At the Agora

From Dr. Seuss's What Was I Scared Of:

I had to do an errand
had to pick a peck of snide
in a dark and gloomy snide field
that was almost 9 miles wide
I said I do not fear those pants
with nobody inside them
I said and said and said those words
I said them but I lied them

I loved this story by Dr. Seuss and many of his other tales. But this one came to mind as I viewed this sculpture in Grant Park, Chicago which looks like a field of pants with nobody inside them.
Of course the sculpture by Magdalena Abakanowicz is entitled something entirely different, Agora, but Seuss still seems apt to me. These bodiless legs were great fun to photograph both on their own and as the city and its denizens interact with it. I think I’ll have to go back often. Here is a selection of the photographs I took.







I wasn’t surprised to find that this sculpture had been created in Poland. It definitely has an aura of the art produced behind the iron curtain even though this work is more contemporary. It reminds me of the statues of the happy Soviet workers and other heroic figures that were all over the USSR.

When I was a young teen, I had a poster of Lenin on my bedroom wall. It was there not because I was a budding Communist but because I was fascinated by the Soviet Union and because I regarded the poster as a striking piece of art. The face was done in stark planes of brown and white. It was so powerful that it was a bit spooky to the young me in way that helped me understand how it might feel to live in a Soviet Bloc country.

I found one public domain photo of some Soviet-era sculpture that seems to relate to what I am trying to say. The link is the original source of the photo.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Riga.sovietarmy.statue.jpg