{"id":83,"date":"2004-08-04T16:10:20","date_gmt":"2004-08-04T16:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2004-08-04T16:10:20","modified_gmt":"2004-08-04T16:10:20","slug":"the_bean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2004\/08\/04\/the_bean\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago’s Millenium Park must have been built on an old Indian graveyard or something. It’s the only explanation for the evil I keep seeing in that place.<\/p>\n


\nFirst there was Frank Gehry’s hideous “bandshell”<\/a>. Now I’ve learned from “The Directory of Wonderful Things,” (a.k.a. Boing Boing<\/a>) that it is also home to this ridiculous doo-dad:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The official title of this chromium thingamabob is “Cloud Gate,” but Chicago locals, including representatives of the press, have apparently given it a far more descriptive name: “The Bean.” The guy who designed it, a London-based sculptor named Anish Kapoor, is not pleased by the nickname and is raising a stink about its use. In an article<\/a> explaining the controversy, Kapoor is quoted as saying that a recent Chicago Sun-Times<\/i> headline that used the nickname was “completely stupid” and “very unnecessary.”<\/p>\n

This little cultural tempest-in-a-teapot provokes two responses from me. The first is a general reaction against the object itself. I’m not necessarily opposed to abstract sculpture, which I tend to like more than abstract paintings. I have encountered some pieces that I find pleasing simply as shapes that occupy space in a particular way, which I’ve always assumed is the point of such works. But really, a giant mirrored bean? I don’t get it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’ll be revealing myself as an ignorant philistine by saying this, but I simply don’t understand how something like this could be called inspired, inspirational, or even particularly interesting. Oh, I suppose you could argue that it’s fun to look at the reflected images in its surface — the changing sky, the ebbing and flowing crowds, even an image of yourself, no doubt distorted by the organic curve of the mirror — but what is so unique or special about that? Mirrored surfaces are all around us in urban settings, thanks to unimaginative skyscrapers that resemble nothing so much as giant ice-cube trays turned on their ends. Being nothing more than another<\/i> reflective surface, albeit one with an unusual shape, “The Bean” renders itself absolutely banal, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure some artsy types might tell me that the point of it is to force the viewer to confront himself and what it means to exist in the urban oasis of the park, or some such nonsense. Whatever. Rationalize all you want, folks, but I’m glad my taxes didn’t pay for this silly thing.<\/p>\n

As for the denizens of Chicago calling this thing “The Bean” instead of “Cloud Gate”… well, sorry, Mr. Kapoor, your work looks like a bean. Ordinary, art-ignorant citizens tend to give things nicknames. It’s not necessarily meant to be disrespectful. I have a theory, actually, that it’s a way for people to process something that they don’t fully comprehend (through no fault of their own, when it comes to things like this). For example, here in Salt Lake, we have a public artwork called “Asteroid Landed Softly,” but everyone I know refers to it “Potato on a Stick.”<\/p>\n

\"Potato-on-a-Stick\"<\/p>\n

Now, personally, I kind of like this thing. When viewed from certain angles, the mirrored column seems to disappear and gives the illusion of a rock floating fifteen feet above Gallivan Plaza. But from most angles, it looks like, well, an impaled tuber. Most folks probably don’t even know the object’s official name. It’s just easier to say, “Hey, you know that thing in downtown that looks like a spud on a stick? Well, the other day I was standing by that thing…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chicago’s Millenium Park must have been built on an old Indian graveyard or something. It’s the only explanation for the evil I keep seeing in that place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-and-architecture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}