

     My fault, I'm sure. Yet a reminder that certain experiences pall without an expert — the Colosseum in Rome is just a ruin baking in the sun unless you pony up the euros for a guide to tell you the stories behind the stones. 
     Or the Museum of Contemporary Art. Over spring break, the boys and I, looking for an alternative to the standard slog through The Art Institute, took in the MCA, a process that didn't fill an hour, including the gift shop, and left us all agreeing that while the museum store was truly remarkable, the museum itself was a pretty box with not much inside.
     Unfair, since at the time, half of the museum was being set up for a big show by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The show opened Friday, and I felt obligated to return and walk through it, led by museum director Madeleine Grynsztejn.
    "You are standing in a room of light," she said, as we stepped into a large space bathed in a lemon glow. "Light is the material he knows in his bones." This is exactly what I'm talking about. Left to my own devices, I might sweep through the yellow room with a shrugging glance at the placard. It would reinforce my general belief that contemporary art is a symptom of cultural decline—Renaissance Italians hewed pietas from white marble, and we install a few yellow bulbs in a bare room, cook up a few lines of explanatory gibberish and call it art.
     Then, Grynsztejn, who came to Chicago last year from San Francisco, where she curated an Eliasson show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, went to work, pointing out how, in the yellow room, the colors fall away—everything looks black-and-white. Indeed very cool. Then, the viewer looks into the next room, and the white walls appear blue.
     "You've created blue!" she said. "When you see that room, that's when this piece is completed— he wants you to co-complete this piece with him. That blue is totally yours." I'm not doing Grynsztejn justice. Most people can't put four words together, even if you feed them the first two, so I never carry a digital recorder. But Grynsztejn offered such a torrent of erudition and enthusiasm, I cursed myself for not bringing a recorder while I desperately tried to scribble down the highlights. Still, 80 percent of her words outraced my overwhelmed fingers and were lost into the ether, itself a small, spontaneous act of performance art, a subtle comment on the ephemerality of knowledge, like those Nepalese monks who create gorgeous mandalas out of colored sand, sing a little song, then sweep them away. Nothing lasts.
     Eliasson is from Iceland, and several works attempt to convey the harsh landscape and austere beauty of that remote island nation.
     "Can you smell the piece?" Grynsztejn said, as we walked into a room where an entire wall was covered with delicate bone-colored clumps of arctic moss. "We shipped it out from Iceland." A complex fragrance, pleasant, like herbal lace.
     The next room had a wall of black hexagonal shapes.

For some reason I didn't mention this room, where an
industrial fan raged above visitors' heads, like a chained
beast. (Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

     "This is compressed Icelandic soil," she said. "Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they gorgeous?" They did indeed seem gorgeous, though I worried that I was under her spell, bewitched by erudition, and that readers, not so blessed, would merely wander, puzzled and disappointed, through the galleries.
     Some of the works seem like they might dazzle without commentary.
     "This is a piece he created in response to my request for him to create something new for San Francisco," she said, standing inside "One-way colour tunnel," a passageway of rainbow glass. "The piece symbolized where we live now in the 21st century, half on screens and half in the real world. It looks like a computer rendering, but it is also physical, like our lives now." Unlike the online world, you need to be present to grasp it.
     "Olafur gives us the gift of actual experience," she said. "It cannot be commodified because it belongs to your personal self." As long as you have the background, I suggested.
     "This is very visceral work," she said. "You don't need a degree in art. You need curiosity, you need empathy." Perhaps. I left the Museum of Contemporary Art impressed with the austere beauty of Iceland, the virtuosity of Olafur Eliasson and the geysering intelligence of Madeleine Grynsztejn, though not in that order. You can only see something for the first time once, so I can't go back and experience it afresh without her, though I imagine public reaction will range from viewing it, like much art, as something of a scam, to being swept up in the artist's complex vision.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two -- one to hold the zebra, the other to cover the sofa with brightly colored dental tools.

              —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 3, 2009

(Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

April Fools Day is every day nowadays

Samuel Pepys

     This is my seventh April 1 writing the blog. For the previous six, I posted some prank. They were fun to write and, I hope, fun to read. Some people were fooled, most people laughed, it seemed worth doing.

     This year not only couldn't I do an April Fools prank post, but I never considered doing it. For a moment maybe. But my heart wasn't in it. Writing a column is a go-by-your-gut kind of thing, and my gut said to write this instead. Apologies to those disappointed.

     Wednesday is April 1, April Fools Day. Were I on my game, this might be a prank column to underscore some ridiculous aspect of our locked-down, social-distancing moment. America at full stop, waiting for the crunch of the iceberg.
     Hats off to whomever pulls off the feat today. I’m not that guy.
     Frankly, reality impoverishes parody lately. You don’t need me. If you want a sick joke, turn on the television this afternoon and you’ll find reality that beggars the imagination. Compared to the daily presidential pratfall, I got nothin’. Every day is April Fools’ Day.
     Besides, deceit stings, even when intended as humor. People have been posting alerts on Facebook announcing a certain state suspending liquor sales — don’t worry boozehounds, it isn’t happening. A jest, yet I silently unfriend the poster anyway. Not in the mood.
     It isn’t that nothing is funny. That deadpan video Mayor Lori Lightfoot made, urging Chicagoans to “Stay Home, Save Lives” (“Your dog doesn’t need to see its friends,” she says). That’s wry — Lori Lightfoot is the Harold Lloyd of politicians.
     Still. When this is over — assuming it ever ends — I don’t want to look back at myself yukking it up as the death toll mounts. I’m not even comfortable giving my own report — boys and wife home, working remotely, all fine. It smacks of obliviousness, of those posts demanding that instead of marking the death toll we should celebrate those who HAVEN’T died. I unfriend them too, thinking of Samuel Pepys.

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Flashback 1918: When flu stalked Chicago

Chicago city workers receive their masks

      Occasionally, despite my best efforts to avoid them, I'll catch a whiff of Fox-befouled yokel who bobs to the top of the social media cesspool and declares that the coronavirus is "only the flu." Which is double idiocy because a) it's not; and b) the flu was even worse. In 1918, it slew more than World War I, as I laid out in 1998, on the 80th anniversary of it gripping Chicago. Some of the insanity back then will be sadly familiar today. 

     Shortly after noon on Oct. 1, 1918, the entire Chicago street cleaning department gathered at the foot of Randolph Street, where they were handed white paper masks and ordered to wear them while they worked.
     So began the deadliest month of the deadliest epidemic Chicago and the nation has seen this century. Eighty years have passed, but we are still feeling the repercussions of the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, as scientists search for the virus responsible and epidemiologists worry that the world is as vulnerable now to a killer flu bug as it was then.
     The Spanish flu (actually a misnomer; it seems to have started in the United States) roared to life in spring 1918, did its worst damage over the next few months, and was gone by the end of summer 1919. It was truly a global epidemic: Samoan Islanders and Inuit Eskimos were both devastated by the disease. Conservative estimates place worldwide deaths at 51 million people, 12 million of them in India. Twenty-eight percent of Americans caught the flu, and 550,000 of them died. Nearly 200,000 people died in the United States in the month of October.

     In Chicago, the crisis tended to be overshadowed by the celebration of the end of World War I. Caught up in that excitement, Chicagoans were slow to grasp the impact of the Spanish flu, though it extracted a far greater toll than the war. In the United States, the flu toll was five times higher than the war toll. Greater, in fact, than all U.S. military deaths in the 20th century.
     The flu was first detected here Sept. 25 at the Great Lakes Naval Base and spread to the general population with stunning ferocity. In a week, 50 people a day were dying in Chicago and in two weeks 100 a day were dying.
     At least 100,000 Chicagoans fell ill. Hundreds of telephone company operators were bedridden, so many that the company asked the public to place fewer calls. Half the nurses in Chicago were sick, and appeals for medical help from as far away as Salem, Mass., were turned down.
     By the middle of the first week of October, the board of health instructed police to arrest people spitting in the street or sneezing without covering their mouths. The first offense got a warning; the second, a $1 fine.
     The northern suburbs were particularly hard hit. In Winnetka and Glencoe, military guards patrolled, "breaking up gatherings on the streets and urging citizens to remain in their homes as much as possible." North suburban schools, theaters and churches were closed, and attendance at funerals was limited to immediate families.
     As the epidemic worsened, city and state leaders, conferring at the Sherman Hotel, struggled to form a plan. They knew the disease passed through the air, and they considered closing Chicago schools, churches and places of public gatherings.
     But they didn't do it. When they requested that churches close voluntarily, religious leaders refused. The fear was that closing the schools would send children pouring into the streets, to spread the virus more quickly. So students attended classes in their overcoats, all the windows open to admit healthful air (which was considered so beneficial that, even before the flu, 700 Chicago children attended "Fresh Air Schools" that met outside).
     Streetcar windows and doors were also kept open; when chilly passengers closed them, officials nailed the doors and windows open.
     Still the plague advanced. The medical establishment, already strained by the war, was quickly swamped. Hotels were converted to hospitals, as was the Indian Hill Golf Club, its nursing staff made up of society women.
     Midway through the lethal month, Daily News columnist Frank Crane weighed in with his opinion: The Spanish flu was a fad, possibly a delusion, certainly no different from bugs of the 1890s, and "if we all take reasonable care of ourselves and by simple rules of health fortify ourselves against bad colds we shall not be in serious danger." The next day, 317 people died in Chicago of the flu.
     Efforts to stop the spread of the disease were remarkably haphazard. Taverns were kept open, but political meetings were banned—the election of 1918 was called "the speechless campaign." In the middle of the crisis, with hundreds dying every day, the city held a gigantic liberty loan parade through the Loop, the streets "jammed to the point of suffocation with cheering crowds."
     Police, however, were instructed to arrest parade goers who spat, and the city health commissioner warned those watching the parade "not to expose themselves to any chills."
     The city closed the theaters for 2 1/2 weeks. Hard-working actors found themselves suddenly stranded with time on their hands. Actor Tyrone Power Sr., whose son, Tyrone Jr., later became a film star, spent his idle time "tramping from one end of the city to the other" -- hiking was a fad at the time.
     Chicagoans, accustomed to going out, turned to other pursuits. The Chicago Public Library reported a 50 percent jump in book circulation. Mrs. Samuel T. Chase reported that society folk were "getting acquainted with their own families."
     The death toll peaked Oct. 17, when 520 people died. Many were among the poorest classes, who could not afford medical care. Charitable institutions, going door-to-door, found entire families sick, delirious and uncared for.
     Minds snapped. Even though the flu was fatal in only about 2 percent of the cases, it was seen as a death sentence. After his family became sick, Pater Marrazzo, a laborer living on South Morgan Street, cut his own throat and the throats of his wife and four children. Only he survived.
     Businesses were quick to try to cash in. All manner of nostrums advertised themselves as helpful against the flu, from Gude's Pepto-Mangan ("Fortify your body against Spanish Influenza") to Smo-ko Tobaccoless Cigarettes ("Influenza Germ Killer"). Something called Ely's Cream Balm advised "Cream Applied in Nostrils May Prevent Spanish Influenza."
      Even public health officials tended to intersperse practical advice with bunkum. "Wet feet will make you an easy victim of the 'flu,' Mr. and Mrs. Individual," warned John Hill Robertson, the city health commissioner.
     Toward the end of the month, the daily death toll began to fall. In November, the rate of infection and death dropped dramatically.
     By then the theaters had reopened, though a new act was added to every stage: a two-minute address by a city health department official on the subject of "How to Escape the Influenza."
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 18, 1998

Happiness is spread as easily as any virus

Josefina Olivo at home

     "The first thing that the plague brought to our fellow citizens was exile,” Albert Camus writes in his novel, "The Plague." That, and “being separated from a loved one… the greatest agony of that long period of exile.” 
     Which is why, even with everything going on, the little sidewalk celebrations that have been popping up everywhere are still noteworthy. They might not be as key as social distancing and hand washing. But they are still important—Camus thought such kindnesses were essential: “It may seem a ridiculous idea," he writes, "but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.”

     ”Abre la puerta!” said Josefina Olivo, seeing her family line the sidewalk in front of her house on West 58th Street. Open the door.
     ”No abre la puerta,” her son gently cautioned. Don’t open the door.
     It was March 20, Olivo’s 95th birthday. Five years ago her big family — she has five children, 19 grandchildren, 29 great-grandchildren — threw a big party for her at a fancy restaurant, with purple balloons, her favorite color.

      Now in the time of coronavirus, the woman referred to as “our matriarch” by her family stood in a purple dress — one granddaughter calls her “Lil Petunia” — and was serenaded with music and signs. She waved.
    Life has a habit of plucking away our joys even in the best of times. It was hard enough for Olivo, then in her late 80s, to stop making 20 lamb cakes every Easter — a tradition she borrowed from a Polish friend in the West Loop bindery where they worked. Pressed by her family — baking took three full days — she cut back to only 10 “los borreguitos,” or little lambs. Now she can’t even hug her grandchildren.
      Still, everyone is free to spread joy, even during a plague. With all the worries about contamination, jobs, supplies, social distancing, it should be noted that people also take time to brighten the days of loved ones, or even complete strangers.

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"You must read, you must persevere"

Scene from Decameron (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    Facebook gets a lot of grief, but I find it helpful. Not only do you see the news stories your friends are tossing up, with a cry of alarm, increasingly nowadays, but also sharing warm and encouraging human moments—some choice ones that I solicited are the basis for my Monday column.
     On Friday I was tired, so rather than read, I began listening to a new book on Audible. Well, not a new book—it's The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, completed in 1353. I would have never thought to read it, but was reminded of it, on Facebook, by my friend Michelle Durpetti, which just goes to show that running a steakhouse and being well-read are not mutually exclusive.  
     This was her post Friday at 8:07 a.m.:

”You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark... —Giovanni Boccaccio
     I have had the privilege of reading this twice in English and three times in Italian. Looking for a truly special read, especially now?
     Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron was the first great masterpiece of European storytelling.
     In the summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten young men and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertain themselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring a host of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings to devious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for “ten days,” Boccaccio’s book of stories draws on ancient mythology, contemporary history, and everyday life.

      That was good enough for me. I probably should wait until I'm done—28 hours of listening on Audible—and make my report, but frankly I don't see the need for delay. The Decameron is laugh-out loud funny—particularly the second story, where two Parisian merchants are friends, one Giannotto di Civignì, a 'thoroughly honest, upright man," a cloth merchant, who "entertained a singular friendship" with a wealthy Jew, Abraham, who was also a very good man. 

    Giannotto feels distressed that Abraham should be consigned to hell "for not possessing the faith, so he took to urging him in friendly fashion to forsake the errors of the Jewish faith and turn instead to the truth of Christianity."
    The Jew "remains obstinate and would not be converted." Giannotto perseveres in his efforts. Eventually he wears Abraham down, and he says that yes, he will convert. But first he wants to go to Rome and see the man Giannotto calls "the vicar of God on earth."
   "I wish to acquaint myself to his style of living and that of his brother cardinals," says Abraham.
    This news devastates Giannotto, who suspects that a visit to the Vatican would sour the strongest believer. "All my efforts gone to waste," he broods. "If he goes to the Court of Rome and observes the impious and disgusting lifestyle of the clergy, far from turning to Christianity from Judaism, he'd revert to being a Jew if he'd already turned Christian."
    But Abraham persists, as Jews tend to do, goes to Rome, where he sees the utter corruption of the papal authority.

     "Every one of them from the greatest to the least was given over to the worst sort of lechery. Not merely the kind which accorded with nature, but also that practiced by sodomites. They did so, moreover, without a scrap of shame or conscience, and the courtesans and pretty boys could ask the earth in exchange for their favors. Aside from their lechery, they were one and all gluttons, he discovered, topers forever at the bottle and like brute beasts more concerned with stuffing their paunches than anything else. On further scrutiny he found that they were all so grasping and money grubbing that they would buy and sell human, nay Christian, blood,  and by the same token sacred objects of whatever sort."

      There's more, but you get the idea. That brought a smile, to remember that while we consider ourselves apostates for questioning our religious leaders, that tradition goes way back, dwelling at the heart of our culture.
      But that wasn't the laugh-out-loud part. The truly funny moment is Abraham's conclusion. 
     "A sober and temperate man," he surveys the corruption and debauch, "grieves not a little," and returns to Paris. 
     "What an unspeakable lot," Abraham tells his friend all about it, not only the lack of the smallest degree of holiness or mercy, but also "lust, greed, gluttony, deceit, envy arrogance, and worse." 
    The Holy See, he continues, seems to be putting all their effort and skill in expunging the Christian religion rather than preserving it.  Then Abraham reaches a surprising conclusion.
     Despite the best efforts of its leadership, he observes, Christianity "continues to spread and acquire ever brighter radiance. I think I'm right to see the Holy spirit at work in it."
     In other words: only the direct intercession of God Almighty and His continuing favor could bring success to a religion otherwise so thoroughly undermined by the evil of its leaders. Abraham declares "nothing will stop" him from joining such a mighty faith.
    "Let us go to church and have me baptized," Abraham insists. Together they proceed to Notre Dame. Giannotto is his godfather.

You can learn more about the version I'm listening to on Audible here. 



 

Metamorphosis

    When the butterfly-shaped Rush University Medical Center opened in 2012 on the near West Side, I took a tour. I'm not sure why; they must have invited me, and I went, having a professional interest in hospitals. I've been inside most hospitals in the city, and watched surgical procedures at quite a few of them.
     Eight years later I only remember one thing about the tour, because I've repeated it over the years, as an interesting factoid. That the lobby of Rush is cleverly designed to be turned into a field hospital, with oxygen outlets and power sources hidden in the pillars for instance, so that should disaster strike the city, they could immediately fill the place with beds and start treating a large number of patients in the large space.
     What kind of a disaster could that be? I mused at the time. A 9/11 attack of some sorts. I tried to wrap my head around the possibilities, but gave up. I really couldn't.
     Now we know. On March 11, the hospital announced it's going into "Surge Mode," "as preparations for a potential sharp increase in patients with COVID-19 move into a new phase." Since much of the hospital is designed to handle airborne infectious disease—their emergency room bays have doors, for instance, instead of the usual curtains, and whole wards can be negatively pressurized to keep contaminated air from leaking out—the lobby ward will be used to handle non-COVID-19 cases, to free up hospital space for those battling the virus.
     Maybe because eight years ago it seems such a distant, improbable, end-of-the-world possibility, that it gave me an extra jolt this week to realize that the long-planned for calamity is upon us now, and as of Friday Rush is now ramping up their lobby field hospital for the very worst, which might arrive within the next few weeks.

The cost of lies; coronavirus death toll could top Vietnam

     The Vietnam War raged for the first 15 years of my life. I’d sprawl coloring as Uncle Walt read the death toll on TV. When I was older, the war became my benchmark for presidential folly: sacrificing thousands of American lives to avoid admitting the obvious: We lost.
     During the first three years of the Trump administration, I kept pulling out Vietnam like a talisman. Sure, things are bad, but look: They’ve been much worse. We’re lucky.
     When fellow Dems swooned, wailing that we’d reached rock bottom — America broken, democracy dead — I’d try to cheer them up by dangling my lucky token. See this? Within our lifetime Lyndon B. Johnson — a Democratic president, for those unfamiliar — also lied, followed by Richard Nixon, a Republican, and their lies led to the deaths of 58,000 Americans. While Trump is certainly affecting lives, he isn’t taking many. There isn’t a growing body count to lay at his feet.
     I didn’t think to add: “Yet.”
     Citing the awful past was a way to feel good about the present, about our beloved country even as it enshrined idiocy and error. We’ve been here before and recovered. We will do so again.
     That seems like giddy optimism now that we are facing a crisis that Donald Trump can’t lie away. We have no idea how many American lives will be sacrificed on the altar of his ego. A thousand? We’ve passed that already. Ten thousand could be dead next week. A hundred thousand? Easily. A million? Some epidemic experts fear more, warning that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die if we continue bungling our response. The final figure will depend in part on whether Trump really declares the crisis over in mid-April and sends Americans packing their churches at Easter.

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