Tag Archives: #TwentiethCenturyArt

Curves in a City of Grids: How Calder’s Flamingo (1974) Transformed Chicago’s Federal Center.

Alexander Calder’s Flamingo (1974) transformed Chicago’s Federal Center by introducing movement, whimsy, and human-scaled organic form into one of the city’s most rigorously ordered modernist spaces. Set amid Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s rectilinear architecture, Calder’s monumental red stabile demonstrates how public art can soften, animate, and humanize the urban environment without diminishing its architectural power. Alexander Calder’s Flamingo was unveiled on October 25, 1974, in a dedication ceremony with the artist. Alongside Picasso and Cloud Gate, it is one of Chicago’s iconic outdoor public artworks.

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. Quoted in Jed Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space: The Later Years: 1940–1976 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020).

June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.24 mb

Above: On the west side of Clark Street between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard—visible directly behind Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture—the prominent structures are from left to right: The Commercial Office Building located at 118 South Clark Street (directly tucked between the Bankers Building and Jackson Boulevard)—was completed in 1920 and designed by the prolific Chicago architectural firm Holabird & Roche, Willis Tower in the distance, The Bankers Building (105 West Adams Street, completed in 1927 by the Burnham Brothers, a 476-foot Art Deco masterpiece featuring characteristic deep light courts and upper-tier setbacks), and, on the other side of Adams Street, The Field Building at 140 S. Clark. Completed in 1934 by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, it stands as one of the finest premier masterpieces of Art Deco skyscraper design in the entire United States. A corner slice of the Edison Building is also pictured.

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 20^th century architectural history is readily on display in its downtown buildings in a range of shapes, sizes, textures and design styles.

The work’s vivid red color and sweeping curves contrast with Mies van der Rohe’s black steel-and-glass buildings.

May 2014. Author’s photograph. 3.28 mb

Because of its monumental size, Flamingo can be intimidating. Actual flamingo shorebirds vary in size, but none are no more than 3 to 5 feet tall, and weigh 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 would weigh around 60 tons.

“It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red” – Alexander Calder. Katharine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

November 2015. Author’s photograph. 260kb 25%

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.

Calder’s Flamingo demonstrates how monumental public sculpture can become an active architectural partner, transforming a formal modernist plaza into a more dynamic, accessible, and memorable civic space.

May 2014. Author’s photograph. 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.

Flamingo by Alexander Calder is a masterwork stabile in Chicago’s downtown. Its monumental scale remains approachable because pedestrians can walk around, beneath, and through it.

May 2013. Author’s photograph. 3.60 mb 102_0480 (1)

November 2015. Author’s photograph. 484 kb 25%

Above: Calder’s Flamingo after dark with the one-story Post Office illumined within behind it (above). Alexander Calder deliberately placed the sculpture in an open urban setting where contemporary sculpture could interact with modern architecture.

June 2022. Author’s photograph. 6.87mb

Above: 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.

November 2015. Author’s photograph. 3.77mb

Above: 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.

Rather than functioning as an isolated object, the sculpture changes how viewers experience the entire Federal Center complex.

October 2015. Author’s photograph. 3.90mb.

Above: Alexander Calder’s Flamingo (1974) sits in Federal Plaza designed by modernist architect Mies Van Der Rohe. Behind it is Mies’ 45-floor John C. Kluczynski Building at 230 S. Dearborn Street and on a sunny east side of South Dearborn his 30-story Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Moving south across Jackson Boulevard is the 5-story 33 West Jackson Boulevard building built in 1910 (with additions/remodels stretching through 1917). Next to it is The Standard Club at 321 South Dearborn Street built in 1926 and designed by Albert Kahn. The Fisher Building (1896) at 343 South Dearborn Street and its annex is next further south. Designed by D.H. Burnham & Company, it was completed in 1896. The Old Colony building on the other side of the L tracks was built between 1893 and 1894, When it officially topped out, the 17-story, 215-foot high-rise briefly held the title of the tallest building in Chicago. It was designed by the legendary architectural firm of Holabird & Roche. The framework was engineered by Corydon T. Purdy who designed it with a highly advanced, pioneering skeletal steel-frame structure that carries the entirety of the building’s massive weight allowing the exterior features absolutely no self-supporting walls.

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.

June 2022. Author’s photograph. 6.20mb

Above: Flamingo sits within a classic Chicago Loop streetscape looking south down South Dearborn Street, framing a beautiful juxtaposition of the city’s architectural evolution. On the left side of the street sits the massive, dark steel-and-glass the Kluczynski Federal Building designed by Mies van der Rohe. On the immediate right foreground is the ornate, reddish-brown stone facade of the Marquette Building (1895). Directly past it rises the colossal, dark brick wall of the Monadnock Building (1891), showcasing its iconic, smooth masonry curves and deep-set bay windows stretching a full block south toward Van Buren Street. In the distant vista is the historic red brick tower of the Old Dearborn Station clock tower (1885) stands out against the sky, acting as a visual anchor at the very end of the street corridor.

May 2024. Author’s photograph. 88% 7.78 mb

Above: This wide angle of federal Plaza frames several historic and modernist landmarks surrounding Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture. These include a portion of John C. Kluczynski Federal Building, Loop Station Post Office, The Commonwealth Edison Building and The Marquette Building.

May 2013. Author’s photograph. 2.80 mb 102_0488 (1)

August 2021. Author’s photograph. 96% 7.91mb DSC_6798

Above: Looking east along West Quincy Street toward Federal Plaza, this view captures a striking convergence of Chicago’s historic and modernist architecture. Framing the corridor is, on the left, a slice of the Rookery Building, completed in 1888 by the firm Burnham & Root, and the Clark Adams Building originally known as the Bankers Building, completed by the Burnam Brothers in 1927. On the right is the Central Standard Building, originally the Continental Illinois National Bank Building, completed in 1924 by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. Anchoring the vista is the sweeping red curve of Alexander Calder’s Flamingo. Just in front of it stands the transparent glass entrance to the single-story United States Post Office (1973), an integral element of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s original Federal Plaza design. Rising behind the plaza and dominating the upper half of the scene is the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building, Mies’s landmark expression of modernist architecture, creating a dramatic contrast with the richly detailed Art Deco and classical forms that line Quincy Street.

By placing a monumental red sculpture of sweeping organic curves within Mies van der Rohe’s disciplined modernist complex, Alexander Calder transformed Chicago’s Federal Center into a dynamic conversation between art, architecture, and public space.

Sources:

Bach, Ira J., and Mary Lackritz Gray. A Guide to Chicago Public Sculpture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Chicago Architecture Center. “Federal Center.” Buildings of Chicago. Accessed September 30, 2022. https://www.architecture.org/learn/resources/buildings-of-chicago/building/federal-center/.

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

Perl, Jed. Calder: The Conquest of Space: The Later Years: 1940–1976. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation. “Chicago Federal Center Plaza.” Designed Landscapes. Accessed September 30, 2022. https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/federal-plaza.

From Li-Li to Lee Miller: The Making of an Artist Before Paris, 1907-1925.

Lee Miller’s extraordinary artistic career did not emerge suddenly in Paris or the Surrealist movement, but was rooted in the unique environment of her Poughkeepsie upbringing, where family affluence, her father’s intense photographic interests, early exposure to cameras, artistic encouragement, and her rebellious independent personality shaped the creative force she would become.

The Millers, Theodore, Elizabeth Lee, Erik, John and Florence, in 1923. Public Domain.

By John P. Walsh

In the first decades of the twentieth century it became increasingly common practice for established American families to reflect and display their personal lives as well as social status in the timely gathering of photographic portraits. Progressively, the American family unit grew more compact in tandem with its greater personal affluence in an economy increasingly dominated by mechanization and the manufacture of consumer goods, all of which worked relentlessly to replace farming as the engine of American enterprise.

The Millers of Poughkeepsie, New York – a seventeenth century town eighty miles north of New York City which in the eighteenth century had progressed to an early state capital and, by 1910, a significant stop on the railroad line¹ – shared that prototypical family form as they gathered for their family portraits between 1914 and 1932.

After 1900, camera availability and quality had markedly improved. Moving into the popular culture, photography allowed the display of a family image that is relaxed and natural as well as a time capsule of its members. In the instance of the Millers their formal and informal photographic portraits capture what appears to be a cohesive family unit expressive of their times. They are within a thoughtfully creative pose and posture likely managed by the head of the household, Theodore Miller (1872-1971), an energetic lifelong amateur photographer.

These portraits are ambitious for an aesthetic which manifests as a controlled vibrancy in the sitters as well as overall composition. The outcome for these portraits which all include Lee Miller as a child and teenager are photographs that combine the qualities of the fine arts with the more delicate workings of a machine.

The extensive photographs taken by her father, Theodore Miller, unintentionally document the formation of a future artist, providing rare visual evidence of the circumstances that nurtured one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable photographers.

Lee Miller at about eight months old, c. December 1907. Taken by her father Theodore Miller, the amateur photographer would photograph his daughter near incessantly from her childhood into adulthood. Part chronicle, part creative project, their photographer-model relationship could be unusual as he photographed his daughter nude at times over the same time period. Public Domain.

Lee Miller at 8 years in a photograph by her father, Theodore Miller, in 1915. Public Domain.

The Millers, headed by highly credentialed mechanical engineer and amateur photographer Theodore Miller and his wife Florence (1881-1954), saw the couple produce a handsome family: brothers John MacDonald (December 15, 1905-2008) and Erik Theodore (born May 22, 1910-?) and middle daughter, Elizabeth Lee, later Lee Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907-1977).

In childhood, Lee was curious, had her special interests and likes, especially the newly invented movies, and was encouraged by her parents to be free and active. Rambunctious in youth, Li-Li (Elizabeth Lee’s nickname) expressed herself as a sort of tomboy and later a definite teenage rebel. In school she was often undisciplined and, as the ringleader, provocative.²

When she was ten years old in 1917, her father gave Li-Li an inexpensive and popular Kodak Brownie to take photographs. Kodak used the box camera to sell more products and popularize photography. Almost more like a toy, the Brownie series was first introduced in 1900 and extensively marketed to children,³ although they were taken by soldiers into World War I.

Theodore Miller’s experimentation with photographic technologies exposed Lee to creative and technical aspects of image-making from an early age. She received a Kodak Brownie camera at age ten, introducing her directly to photography.

Kodak Brownie similar to the first camera Lee Miller had when she was 10 years old that was given to her by her father. PHOTO: “Kodak Brownie Target Six-20” by John Kratz is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the age of American invention, teenage Li-Li Miller, intelligent and creative, was fascinated by her father’s enduring experimentation with new camera gadgets including stereoscopy. That photographic application produced two-dimensional images which, when combined in the brain, gave the perception of three-dimensional depth.⁴

Traditional stereoscopy. PHOTO: “Stereoscopy” by designrecherche is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The family’s photographs serve as both personal records and carefully composed artistic images.

The Millers in 1914. Florence, Erik, Lee, John, Theodore. Public Domain.

Lee Miller and her mother in 1914. Public Domain.

In an almost desperate search for an academic program to constructively engage their daughter’s interest, the Millers placed Li-Li in and out of several schools around Poughkeepsie. Lee traipsed through Governor Clinton school to Oakwood Quaker to St. Mary’s Catholic to Eastman Business College to Putnam Hall known as the prep school for local Vassar College.

Even with extra-curricular dance and theater activities as well as sojourns into creative writing – along with extended trips to New York City and, accompanying her father on business trips, such as to Puerto Rico on a cruise – by 1920 Li-Li seemed only most uniquely prepared to embrace the intrepid nonchalance of the flapper whose age had arrived thanks to the appearance of This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“The Flapper” as conceived by American illustrator Frank Xavier Leyendecker (1876-1924) for Life magazine in 1922. It seemed by the start of the 1920’s, the teenage rebel and provacateur Lee Miller was ready to embrace the Flapper’s nonchalant image. PHOTO: “‘The Flapper’ (1922)” by Swallowtail Garden Seeds is marked with CC PDM 1.0. This work is in the public domain.

Lee was intelligent, strong-willed, unconventional, and often rebellious in school and social settings. Her interests in movies, dance, theater, travel, and creative expression reflected a broader artistic temperament.

The Millers in 1920. Lee, Erik, Theodore, Florence and John. The teenager bobbed and later permed her golden hair to match a new decade’s fashionable style as she looked for the next exit out of Poughkeepsie. Public Domain.

At the end of a record-cold spring of 1925, Li-Li, called spoiled and well-to-do by many of her neighborhood classmates, took a ship for Paris, France, on May 29 of that year. The Millers’ intention was not to internationalize the shortcomings of their daughter’s educational career, but to assist in the rebellious 18-year-old’s discovery and development of a talent and skill to match her artistic temperament.⁵

No one could predict in 1925 that after spending this short period of time in Europe as a teenager, Li-Li Miller of Poughkeepsie, New York, will, as Lee Miller, finally return to Europe to spend most of the rest of her life, over 50 years. In those adult years, Miller became a celebrated artist’s and cinema’s muse as well as an important World War II photographer.

By the 1920s, Lee embraced the spirit of the modern flapper, seeking independence beyond her hometown. Her 1925 departure for Paris marked the transition from gifted, restless teenager to the future photographer, model, muse, Surrealist, and war correspondent she would become.

In the cold spring of 1925, Lee Miller is joined by her father as the 18-year-old Lee boards the ship that will take her to Paris to study. The family’s hopes include that in Paris Lee will find and develop some talented skill to express her artistic temperament. Public Domain.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Burke, Carolyn, Lee Miller: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006, p.6.
2. Haworth-Booth, Mark, The Art of Lee Miller, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 14; provocative-Burke, p. 24.
3. Roberts, Hilary, Lee Miller: A Woman’s War, Thames & Hudson, 2015, p. 190.
4. see Lincoln, Tom, Exercises in Three Dimensions, 2011. http://www.lincolntom.com/pages/Exercises%20in%203D.html- retrieved April 17, 2019
5. Roberts, p.194; https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/april/page/2/

CORRIDORS│An Educational Website in the Arts and History. Featuring My Photography and Videos.

Content/Web Producer: John P. Walsh.

Tag Archives: #TwentiethCenturyArt

Curves in a City of Grids: How Calder’s Flamingo (1974) Transformed Chicago’s Federal Center.

The work’s vivid red color and sweeping curves contrast with Mies van der Rohe’s black steel-and-glass buildings.

“It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red” – Alexander Calder. Katharine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

Calder’s Flamingo demonstrates how monumental public sculpture can become an active architectural partner, transforming a formal modernist plaza into a more dynamic, accessible, and memorable civic space.

Flamingo by Alexander Calder is a masterwork stabile in Chicago’s downtown. Its monumental scale remains approachable because pedestrians can walk around, beneath, and through it.

Rather than functioning as an isolated object, the sculpture changes how viewers experience the entire Federal Center complex.

By placing a monumental red sculpture of sweeping organic curves within Mies van der Rohe’s disciplined modernist complex, Alexander Calder transformed Chicago’s Federal Center into a dynamic conversation between art, architecture, and public space.

Sources:

From Li-Li to Lee Miller: The Making of an Artist Before Paris, 1907-1925.

The extensive photographs taken by her father, Theodore Miller, unintentionally document the formation of a future artist, providing rare visual evidence of the circumstances that nurtured one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable photographers.

Theodore Miller’s experimentation with photographic technologies exposed Lee to creative and technical aspects of image-making from an early age. She received a Kodak Brownie camera at age ten, introducing her directly to photography.

The family’s photographs serve as both personal records and carefully composed artistic images.

Lee was intelligent, strong-willed, unconventional, and often rebellious in school and social settings. Her interests in movies, dance, theater, travel, and creative expression reflected a broader artistic temperament.

By the 1920s, Lee embraced the spirit of the modern flapper, seeking independence beyond her hometown. Her 1925 departure for Paris marked the transition from gifted, restless teenager to the future photographer, model, muse, Surrealist, and war correspondent she would become.

The work’s vivid red color and sweeping curves contrast with Mies van der Rohe’s black steel-and-glass buildings.

“It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red” – Alexander Calder. Katharine Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

Calder’s Flamingo demonstrates how monumental public sculpture can become an active architectural partner, transforming a formal modernist plaza into a more dynamic, accessible, and memorable civic space.

Flamingo by Alexander Calder is a masterwork stabile in Chicago’s downtown. Its monumental scale remains approachable because pedestrians can walk around, beneath, and through it.

Rather than functioning as an isolated object, the sculpture changes how viewers experience the entire Federal Center complex.

By placing a monumental red sculpture of sweeping organic curves within Mies van der Rohe’s disciplined modernist complex, Alexander Calder transformed Chicago’s Federal Center into a dynamic conversation between art, architecture, and public space.

Sources:

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The extensive photographs taken by her father, Theodore Miller, unintentionally document the formation of a future artist, providing rare visual evidence of the circumstances that nurtured one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable photographers.

Theodore Miller’s experimentation with photographic technologies exposed Lee to creative and technical aspects of image-making from an early age. She received a Kodak Brownie camera at age ten, introducing her directly to photography.

The family’s photographs serve as both personal records and carefully composed artistic images.

Lee was intelligent, strong-willed, unconventional, and often rebellious in school and social settings. Her interests in movies, dance, theater, travel, and creative expression reflected a broader artistic temperament.

By the 1920s, Lee embraced the spirit of the modern flapper, seeking independence beyond her hometown. Her 1925 departure for Paris marked the transition from gifted, restless teenager to the future photographer, model, muse, Surrealist, and war correspondent she would become.

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