Category Archives: Individual artwork

At the St. Louis Museum, George Caleb Bingham’s “Stump Speaking” Presents the Missouri Artist Politician’s Complex, Satirical Vision of Mid-19th Century American Democracy on the Frontier.

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FEATURE IMAGE: George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), Stump Speaking, 1854, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 58 in. (108 x 147.3 cm), St. Louis Museum of Art. The painting begun by Bingham in November 1853 was completed in February 1854 in Philadelphia. Stump Speaking is one of three paintings in a series representing to a national audience the idea of the American democratic process. Bingham exhibited Stump Speaking in a series with his The County Election and The Verdict of the People at the influential but short-lived (1856-1860) Washington Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and the Western Academy of Art in St. Louis. These election series paintings along with Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen in Port (see below) then went on view at the St. Louis Mercantile Library (founded 1846) until the 1930’s when the election series paintings were loaned to the City Art Museum (the future Saint Louis Art Museum). In 1941, The Mercantile Library sold Stump Speaking and The Verdict of the People to Boatmen’s National Bank of St. Louis (now Bank of America) and, in 2001, Bank of America gave Stump Speaking to the Saint Louis Art Museum. Public Domain. https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/29774/ – retrieved September 13, 2025.

Bingham, The County Election, 1852, oil on canvas, 38 x 52 in. (96.5 x132 cm), St. Louis Art Museum. It depicts an election in 1850 in Saline County, Missouri, located between Columbia and Kansas City in central Missouri. Bingham’s paintings depict a dispassionate electorate before the Civil War reflecting the Founders’ ideals in challenging times. A staunch Unionist, George Caleb Bingham’s own political views rejected radical politics whether an unrestrained northern Abolitionist cause or that of Southern Fire-Eaters and strived toward negotiation and minimally Federal regulation of slavery. Bingham opposed the proslavery wing of Missouri politics represented by Gov. Clairborne Fox Jackson (1806-1862) who appears in Stump Speaking. Though Bingham’s election series is painted before the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 in neighboring Illinois, Bingham, a Whig, tended towards Lincoln’s characterization of democracy that government should provide “a fair chance” to all. Though depicted at the periphery in service roles to whites, Bingham’s artwork presented slaves sympathetically encouraging his viewers to acknowledge the slaves’ existence and to recognize that they are being excluded from the noble American democratic process. Public Domain. See – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/books/review/born-equal-akhil-reed-amar.html  – retrieved September 28, 2025.

Bingham, Verdict of the People, 1854, 74 cm × 93 cm (29 in × 36.5 in), St. Louis Art Museum. When Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017, The Verdict of the People was the chosen painting, hanging on a partition wall behind the ceremonial head table in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Public Domain.

In Stump Speaking, Democrat Erasmus Darwin “E.D.” Sappington (1809-1858), born in Tennessee, is the main speaker shown leaning forward and pleading his case to a crowd of rural citizens. Behind him, with tablet in hand, sits his opponent taking notes in preparation for his turn at the make-shift podium. Candidate Sappington had married the eldest daughter of Kentucky Governor John Breathitt (1786-1834), Penelope Breathitt (1822/3-1904), and the couple had four children. Gov. Breathitt, a Jacksonian Democrat, had been elected as the Bluegrass State’s 11th Governor in 1832, serving until his death from tuberculosis at age 47. After his death, Breathitt County in Eastern Kentucky was created and named in his honor.

Bingham – portrait of Erasmus Darwin “E.D.” Sappington, 1844. Public Domain.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86334793/penelope_c-sappington – retrieved September 26, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60353793/erasmus_darwin-sappington – retrieved September 26, 2025.
The rotund man seated behind the speaker is Meredith Miles Marmaduke (1791-1864), part of the Missouri’s Democratic political machine. Born in Virginia, like Bingham, Marmaduke moved to Missouri in 1823 where he married Lavinia Sappington (1807-1885) whose mother, Jane Breathitt (1783-1852), was the older sister of Kentucky Governor Breathitt. The Marmadukes had 10 children together. Marmaduke was a trader on the Santa Fe Trail, surveyed and platted Arrow Rock in Saline County on the Missouri River where he had a plantation and was elected Lt. Governor of Missouri. When Governor Thomas Reynolds (1796-1844) died in office by suicide, Marmaduke assumed the Governorship from February 1844 until November 1844, finishing out the term. The Reynolds Administration was heavily criticized by conservative Whigs for championing the abolition of debtor’s prisons in the state which the Missouri General Assembly accomplished in February 1843. Reynolds whom Marmaduke succeeded also freed up voting requirements to provide greater voting access to the state’s residents, another issue opposed by Whigs. When the University of Missouri in Columbia was established in 1839 and became the first public university west of the Mississippi River, the Reynolds Administration achieved the education milestone of enrolling its first class. Meredith Miles Marmaduke, a former slaveholder, was a staunch Unionist during the U.S. Civil War, although four of his sons fought for the Confederacy which was a typical outcome of the conflict in the Border States. After the war, one of those sons, in 1885, became Missouri’s 25th governor.

“Historical, Pictorial and Biographical Record, of Chariton County, Missouri”, p. 30 (1896). Public Domain.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11995/jane_kelley-sappington – retrieved September 26, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11998/lavina-marmaduke – retrieved September 26, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11993/meredith_miles-marmaduke – retrieved September 26, 2025. The Washington Art Association: An Exhibition Record, 1856-1860, Josephine Cobb, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. Vol. 63/65, The 45th separately bound book (1963/1965), pp. 122-190. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40067358  – retrieved September 26, 2025.

Claiborne Fox Jackson. Public Domain. see- https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/claiborne-fox-jackson/ – retrieved September 28, 2025.

At right in Stump Speaking the man in the white coat and top hat is then-state senator Clairborne Fox Jackson (1806-1862) who became the secessionist governor of Missouri in 1861. Jackson was forced out by the Missouri General Assembly’s Unionist majority on July 30, 1861, and replaced by a former Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court as provisional governor for the rest of the war.  During these contentious deliberations, Bingham was in the state capitol to dedicate portraits of Henry Clay and President Andrew Jackson. Asked to say a few words, Bingham praised the 7th president’s suppressing nullifiers in 1832-1833 and called secession treason which almost blew the roof off the Missouri House. See- https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/an-artists-revenge/– retrieved September 27, 2025. Removed Gov. Jackson did not recognize the assembly’s actions and issued a proclamation on August 5, 1861, declaring that Missouri would secede from the Union. Jackson then traveled to Richmond, Virginia, to meet Confederate President Jefferson Davis and seek support of local Confederate militia forces and recognition by the Confederate government, both of which the Confederacy did. Union forces, however, had occupied most of Missouri and the state’s Unionist versus Secessionist political impasse was basically moot. Jackson withdrew to Arkansas with Confederate militia but was defeated by Union forces at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862. Violent skirmishes, often savage attacks, continued in Missouri as Confederate guerrillas, called bushwhackers, caused random fear and havoc. Missouri bushwhackers included outlaws Jesse James and his older brother Frank James. Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863 killed no less than 150 men and boys and inflamed the border. Fleeing further south to regroup, Jackson died at 56 years old of pneumonia and stomach cancer. Claiborne Fox Jackson having, in 1831, married Jane Breathitt Sappington (1813-1831) and, in 1833, Louisa Catherine Sappington (1814-1838), sisters of Lavina Sappington Marmaduke, was brother-in-law to Meredith Miles Marmaduke. As “E.D.” Sappington was brother to these women, all three men in Bingham’s painting were brothers-in-law.

Bingham’s lively crowd evokes William Hogarth’s mid-18th century Election series, but with little to none of the British artist’s turbulent depictions. The American Bingham’s election series is orderly in its business. Bingham’s Stump Speaking depicts none of Hogarth’s corruption where the voter or politician is pictured as an idiot and fool whose election requires that he be bribed, threatened, conned, intoxicated, or generally pushed around. One of Hogarth’s voters has to be carried to the ballot box to cast his vote because he is already dead. By contrast, in mid-19th century America, the democratic process, while popularly engaging and verbally contentious, is a pictorial pantheon of virtue: calm, dignified, respectful, decent, honest, ethical, and incorruptible. The American people carry out their sacred duty of democratic self-governance accompanied by earnest and sober demeanor as all Americans, North and South, as Lincoln observed “pray to the same God.” See – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/books/review/born-equal-akhil-reed-amar.html – retrieved September 28, 2025. While depicting politicians in American art and illustration had been typical from the Republic’s earliest days, Bingham casts them in a context with their voters laboring together in a noble field of American politics and democracy. In a painting that depicts the nation’s spread of universal suffrage for adult white males in the pre-Civil War era and the mobilization by party organizations of popular politics, Bingham neither depicts an anonymous crowd nor one restricted in social type. It is a real, breathing American landscape attracting and engaging a variety of ages and occupations. One does not find a shouting match, let alone some kind of melée in Bingham’s American electorate. It is quite the opposite: the crowd is civilized. Though assembled haphazardly, they are seated in peaceable order where some, amused by the proceedings, can share their laughter good-naturedly. Bingham’s figures are stalwart and reliable who come to attentively learn and independently decide among candidates. For Americans, listening to and questioning what each candidate has to say, and then voting, is a sacred civic duty since 1789 that Bingham updates to his present day.

About the Artist.

George Caleb Bingham (1811-79), an artist and politician. Born in Virginia, Bingham grew up on the frontier land of the Missouri River, and he was largely self-taught. He is famous for his scenes of manly, everyday life, showing work and play, mostly along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. His most celebrated picture is Fur Traders Descending the Missouri. Public Domain.

After his first wife, Sarah Elizabeth Hutchinson Bingham, died in November 1848 at 28 years old following 12 years of marriage, she was buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery in Boonville, Missouri. The next year, on December 3, 1849, Bingham married Eliza Thomas of Columbia, Missouri. Bingham had one child each with both his first and second wife. In 1876, Eliza having developed mental health issues, Bingham was forced to commit her to a state mental institution in Fulton, Missouri. She died there later that same year. Eliza was buried next to her parents in Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri. Now 55-year-old Bingham was a two-time widower with a 15-year-old son.  Unfortunately, the artist, too, would not be long for this world.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101339337/sarah_elizabeth-bingham – retrieved September 26, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89597996/eliza_k-bingham – retrieved September 26, 2025. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7096/george_caleb-bingham – retrieved September 26, 2025.

Bingham – The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, 96.8 x 123.2 cm (38 1/8 x 48 1/2 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. https://www.nga.gov/artworks/75206-jolly-flatboatmen – retrieved September 26, 2025. Scholars observe that Bingham’s paintings before the Civil War embody his partisan political views as a Whig Party politician with “his Western scenes a commentary on the importance of commerce and the need for federal funding for internal improvements.” Public Domain. See – https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/an-artists-revenge/ – retrieved September 27, 2025.

Bingham – Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845, 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The painting is Bingham’s most celebrated work. Public Domain. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10159 – retrieved September 26, 2025.

After the death of Eliza, Bingham married a third time in 1878. Martha Ann “Mattie” Livingston Lykins-Bingham (1824-1890) was a recent widow of one of Bingham’s friends in Kansas City. Mattie was a capable and dignified businesswoman with a big personality. Born in Kentucky and living In Lexington until she married Dr. Lykins, the Lykins’ were one of Kansas City’s power couples. At the outbreak of the Civil War, she and Dr. Lykins, along with a large swath of the local population in that part of western Missouri, were southern sympathizers. They and thousands more were expelled from the city by Order No. 11 of Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing Jr., commander of the District of the Border, to rid Missouri of their political persuasion. The displacement caused tremendous suffering for Missouri civilians and Order No. 11 was very controversial. Bingham, then-state treasurer of Missouri who swore a loyalty oath to the Union, was appalled by the “military tyranny” of Order No. 11 where the refugees’ farms and fields were pillaged and burned. Many of its victims viewed the action as simply anti-American government retribution for the local population’s political beliefs. See – https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/an-artists-revenge/ – retrieved September 27, 2025.

Bingham – “Order No. 11,” oil on canvas, 1865-1868, 56 3/16 x 79 7/16 in. (142.7 x 201.7 cm) , Cincinnati Art Museum. An artwork imbued with religious themes, historian Albert Castel wrote “Order No. 11” was “mediocre art but excellent propaganda, and it did more than anything else to create the popular conception of Order No. 11.” See – https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/an-artists-revenge/ – retrieved September 27, 2025. https://cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/explore-the-collection?id=11296936 – retrieved September 27, 2025.

Mattie and Dr. Lykins returned to Kansas City after the war and made a life there until Dr. Lykins’ death in 1876, the same year Eliza Bingham died. Two years later, Mattie married George Caleb Bingham. After Bingham’s death in 1879 from stomach flu, Mattie lived with his young son James Rollins Bingham (1861-1910) who never married. In 1890, following years of trouble with her health, Mattie died following surgery for a stomach tumor. Mrs. Lykins-Bingham was buried In Union Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri, in the Bingham family plot.

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: FERNAND HARVEY LUNGREN (1857-1932), The Café, 1882/84, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago.

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FEATURE Image: Fernand Harvey Lungren (1857-1932), The Café, 1882/84, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago. 9/2014.

Fernand Lungren, not dated, c. 1900.

The artist, born in Sweden, moved with his family to Toledo, Ohio, as a child. Lungren wanted to be an artist but his father objected, wanting him to be a mining engineer. For a brief time, in 1874, Lungren attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to study his father’s preferred subject. But after two years—Lungren’s father still opposed to his son being an artist— saw the younger Lungren rebel and prevail. In 1876 Lungren was able to study under Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) at the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia and had Robert Frederick Blum (1857-1903), Alfred Laurens Brennan (1853-1921) and Joseph Pennell (1857-1926) as fellow students.

Thomas Eakins, self-portrait, c. 1880. The 19-year-old Lungren studied under Eakins at the Pennsyvania Academy in Philadelphia.

In winter 1877 the 20-year-old Lungren moved to New York City. With his first illustration published in 1879, he worked as an illustrator for Scribner’s Monthly (renamed Century in 1881) as well as for Nicholas (a children’s magazine) and as a contributor until 1903. He later worked for Harper’s Bazaar, McClure’s and The Outlook. Lungren’s illustrations included portraits, and social and street scenes.

Paris in the 1880’s. Lungren was largely disappointed by his visit to Paris from June 1882 to December 1883 when he returned to New York.

In June 1882 Lungren sailed to Paris via Antwerp with a group of artists. In an 18-month stay in Paris he studied informally for two months at the Académie Julian, and viewed the latest French Impressionist artworks. He found his artistic purpose in Paris in direct observation and spent the balance of his time studying Parisian street scenes in the manner of the “new painting.”

Fernand Harvey Lungren (1857-1932), The Café, 1882/84, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee. Lungren depicts two women sitting at a dining table. The models and dresses share affinities with The Café from the same period. The cafe setting offered a myriad of elements to express modernity.
La France Élégante et Paris Élégant Réunis 1882.
Fernand Harvey Lungren (1857-1932), The Café, 1882/84, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago. 9/2014. Lungren paid special attention to the image presented by a woman in the details of her fashion from her hat with pom-poms, the size of her bustle, and even her shawl. Further, the bright electric lights above the woman’s head illustrate the intense competition and innovation of the late 1870’s and 1880’s in developing and marketing functional incandescent lamps. The contrast they provide to the dimmer gaslamps also depicted in the painting by Lungren are remarkable.
The Café, 1882/84, (detail). The architectural space of the café opens the street. The figure on the right holds a bouquet of yellow flowers while a coachman in the background is reflected by the light of a shop window with a carriage moving to the left.

Lungren returned to New York City in 1883 and, soon afterwards, established a studio in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad which wished to commission images of the Southwest to entice eastern tourists, Lungren made his first excursions west in the early 1890s. In 1892 he visited Santa Fe, New Mexico for the first time and, in the following years painted artworks inspired by his contact with American Indian culture and the desert landscape. This was the start of his lifelong association with American West and Southwest. In 1899 he showed these American desert works at the American Art Galleries in New York and afterwards at the Royal Academy in London and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Fernand Harvey Lungren (1857-1932), Canyon de Chelly
oil on canvas
18 3 /16 x 36″, c. 1903-1906. AD&A Museum, Santa Barbara, CA.

When Lungren was in London he made pictures of street life and met several artists, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). In late 1900 Lungren traveled to Egypt with American pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936) and returned to New York via London in the next year. Lungren had married Henrietta Whipple in 1898 and they eventually moved to California in 1903, settling in Mission Canyon above Santa Barbara in 1906.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. The U.S. president and conservationist was one of the admirers of Lungren’s artwork.
Fernand Harvey Lungren (1857-1932), Afterglow: Painted Desert
oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 45 in.; framed: 29 3/4 x 49 3/4 x 2 in. AD&A Museum 

Lungren lived and work in California—including several notable trips to Death Valley starting in 1909 —until his death in 1932. After Lungren’s wife died in 1917, the artist helped found the Santa Barbara School of the Arts in 1920 and remained on its board until his death in 1932. He became a charter member of the Santa Barbara Art League and executed two works for dioramas at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Most of Lungren’s artwork, including hundreds of his paintings (some 300 works), were bestowed to Santa Barbara State Teachers College, which became the University of California, Santa Barbara, and are part of the University Art Museum

Lungren in later life.

SOURCES:

J.A. Berger, Fernand Lungren: A Biography, Santa Barbara, 1936.

http://art-collections.museum.ucsb.edu/collections/show/44 – retrieved May 1, 2024.

https://collection.sina.cn/zhuanlan/2022-03-11/detail-imcwipih7897380.d.html – retrieved May 1, 2024.

Artist Fernand Lungren

https://www.artic.edu/articles/960/fernand-lungren-illuminated-in-the-cafe-and-the-city-of-lights – retrieved May 1, 2024.

AUSTRIA. My Art Photography: OSKAR KOKOSCHKA (Austrian, 1886-1980), Lady In Red, c. 1911, oil on canvas, Milwaukee Art Museum.

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Feature Image: Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886-1980), Lady In Red, c. 1911, oil on canvas, 21 11/16 × 16 in. (55.09 × 40.64 cm), Milwaukee Art Museum. Author’s photograph, 2016.

Oska Kokoschka in 1916. Photography by Marta Wolff (1871-1942), a Berlin-based photographer. On September 1, 1942 Marta Wolff was taken from her last place of residence in Wiesbaden to Theresienstadt. She died there of pneumonia on September 22, 1942. see – https://oskar-kokoschka.ch/fr/1001/Biographie – retrieved May 1, 2024. Public Domain.

When Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886-1980) painted Lady In Red that is in the Milwaukee Art Museum he was a starving artist living in Berlin. At 24 years old Kokoschka became associated with Berlin’s avant-garde and its writers, artists, and theatre actors. The artist knew some of the artists and others of Die Brücke and those associated with Der Sturm, the art and literary magazine. In June 1910 Paul Cassirer organized Kokoschka’s first major show. But Kokoschka’s involvement with the German Expressionists was limited as the young artist was dedicated to pursuing his own artistic ideas and forms. Commenting on this independence, Kokoschka wrote that he was “not going to submit…to anyone else’s control. That is freedom as I understand it.” (Oskar Kokoschka, My Life, translated from the German by David Britt, New York, Macmillan, 1974, p. 67). As Kokoschka developed the art of “seeing,” with his emphasis on depth perception, the local press saw young Kokoschka’s volatile unpredictability and called him “the wildest beast of all.”

Between 1900 and 1930, Berlin is the world capital of art.
Paul Cassirer (1871-1926) was a dynamic tastemaker with close ties to the Paris art market, especially to Galerie Durand-Ruel. In 1910 he mounted Oskar Kokoschka’s first major show. Before that, also in 1910, he held the first major Édouard Manet exhibition in Berlin. Cassirer was secretary of the Berlin Secession, an association of renegade modern artists established in 1898 in reaction to the academic and governmental restrictions imposed on contemporary art. Public Domain.

Though Kokoschka studied art of the past masters to develop a unique individual style, he and Die Brücke did interact on ideas and formal problems which generated an artistic atmosphere in Berlin and Vienna. In 1912, Kokoschka started a disastrous affair with Alma Mahler (1879-1964), the widow of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Its final ending in 1915 led Kokoschka to volunteer for the front lines in World War I and being seriously wounded in combat. The artist enlisted in the 15th Austrian Dragoon Regiment where, in 1915 on the Ukrainian front, Kokoschka was seriously wounded by a bullet to the head and a bayonet wound to the chest. In 1916 Kokoschka was wounded by grenade fire on the Isonzo Front.

Oskar Kokoschka, Die Windsbraut (The Bride of the Wind), 1913. Oil on canvas, 180.4 x 220.2 cm, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland. see – Kunstmuseum Basel – Sammlung Online – Die Windsbraut – retrieved May 1, 2024.

As its two figures bear portrait-like features of Kokoschka and Alma Mahler, the painting is interpreted as an autobiographical testimony to their relationship. Alma Mahler was the widow of composer Gustav Mahler, who died in 1911. In a letter to the Berlin art dealer Herwarth Walden, the artist described the newly completed work as “Tristan und Isolde” (Spielmann 2003, p. 153) alluding to unfulfillable quality of a difficult love. In the same year of 1914, the current title was created in conversation with the poet Georg Trakl.

Alma Mahler was the young widow of composer Gustave Mahler (1860-1911). In 1912 she and Kokoschka embarked on a tumultous affair. In 1913, they travelled together to Italy, and he depicted himself alongside her in the famous painting Die Windsbraut (Bride of the Wind) in 1914.

Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886-1980), Lady In Red, c. 1911, oil on canvas, 21 11/16 × 16 in. (55.09 × 40.64 cm), Milwaukee Art Museum. Author’s photograph, 2016.

The Expressionists’ emotional involvement with world events affected each of their creative processes. In these experiences of personal and social upheaval, Kokoschka maintained that as an artist – and he viewed this role as an existential fact more than a choice – his life had less to do with often prefabricated ideologies, programs, and parties and, rather, with searching and crafting his unique outlook as a creative individual. “There is no such thing as a German, French, or Anglo-American Expressionism!” Kokoschka would argue, “There are only young people trying to find their bearings in the world.” (Kokoschka, My Life, p. 37).

Kokoschka’s individualism made him one of the supreme masters of Expressionism, an -ism he defied. His tempestuous canvases with harsh colors and disjointed angles produced compositions that were emotionally aggressive and meant to prod the viewer into discomfort and rage. As Kokoschka eschewed the main modernist movement of Expressionism for the discovery and practice of his own unique style, he became one of the few major artists (Max Beckmann is another) who will often not appear in the annals of mainstream 20th century modernism, though this exclusive outcome is likely what would satisfy “the wildest beast of all.”

Oskar Kokoschka, 1963, © ERLING MANDELMANN ©, “Oskar Kokoschka (1963) by Erling Mandelmann” by Erling Mandelmann is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. -Retrieved October 27, 2025.

SOURCES:

The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany, Peter Paret, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980, p. 208.

Oskar Kokoschka, My Life, translated from the German by David Britt, New York, Macmillan, 1974.

https://oskar-kokoschka.ch/fr/1001/Biographie – retrieved May 1, 2024.

Oskar Kokoschka: Letters I. 1905–1919, edited by Olda Kokoschka and Heinz Spielmann, Düsseldorf, Claassen, 1984.

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980)

http://www.jottings.ca/carol/kokoschka.html#3 – retrieved May 1, 2024.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kokoschka-oskar – retrieved May 1, 2024.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marta_Wolff – retrieved May 1, 2024.

https://upclose.christies.com/restitution/kunstsalon-cassirer – retrieved May 1, 2024.

https://www.gallery-weekend-berlin.de/journal/simon-elson-pate/ – retrieved May 1, 2024.

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: JOAN MIRÓ (1893-1983, Spanish), Joan Miró’s Chicago, 1967 (installed 1981), Chicago, Illinois.

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FEATURE image: July 2015. Joan Miró, Joan Miró’s Chicago (sometimes Miss Chicago), steel reinforced-concrete, colored ceramics, 1967, Brunswick Building Plaza, 69 W. Washington Street, Chicago. This artwork is Miró’s only monumental sculpture. 7.04 mb. Author’s photograph.

Joan Miró (1893-1983) is a Catalan who is a major dadaist artist  “Dada” is a nonsense word but its artistic movement that started around 1915 in Zürich, Switzerland, has brought into existence many famous artworks by a range of artists. As World War I raged on in Europe between 1914 and 1918, young artists and intellectuals reacted with art, performance, and poetry that was radically experimental, dissident and anarchic. These artists countered the horrors of the war and capitalist culture by moving past a degradation of art to contributing to an anti-art under the banner of “dada.” These ideas and ideals of dada quickly spread to the art capitals of Paris and New York – and beyond.

Joan Miró’s Chicago is the artist’s first monumental sculpture in the world.

Joan Miró’s Chicago is in this dada milieu as it sits in the Brunswick Building Plaza, directly across Washington Street from another Spanish artist’s 50-foot-tall Cor-Ten steel sculpture from the same time (1967): Chicago’s Picasso in Daley Plaza. Miró’s sculpture expresses the neck, bustline, and slim and wasp-waisted hips of a woman’s torso with outstretched arms and a simplified head. She is made of steel-reinforced concrete with brightly colored ceramics that are added to the scooped-out hem of her skirt. Like other of Miró’s sculptures of female figures from the 1950s, the shape of the skirt is that of an overturned broad-lipped cup or chalice. The bronze, crown-like headdress is like the dadaist found objects that populated Miró’s artwork whether paintings, sculptures, ceramics and more throughout his career. Joan Miró’s Chicago possesses qualities evocative of primitive fertility or earth goddesses similar to those found in the ancient Mediterranean world.

One of Dada’s major sculptural forms to emerge and which was masterly accomplished by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), was the “readymade” which used familiar mass-produced objects (i.e., ceramic urinals, household tools, etc.) for high art pieces. The dada expression of the readymade increasingly asked the viewer to take seriously these consumer items and found objects as high art on an equal platform with lofty traditional productions of a monied arts establishment.

Dadaists experimented boldly with new media such as collage (Jean Arp, 1886-1966), airbrushed photography (Man Ray, 1890-1976) and nonsensical poetry (Hugo Ball, 1886-1927). These art forms freely combined as well as crossed over its categories, i.e., nonsensical poetry interpreted in performance art.

Joan Miró, Barcelona, June 13, 1935 by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964). Public Domain. This work is from the Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congress. According to the library, there are no known copyright restrictions on the use of this work. As the restrictions on this collection expired in 1986, the Library of Congress believes this image is in the public domain. The Carl Van Vechten estate has asked that use of Van Vechten’s photographs “preserve the integrity” of his work, i.e, that photographs not be colorized or cropped, and that proper credit is given to the photographer which is the photograph here.

Miró’s art does not accept the world as it is.

In the 1930’s and 1940’s Miró worked with material such as paper, string and even toothbrushes and, sometime later, natural objects such as rocks and fruits to make loose, playlike assemblies, many of which due to fragility or destruction, did not survive. Miró did not transform or repurpose these found objects – bells, jars, vases – but by leaving them alone saw they retained what the artist called their own “magical powers.” Miró’s more permanent artworks – paintings, ceramics, plaster or bronze sculptures, etc. – possess the same randomness as his looser assemblies which is the artist’s intended reflection of nature’s promiscuous progeny. The artist turns his back on established art principles and pursues his own independence which, following intuition unto slow resolve, improbably marries diverse objects of recognizable forms making for an assembly of more than one class or nature. They are of a realm not always of this world.

July 2015. Miró with City Hall in background. Chicago. 5.77mb DSC_0308 (1) Author’s photograph.

Though Miró completed a maquette of the sculpture in 1967 (called Project for a Monument for Barcelona), its production into a 40-foot sculpture – the artist’s only monumental sculpture – was delayed until 1979. The hundreds of thousands of dollars for the production and installation of Joan Miró’s Chicago was provided by a private-public partnership in Chicago.

SOURCES:

A Guide to Chicago Public Sculpture, Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1983, pp. 73-74.

https://magazine.artland.com/what-is-dadaism/ – retrieved June 29, 2023.

Joan Miró, Janis Mink, Taschen, 2006, p. 93.

Miró, Guy Weelen, translated by Robert Erich Wolf, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989, pp. 178-179.

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: Gettysburg National Military Park, PA, 1888 bronze of Brigadier General Gouverneur Kemble Warren by Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940).

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FEATURE image: Brigadier General Gouverneur Kemble Warren, 1888, by Karl Gerhardt. Gettysburg National Military Park. Author’s photograph taken in April 2006 (65%).

One of Gettysburg’s most famous statues among the park’s many hundreds of monuments, markers and plaques, Gouverneur (his first name, not his title) Kemble Warren (1830-1882) was a civil engineer and U.S Army general from New York. The statue, by Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940) was dedicated in 1888 and is on Little Round Top. Karl Gerhardt was an American sculptor who is famous for the death mask of President U.S. Grant in 1885.

The artist; Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940) around 1880. Public Domain.

At this spot, on July 2, 1863, General Warren, commander of the Second Army Corps (part of the Army of the Potomac) and its chief engineer, detected Confederate General John Hood’s flanking movement and, recognizing the importance of the undefended position on the left flank of the U.S. Army, directed on his own initiative, the brigade of Colonel Strong Vincent (1837-1863) from Pennsylvania to occupy it minutes before it was attacked. While this action saved the key Union position on Cemetery Ridge, Col. Vincent was carried off the field mortally wounded and died at a nearby farm on July 7, 1863.

Colonel Strong Vincent (1837-1863). Public Domain.

The statue was dedicated by veterans of the 5th New York Infantry Regiment (Duryee’s Zouaves). While Little Round Top is famous for the fighting on July 2, 1863, seven men were also killed around these rocks on the morning of July 3, 1863.

Artwork subject; Brigadier General Gouverneur Kemble Warren during the Civil War. Public Domain.

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: THE WORKER, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 2001, Willow Springs, Illinois. (7 Photos & Illustrations).

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FEATURE Image: Cook/DuPage Cos., Willow Springs, IL. The Worker, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Camp Chicago-Lemont, Company 612, est. June 4, 1933. Author’s photograph, 6/2018 6mb.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a major program in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to combat the devastating effects of the Great Depression. Called “Mr. Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” there were over 50 such camps in Illinois alone and over 1000 special projects in the state between April 1933 and July 1942. The camp at Willow Springs was one of FDR’s first such camps established in spring 1933. The Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy indicates June 4, 1933, as the establishment date for Camp Chicago-Lemont, Company 612 in Willow Springs, Illinois.

The recent statue called The Worker was dedicated on June 3, 2001 to commemorate the dedication and spirit of the young men, aged 17 to 28 years old, who served in the CCC and specifically in Willow Springs, Illinois. The larger-than-life-sized bronze CCC Worker Statue stands at the intersection of Archer Avenue (Route 171) and Willow Boulevard in Willow Springs Woods, and is one of many such similar statues that stand on the American landscape in tribute to the men of the CCC.

The purpose of this government “alphabet” program, one of the New Deal’s most successful, was multi-faceted. The primary motivation was to address staggering unemployment numbers of up to 25% (and higher in certain pockets of the country) caused by the collapse of the private enterprise system in the Great Depression that started on Wall Street in October 1929. The CCC was specifically designed to give jobs to young men and so to relieve their families who had great difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression.

CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys working, 1935. “CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys working, Prince George’s County, Maryland 1935 LOC 8a00074u” by over 26 MILLION views Thanks is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
June 2018. The Worker, Willow Spring, IL. Author’s photograph, 12.87mb.
June 2013. CCC plaque, Willow Springs IL. 3.33mb

Camps proliferated all over the country in every state. In its nine years and 3 months duration the CCC employed upwards of 3 million young men between 17 and 28 years old. For their manual labor jobs related to conservation and the development of natural resources provided by the federal program, these men received their food, clothing, lodging, medical and dental attention, along with a paycheck of $30 a month (around $600 in today’s dollars), most of which ($25) had to be sent home to their struggling families. The popular program enjoyed wide bi-partisan and public support.

Each camp could house around 200 men and, while the lifestyle was quite simple, it beat panhandling on the streets in the mind of most of the CCC’s young enrollees.

FDR during a presidential radio broadcast in 1933. Library of Congress. Public Domain.

The Emergency Conservation Work (EWC) Act, or CCC, was part of the Emergency Session of the 73rd Congress that FDR called on March 9, 1933, just days after his first inauguration. FDR promised if granted emergency powers he would have 250,000 men in camps by the end of July 1933. Senate Bill S. 598 was introduced on March 27, 1933, passed both houses of Congress and was signed by FDR on March 31, 1933, less than one month into his 4-year term. Though opposed at first by Big Labor who feared that jobs would be filled by this army of non-union workers, the Roosevelt Administration went ahead and mobilized the men, material, transportation and necessary bureaucracy to establish the CCC on a scale never seen before in the United States in peacetime. Dated April l5, 1933, Executive Order 6101 authorized the program, appointed Robert Fechner (1876-1939) as its first director and established an Advisory Council with representatives from the War, Labor, Agriculture and Interior Departments. It was part of “the 100 days” that marked the passage into law of a series of 15 major bills during FDR’s first 100 days as the 32nd U.S. president.

The Federal program provided that these work projects took place mostly on rural lands owned by government entities. CCC workers throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation’s decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees between 1933 and 1942. Their work also revived the nation’s crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure.

CCC, 1940. “Leaders and Assistant Leaders, Civilian Conservation Corps, Company 229, Camp Willow Creek F-188, 1940 – Emida, Idaho” by Shook Photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The CCC was immensely popular, but Pearl Harbor effectively ended it. With the establishment of the draft and industry involved in the war effort, the government no longer needed to subsidize work. In 1942, the last CCC camps were dismantled or repurposed for the army.

With the exception of Social Security and the Rural Electrification Act, no program of the New Deal era has ever had a greater influence on the country. In Illinois alone, the impact was remarkable. Over 92,000 men worked in the CCC in the state. An estimated 60 million trees were planted, 400 bridges built, 1,200 miles of trail made and nearly 5,000 flood-control apparati put in place.

SOURCES:

https://ccclegacy.org/CCC_Camps_Illinois.html – retrieved May 16, 2023.

https://will.illinois.edu/21stshow/story/ccc-in-illinois-past-and-future – retrieved May 16, 2023

https://icl.coop/story-ccc-legacy-illinois/ – retrieved May 16, 2023.

June 2013. CCC (The Worker) statue, Illinois Route 171 (Archer Avenue) Willow Springs, IL. 5.61mb

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: Bronze, 1930, Capt. A. Lincoln, Illinois Volunteer Militia, Black Hawk War, 1832, by LEONARD CRUNELLE (1872-1944), on the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois.

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FEATURE image: The large bronze statue was the first prominent public depiction of the 16th U.S. president as a young adult man. Author’s photograph, June 2017. 4.70mb. Capt.

Young Lincoln was stationed in Dixon, Illinois, at Fort Dixon on the Rock River in today’s Lee County where the statue stands. “Rock River Fall_03” by markellis_1964 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Capt. A. Lincoln looking onto the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois. Young Lincoln enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers on April 21, 1832 and, following more enlistments, finally mustered out of military service on July 10, 1832. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 8.26mb.

Illinois in the early 1830s was the edge of the American frontier and virtually wilderness. The Native American tribes were being expelled from the northern tier of the state established in 1818 by ceding their lands to the U.S Federal Government. Most of the Native Americans were pushed out of the state by treaty by the end of the 1820s. This quickly changed the landscape of a rapidly growing Illinois by way of new arrivals of settlers from the East in the 1840s and 1850s. Settlers were accompanied by ambitious commercial projects such as transportation canals and, even more impressive, the railroads, all of which worked to open up the Middle West of the United States to global markets and industrial prosperity.

Abraham Lincoln, born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1809, was 21 years old when he arrived into Illinois in 1830 with his family from Indiana. During the 1832 Black Hawk War, the 23-year-old Abe Lincoln lived in New Salem, Illinois, and was elected captain in the Illinois National Guard. The bronze statue, cast in 1930, of Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, depicts for the first time a yet untapped aspect of the 16th president’s life and career for his ever-expanding public iconology – that of the youthful adult Lincoln starting out in his career.

Lincoln enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers on April 21, 1832 near Richland Creek in Sangamon County which was located about halfway between New Salem and Springfield, Illinois. The next day, Lincoln mustered into state service at Beardstown, Illinois, about 40 miles to the west on the Illinois River.

The 6-foot-4-inch Lincoln was elected captain, a position he said he was both surprised and proud to receive.

Lincoln mustered into U.S. service near Janesville, Wisconsin on May 3, 1832. He mustered out on May 27, 1832 in Ottawa, Wisconsin. Lincoln never fired a shot.

On that same day of May 27, 1832 Lincoln re-enlisted as a private in Captain Iles’ company. When that enlistment expired, Lincoln re-enlisted again in Captain Early’s company.

Lincoln finally mustered out of military service on July 10, 1832 at Whitewater, Wisconsin.

Young Lincoln was stationed in Dixon, Illinois, at Fort Dixon on the Rock River where this statue — unveiled in late September 1930 — stands. The sculptor is French-born Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944).

The artist leonard Crunelle (1872-1944) with the head of his heroic-sized Lincoln the Debater completed in 1929. Fair Use. The following year he completed Capt. A. Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, which was another heroic-sized statue of an even much younger Lincoln

Crunelle’s immigrant family arrived in Illinois in 1889 and settled in Decatur, about 40 miles east of Springfield, Lincoln’s hometown. When Crunelle worked in the local mines, he started making fired clay sculptures. His work was brought to the attention of prominent American sculptor and teacher Lorado Taft (1860-1936) who brought young Crunelle to Chicago to study at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the same time, Crunelle began to do decorative work for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

Lorado Taft made his Black Hawk statue monument in 1911 in Oregon, Illinois, also on the Rock River about 16 miles upstream from Dixon, Illinois. It is all part of the area that saw action during the Black Hawk War in 1832 and led to the complete surrender and expulsion of the last Native American group in Illinois. “Black Hawk (aka ‘The Eternal Indian’)” by Dan Brekke is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

The bronze sculpture of Lincoln – who later as a lawyer and politician expressed pride in his brief military service – is one of the first attempts to depict the Great Emancipator in his youth. Though Crunelle had made a statue called Lincoln the Debater for display in a park in Freeport, Illinois, in 1929 the slightly later Capt. A. Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, depicted Lincoln more than half the great debater’s age.

Plaque. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 9mb.
Capt. A. Lincoln 1832. Dixon, Illinois. The 6-foot-4-inch Lincoln was elected captain, a position he said he was both surprised and proud to receive. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 6.87mb.
“Rock River Fall_49” by markellis_1964 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Reconstruction of log structure typical for the early 1830’s in Illinois when young Abraham Lincoln served at Fort Dixon on the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois, in the Illinois National Guard. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 6.75 mb.

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: RICHARD HUNT (1935-2023, American), We Will, 2005, Chicago, Illinois.

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Richard Hunt (b. 1935, American), We Will, welded stainless steel, 35’x 8’ x 8’, Chicago, Illinois, in July 2016.

Chicagoan Richard Hunt has over 150 large-scale installations around the world. Since 2005, Richard Hunt’s We Will has stood proudly on the sidewalk by the intersection of Randolph Street and Garland Court near Chicago’s Cultural Center and Millennium Park. We Will stands 35 feet tall and is made of welded stainless steel. The public art is a sculpture of scale that is impressive on its downtown Chicago streets.

“I Will” is the long-time mantra of Chicago. Its roots trace to the Great Fire of 1871, and the dogged resiliency of its citizens to rebuild, to reinvent, and to grow to new heights. The sculpture evokes the licks of flame from that devastating event in the 19th century from which the city built back bigger, better, faster, and stronger – and whose title We Will indicates that Chicagoans in the 21st century continue this tradition of resilience and resolve by looking to do so together.

We Will was commissioned by the Mesa Development Company, the developers of a condominium and mixed-use building in Chicago.  Hunt has his artwork installed for viewing across the city of Chicago including, in 2021, his Light of Truth Monument to Ida B. Wells in Bronzeville, Jacob’s Ladder in the Carter Woodson Regional Library, Farmer’s Dream at the MCA, and Flightforms at Midway Airport, among others.

“There are a range of possibilities for art on public buildings or in public places. To commemorate, to inspire. I think art can enliven and set certain standards for what is going on in and around it.” – Richard Hunt, sculptor.

Among these celebrated works by Richard Hunt is included the first artwork commissioned for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Titled Book Bird, Hunt’s sculpture will be placed outdoors in the Library Reading Garden of the new Chicago Public Library branch at the Obama Presidential Center campus. The former 44th U.S. president in a Zoom call with the artist recently observed about Richard Hunt and his artwork: “[Hunt’s] personal story embodies what is hoped to be the experience at the center. To have one of the greatest artists Chicago ever produced and to participate in what we hope is an important cultural institution for the city and the South Side  …it feels like a pretty good fit to me.”

“Young Richard Hunt in Cleveland Ave Studio – Chicago 1962” by Unknown, From the Estate of Richard Hunt is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Richard Hunt was born in 1935 in the Woodlawn neighborhood and lived at 63rd and Eberhart on the South Side of Chicago. His family moved to Englewood when Hunt was 4 years old. Hunt attended public schools and his family was very involved in visiting the city’s cultural institutions, particularly The Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. Hunt received a B.A.E. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1957 and, afterwards, studied and traveled in Europe as well as served in the U.S. Army.

In the artist’s long career Hunt has received more than a dozen honorary degrees from leading educational institutions of higher learning across the country. He has also served at several prestigious universities as professor and artist in residence. Hunt made history when he became the first African-American artist to have a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

“There are a range of possibilities for art on public buildings or in public places,“ Hunt said recently in the context of his Obama Center work, “To commemorate, to inspire. I think art can enliven and set certain standards for what is going on in and around it.”

Richard Hunt died in Chicago on December 16, 2023. Hunt was 88 years old. See more – https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-12-18/richard-hunt-dies-sculptor-inspired-by-civil-rights-movement – retrieved December 19, 2023.

Sources and further information:

https://www.obama.org/the-center/richard-hunt/

https://richardhuntstudio.com/portfolio-items/we-will/

Chicago. August 2021.

Text, 2016 and 2021 photographs, format:

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: ALEXANDER CALDER (American, 1898-1976), Flamingo (1974), Federal Center Plaza, Chicago, Illinois.

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FEATURE Image: Flamingo by Alexander Calder is a masterwork stabile in Chicago’s downtown. It was unveiled on October 25, 1974 in a dedication ceremony with the artist. It is one of Chicago’s iconic outdoor public artworks.  6/2022 7.73 mb

In downtown Chicago’s Federal Center Plaza on South Dearborn Street between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard is Alexander Calder’s 53-foot-tall painted steel plate “stabile object” entitled Flamingo. The Chicago Federal Center was completed in 1974 with Calder’s artwork. The design project began in 1958 and included three International-style government buildings by modernist architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) within a public plaza design that was completed in 1974. Flamingo, commissioned after Mies’ death for $250,000 by the Government Services Administration, was unveiled on October 25, 1974 with the 76-year-old Calder present for its dedication ceremonies and festivities. With the commission Calder understood the significant impact of his artwork for the Federal Center Plaza in Chicago.

Calder’s prolific and impressive art career started in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Flamingo (a.k.a., “the Calder”) in Chicago’s historic Federal Center Plaza is a later work, whose maquette Calder made before it was intended for Chicago.

During his artistic career’s many decades and years, Calder never stopped developing in his art. The 1974 steel sculpture painted red-orange is four stories tall and makes a powerful impact on the streetscape where it is an integral part. Along with Chicago’s Picasso in 1967 and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (“the Bean”) in 2004, Calder’s Flamingo in 1974 has taken its well-deserved place among Chicago’s most iconic outdoor public artworks.

From the inventor of the mobile, Calder turned later to the development of the stabile of which Flamingo is a masterwork. Starting in the mid1950s and into the 1970’s, Calder produced scores of stabiles in many shapes and sizes for display around the world.

“Most architects and city planners want to put my objects in front of trees or greenery. They make a huge error. My mobiles and stabiles ought to be placed in free spaces, like public squares, or in front of modern buildings, and that is true of all contemporary sculpture.” – Alexander Calder.

6/2022 7.24 mb

Titled Flamingo, the towering abstracted “Calder red” painted stabile object can evoke reactions to it that are unexpected. Calder’s stabile masterwork was unveiled in October 1974 which was the same year the Sears Tower (in the background) was completed and which was at that time the world’s tallest building (today it is ranked no. 26). From Federal Center Plaza, Chicago’s 20th century architectural history is readily on display in its downtown buildings in a range of shapes, sizes, textures and design styles.

5/2014 3.28 mb

Flamingo can be intimidating because of its monumental size. Actual flamingo shorebirds vary in size, but are usually no more than 3 to 5 feet tall, and weighing about 5 to 7 pounds. At 53 feet tall, Calder’s immense stabile in Chicago is about the size of a giant sauropod dinosaur which could weigh around 60 tons.

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Alexander Calder trained and worked as a mechanical engineer before he became an artist. The graceful design and construction of Flamingo is expressed by nearly one-inch-thick steel plates buttressed by ribs and gussets joined overhead by lofty arches and resting on three legs as if it is nearly weightless. Even his largest stabiles (of which Flamingo is one) are made so they can be easily unbolted, and taken apart to be transported and assembled at the place of destination.

5/2014 4.82 mb

In Federal Center Plaza is a complex of three buildings of varying scales by Mies van der Rohe: the broad 30-floor Everett McKinley Dirksen Building at 219 S. Dearborn Street completed in 1964 (at right), the lean 45-floor John C. Kluczynski Building at 230 S. Dearborn Street completed in 1974 (not pictured), and the single-story U.S. Post Office building at 219 S. Clark Street (not pictured). Calder’s Flamingo sits on its three pillars like a lunar lander that reflects the arcaded bases of Mies van der Rohe’s buildings that surround it as well as provide a sweeping contrast of curves and bright stand-out color against the surrounding modernist buildings’ monochrome glass-and-steel grid appearance. Calder’s artwork achieved more than the sum of these parts – it transformed Mies’ overall somber architectural trio into a more dramatic and complex quartet that included Calder’s art. The 30-story Dirksen Building is across Dearborn Street.

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Calder’s Flamingo after dark with the one-story Post Office illumined within behind it.

6/2022 6.87mb

Calder’s stabile is one of the most monumental public art commissions in Chicago. Flamingo’s height and breadth (it fills a space of about 1440 square feet) achieves a largesse that does not forgo a human scale as it allows pedestrians to freely walk around, under and through it. The 45-story Kluczynski Building is at left.

11/2015 3.77mb

Flamingo lighted at night in late November where there is already a snow pile on the sidewalk in Chicago’s Federal Center Plaza presaging the Chicago winter. In summer months there is a regular farmer’s market on the Federal Center Plaza. It is also the location for a variety of political gatherings year-round. The Kluczynski Building is behind.

6/2022 6.20mb

In October 1974 Alexander Calder was in Chicago for a “Calder Festival” where two of his major works were being dedicated – Flamingo for Federal Center Plaza (depicted above with the Kluczynski Building) and Universe, a motorized mural for the Sears Tower. Reflecting the artist’s lifetime interest in circuses, Calder joined in the city’s circus-themed parade in his honor. In another major cultural event in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art held a large retrospective exhibition of Calder’s art from October to December of 1974.

10/2015 3.90mb.

Looking from the Marquette Building south to Calder’s Flamingo in situ in Federal Center Plaza.

SOURCES:

https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/federal-plaza – retrieved September 30, 2022.

A Guide to Chicago Public Sculpture, Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1983, pp. 54-55.

Calder’s Universe, Jean Lipman, The Viking Press and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1976, pp. 305; 339.

Calder The Conquest of Space, The Later Years: 1940-1976, Jed Perl, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020, pp. 551; 553.

https://www.architecture.org/learn/resources/buildings-of-chicago/building/federal-center/ – retrieved September 30, 2022.

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All text and photography by:

UNITED STATES. My Art Photography: BIAGIO GOVERNALI, Bronze Doors, Mysteries of the Rosary (2004)—Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago, IL.

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FEATURE IMAGE: Dedicated by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. on October 11, 2004, the three sacred bronze doors – East, West, and Central – at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago, IL, are by Italian artist Biagio Governali, native of Corleone, Italy, and depict the mysteries of the Rosary. CENTRAL Bronze Door: Sorrowful Mysteries panel (detail), The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. 12/2013 1.55 mb

INTRODUCTION.

Our Lady of Pompeii was originally established in Chicago in 1911 as an Italian national parish. The present church building at 1224 West Lexington Street in Chicago’s westside University Village/Little Italy neighborhood was constructed in 1923 and dedicated to Mary, Queen of the Rosary in 1924. The parish began under the Scalabrinian Missionaries, a religious institute founded in Italy in 1887 to aid and serve the Italian immigrants to America.

In 1994 Joseph Cardinal Bernardin proclaimed Our Lady of Pompeii church a Shrine, dedicated to honor Mary, the Mother of God and Queen of the Holy Rosary. Ten years later practically to the day, Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. dedicated the Shrine’s bronze doors. On that same October day in 2004, Bishop Carlo Liberati, Pontifical Delegate to the Shrine of The Blessed Virgin of The Holy Rosary in Pompeii, Italy, established “a most fervent and fraternal link of communion” between the shrine in Pompeii, Italy, and that of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago.

Inspired by the main gate (“Porta del Paradiso”) of the Baptistry of Florence made by Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) between 1425 and 1452 and located in front of Florence’s cathedral, the bronze doors in Chicago were made by Biagio Governali, native of Corleone, Italy. The artist modeled each panel in wax which were then sent to Verona, Italy, to be cast in bronze and polished. These Veronese craftsmen came to Chicago on two occasions to mount and position the doors before they were dedicated and blessed by Cardinal George in 2004.

WEST Bronze Door: JOYFUL Mysteries.

WEST Bronze Door. Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. 12/2013 6.72 mb

The West Bronze Door, dedicated in 2004, depicts the five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii (1923), 1224 West Lexington Street in Chicago. Clockwise from top left, the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56), the Nativity of Jesus (Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 1:18-2:23), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:22-40) and Christ among the Doctors (Finding in the Temple) (Luke 2:41-52). The shrine is the oldest continuous Italian-American Catholic Church in Chicago and is today a place to pray for peace that embraces pilgrims of all faiths.

1. The Annunciation (top, left)

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1:26-27).

2. The Visitation (top, right)

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”‘ (Luke 1:39-42).

3. The Nativity of Jesus (center)

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrolment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:1-7).

Upper portion of WEST Bronze Door depicting Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38); Visitation (Luke 1: 39-56), and Nativity (Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 1:18-2:23). The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. 12/2013 4.42 mb

4. The Presentation in the Temple (bottom, left)

“And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”‘ (Luke 2:21-24).

5. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple (bottom, right)

“Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom; and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it …
After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” (Luke 2:41-47).

The exterior doors of the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago visually narrate the twenty mysteries of the Rosary. These are the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous mysteries. The faithful can use each door panel as a meditation to pray each decade of the Rosary.

In Europe, most of the complete works of art that have survived undamaged and unrestored from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to today are bronze doors, most of which are in Italy.

Even when the Shrine doors are closed, the sanctuary calls to all passersby to look, ponder, and personally experience the Gospel that these doors present in its fine artwork of the mysteries of the Rosary.

CENTRAL Bronze Door: SORROWFUL and GLORIOUS Mysteries.

The exterior doors of the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago visually narrate the twenty mysteries of the Rosary – the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Luminous mysteries. The faithful can use each door panel as a meditation to pray each decade of the Rosary.
In Europe, complete works of art that have survived undamaged and unrestored from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to today are bronze doors, with most in Italy.
The Shrine doors are closed but the sanctuary calls to passersby to look and ponder on the Gospel that these doors present on the mysteries of the Rosary.

Sorrowful Mysteries.

1. The Agony in the Garden (top, left)

“Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go yonder and pray.’ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’” (Matthew 26:36-39).

2. The Scourging at the Pillar (top, right)

“Pilate released Barabbas to them, but after he had Jesus scourged, he handed him over to be crucified.” (Matthew 27:26).

3. The Crowning With Thorns (center, left)

“Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” (Matthew 27:27-29).

4. The Carrying of the Cross (center, right)

“And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull).” (Mark 15:21-22).

5. The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus with Mary and John (center)

“And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ …It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last” (Luke 23:33-46). 

Upper portion of Central Bronze Door of Sorrowful Mysteries (left panel) and Glorious Mysteries (right panel) of the Rosary.

Glorious Mysteries.

1. The Resurrection of Jesus (center)

“But at daybreak on the first day of the week they took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.  5They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? 6He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, 7that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” 8And they remembered his words. 9 Then they returned from the tomb and announced all these things to the eleven and to all the others. 10The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James; the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles, 11but their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone; then he went home amazed at what had happened.” (Luke 24: 1-12).

2. The Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven (top, left)

“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.” (Mark 16:19).

3. The Holy Spirit comes upon Mary and the Apostles (top, right)

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-4).

4. The Assumption of Mary into Heaven (bottom, left)

“Henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me.” (Luke 1:48-49).

5. The Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven (bottom, right)

“And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” (Revelation12:1).

CENTRAL Bronze Door -Sorrowful Mysteries panel (detail), The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. 12/2013 1.55 mb

At the bottom of the Sorrowful Mysteries bronze door, the angels hold a tablet emblazoned with Latin text that contains statements on the rosary by two post-Vatican II modern popes. A translation of the text reveals the importance of the rosary to Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) and John Paul II (1920-2005), both canonized saints. Pope Paul VI: “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul.” Pope John Paul II: “To meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary is to look into the face of Christ.”

EAST Bronze Door: LUMINOUS Mysteries.

EAST Bronze Door (complete exterior), Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. 12/2013 6.89 mb

Pope Saint John Paul II (1920-2005) established the Luminous Mysteries near the end of his almost 27-year pontificate in 2002. About the entire rosary itself the pope said, “To meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary is to look into the face of Christ.”

According to The Catholic Encyclopedia (“The Rosary,” Herbert Thurston and Andrew Shipman, volume 13, Robert Appleton Company), the structure of the rosary including its 15 mysteries (five each for Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious) had been officially unchanged for 500 years – from the 16th to 20th centuries.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II instituted the five Luminous Mysteries. In his Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, published on October 16, 2002, the pope marked out 4 broad areas as reasons to pray the rosary:

1. The rosary aids in contemplating Christ with Mary;

2. The rosary aids in contemplating the mysteries of Mary;

3. The rosary is a way of assimilating the mystery of “It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20); and,

4. The rosary is a way of praying for, and arriving at, peace in one’s life, family, neighborhood, and in the world.

In the same letter (Chapter 3), the pope observed that icons and other religious visual images can assist the human imagination to meditate and contemplate upon the mysteries of the Christian faith, particularly those of the rosary. Appealing to the Church’s traditional spirituality as well as that of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) in The Spiritual Exercises, the pope’s exhortation to artistic representations as aiding mental prayer imbues Chicago’s great bronze portals depicting the mysteries of the rosary with the authenticity of standing at the threshold between time and eternity and the sacred and profane.

The pope acknowledged that although all the rosary’s 20 mysteries can be termed “luminous” – that is, pertaining to mysteries of light – the five new Luminous mysteries fill the gap between the infancy and hidden life of Christ (i.e., Joyful) and Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Day (i.e., Sorrowful and Glorious).

The Luminous mysteries present five significant moments from Christ’s public ministry. Each of these mysteries, the pope writes, “is a revelation of the Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus.” (For more see- https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae.html).  

Luminous Mysteries

1. The Baptism in the Jordan (top, left)

“And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”‘ (Matthew 3:16-17).

2. The Wedding Feast of Cana (top, right)

“On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.”‘ (John 2:1-5).

5. The Institution of the Eucharist (center)

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.”‘ (Matthew 26:26).

EAST Bronze Door (detail, top), The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago. Upper panels of East Bronze Door depict the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago’s Little Italy. The sculptor is Biagio Governali who was born in Palermo, Sicily, and is an award-winning artist active in Italy and internationally, participating in many art exhibitions. 12/2013 4 mb 12/2013 3.60 mb

3. The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (bottom, left)

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

4. The Transfiguration (bottom, right)

“And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.” (Matthew 17:1-2).

EAST Bronze Door (detail, bottom), The Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, Chicago.12/2013 3.48 mb

SOURCES:

Click to access Bronze-Doors.pdf

-retrieved April 5, 2026.

Gates of Paradise

photographs and text: