Listing Through Life

The Museum of Contemporary Photography had not been what I’d hoped and had only taken 15 minutes to view. We still had half a day ahead of us, so we walked up Michigan Avenue to The Museum of Contemporary Art. Admission to this one was $12, but it was a little bit larger. Not much, but a little bit.

Outside is one of three “Wind Sculptures” that “captures the movement of a billowing bolt of fabric. Their design was inspired by the sails of ships whose patterns derived from Dutch wax fabrics.”

A lot of the pieces were just plain weird.

Others were fun in a childish sort of way, but art?

One exhibit featured the works of Alexander Calder.

This car was driven from Italy to Poland where parts were replaced to make it look as much as possible like the flag of Poland. Then it was stuck to the wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Not sure if it’s art, but it makes for a pretty good Red Chair photo.

There were some pieces that I would consider art — works that could be said to reflect or point to beauty or truth, but there were also some that celebrated depravity and others that were, in my opinion, attempts to promote a cause and be original without possessing talent. But that’s just my opinion.

The lone sculpture in the “Sculpture Garden” at the museum wasn’t worth photographing, but that didn’t keep me from getting one Red Chair picture.

Exhibits change frequently. Perhaps another visit would be more rewarding. It won’t be anytime some. But I can check it off my list of things to do in Chicagoland.

I’m not sure where I heard of this museum, but I obviously did because I put it on my list of things everyone should do in Chicagoland. After returning downtown from Graceland Cemetery, we visited.

The museum consists of three floors in a building on the Columbia University campus on  Michigan Avenue, across from Grant Park. In all, there were maybe 50 photographs and other art pieces scattered about. It was free, which was one point in its favor.

The exhibit on display was called “Phantoms in the Dirt.” According to the brochure, it “brings together artworks that scrutinize and make use of the rough work of matter (the dirt beneath our feet, so to speak), but the artists whose works are presented here are also equally attuned to the mutability of photographic meaning and to the equivocal presence of remnants and traces.”

Another paragraph states, “We all exist in a physical world in our all-too-material bodies … but it’s worth remembering that the ground beneath our feet isn’t necessarily neutral or inert; like so many things, dirt can contain and carry much more than one can see.”

So … it was an exhibit on the importance of dirt.

The main room contained a few scattered photos on the wall, a rusted, dented 50-gallon drum and a wall make from tree bark.

In smaller room to the right, we discovered this photograph of a lake, dipped in the water of that lake.

And tucked back into a corner next to the stairwell we found this piece.

These “photographs” were on the second floor. If I understood correctly, film was buried in radioactive soil and this was the result.

The spots in this painting appear to be a swarm of locusts.

And finally, this photograph. There were three by this artist, all consisting of a man holding a white piece of cardboard in a bleak landscape. I think I get this one — the cardboard is his red chair.

The whole museum took maybe 15 minutes to see. As we left, we discussed the pretentious nature of modern art in which anybody can point to anything, come up with a highfalutin description and call himself an artist. Very plebeian of us, I know. It’s a matter of taste mostly. But how some of this stuff points to beauty or truth (the essentials of art, in my opinion), I fail to see.

Out on the street, two guys were arranging a window display, so I thought I’d take my own contemporary photograph.

A friend and I headed into the city for a day of adventure. We rode down on the Metra, then walked across the Loop and caught the red line north to the Sheridan stop. We walked about half a mile to Graceland Cemetery. The very kind woman in the office gave us a map and sent us on our way.

It was a poor choice of days — as humid as it could possibly be with frequent rain, but we had the cemetery to ourselves. We found almost all the graves of famous people, many of whom we had never heard. But they were on the map, so they must have been famous.

Dexter Graves (1789-1844) — Hotel owner, early settler. Larado Taft created the monument “Eternal Silence”

John Kinzie (1799-1881) — Trader, first white settler in Chicago

On the east side of the cemetery, there were a lot of fancy tombs. I kept thinking that no matter how impressive the tomb, the guy buried there is just dead.

I held my camera up to the window of one of them. It looked like this inside:

Jack Johnson (1878-1946) — First black boxer to win the world heavyweight championship

Victor Lawson (1850-1925) — Newspaper publisher who owned the Chicago Daily News. Larado Taft sculpted the monument”Crusader”

Peter Schoenhofen (1827-1893) — Brewer. Tomb designed by Richard Schmidt

George Pullman (1831-1897) — Railway industrialist, inventor of the sleeping car

William Kimball (1828-1904) — Piano and organ business

Potter Palmer (1826-1902) — In cotton and dry goods, real estate investor who sold his dry-goods store to Marshall Field

John Altgeld (1847-1902) — Lawyer and judge, Governor of Illinois who pardoned the Haymarket anarchists

Daniel Burnham (1846-1912) — Architect of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. His tomb was on an island accessible by a bridge.

H.H. Getty — Lumber baron. Tomb designed by Louis Sullivan

Joseph Medill (1823-1899) — Owner of the Chicago Tribune, Mayor of Chicago, one of the founders of the Republican Party

Philip Amour (1832-1901) — In the meat packing industry

The largest tombs, and the largest congregation of famous tombs, were clustered around the small lake.

Lucius Fisher (1843-1916) — Civil War veteran, real estate investor

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) — Architect who perfected the International Style

Bruce Goff (1904-1982) — Architect known for innovative one-of-a-kind designs and an “uncongenial use of material”

Marshall Field (1835-1906) — Owner of largest retail and wholesale dry-goods company in the world

William Hulbert (1832-1882) — Founder of the Chicago Cubs and the National League

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) — Founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency

Random scene

I showed my wife this next gravestone and we made a pact not to bury each other under a similar one.

We were there about an hour and a half and saw nobody except a couple landscapers. It’s not a tour I want to take frequently, but it was interesting to do once.

“Auto Attractions” doesn’t begin to describe this museum. The guy who created this collection bought everything he could find that had anything to do with anybody you’ve ever heard of — from Abraham Lincoln to Laural and Hardy to John Dillinger. It’s housed in a prefabricated warehouse in an industrial park in the small town of Rockton, just a short distance from the Wisconsin border.

Here are photos of just some of the items, to give you an idea of the eclectic insanity of the place.

Many of the items were displayed with documents to prove their authenticity, and my feeling is that they were likely genuine. If you pay attention, you will notice that, for some items, it doesn’t actually say there is a direct connection with a celebrity, like Khrushchev’s limousine for example. There’s a 1950 Russian Zim limousine, no doubt genuine, and there’s a photo of Khrushchev, and you know it’s likely that he rode in a Zim limousine, but it never quite says he rode in this very limousine. Things like that lead me to believe that the items with specific claims really are what they are claim to be.

I took my time and saw it all — or most of it anyway. I wasn’t much interested in the two rooms of race cars and my senses were overloaded by the time I got to the final couple rooms. And there’s no way I could have read all the signs or looked at all the autographed photos or studied all the trinkets. Here’s a video, but even this doesn’t fully capture the awesomeness of this collection.

There were a handful of other visitors, but most of the time I had the place to myself. The young woman who took my money was the only employee I saw, and she didn’t seem too worried about security or anything else. After finishing my tour, I asked if I could go back through with the red chair and she gave me permission without hesitation.

Cadillac made from parts dating from 1949 to 1973, used in the music video for Johnny Cash’s song “One Piece at a Time.”

1925 Ford Model T Roadster Pickup used in the Laurel and Hardy movie Big Business.

The Wagon Queen Family Truckster used in National Lampoon’s Vacation.