EYE DON’T THINK IT IS ART!

Because everyone’s taste is different, we all have our own definition of what art is. We have dissimilar feelings about what we appreciate or respond to. Artist Tony Tasset’s three stories tall, EYE sculpture, newly installed at Pritzker Park (State and Van Buren) for a few months of display, might be a perfect sculpture of an eye, but I don’t see it as art. It also must be terrifying for a young child confronted by a giant eyeball with 258 veins as they walk down the street. The fact that “more than six figures” (no exact amount has been reported) has been spent on what is just a temporary exhibit makes the veins in my own eyes bulge in dismay! I am even more upset to have learned that this EYE is just a larger version of an EYE that has been in the Collection of Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO. since 2007. So the “EYE “idea is already three years old! Plus “more than six figures” have been spent on a piece of art that is going away. So we basically only “rented” it for the money.

The second part of the EYE display is 156 street banners of the Illinois state bird the cardinal. I have no clue why these two images have anything to do with each other but Tasset said, “I hope both EYE and CARDINAL change the everyday experience for pedestrians and drivers along State Street. The image of the flying bird is quieting and humble in contrast to the commercial bustle surrounding it, while the enormous scale of the EYE serves to miniaturize its surroundings… The juxtaposition of these two archetypal images with the city of Chicago as a backdrop should create a grand surreal picture, in the spirit of Magritte and Dali.” How does a street banner of a red bird create a surreal picture? Honestly Mr. Tasset, you are putting your self in a category of artists you don’t come close to belonging in!

Not being a culturally educated person, I had never heard of Tasset until his EYE was put up. He is a midwest-born multimedia artist who currently teaches art at the University of Illinois Chicago. Back in 2005, he created a conceptual sculpture of a pile of snow, as a site-specific installation for the west window of the old Goldblatt’s building at 1613 W. Chicago Ave. The City of Chicago’s tourism web site wrote, “To create a hyper-realistic replica of a typical Chicago snow pile, Tasset included pieces of handcrafted debris such as coffee cups and matchbooks. “ I saw a picture of the sculpture and it did look exactly like a dirty pile of snow. I can see a REAL dirty pile of snow in Chicago for about six months of the year; why would I care to view a fiberglass pile of dirty snow?

Some of Tasset’s other unusual sculptures include, “Smashed Pumpkin”(bronze and hand painted), “ Dead Blue Jay “(taxidermied bird), “Pallet” maple wood),” Box” (cardboard and paper tape) “Shredded Styrofoam Cup” (epoxy paint and bronze) and , unbelievably, “Coke Can Cross” which is five Diet Coke cans laid out like a cross. There is only an edition of three of the Coke sculpture. Since I drink about 10 cans a day; I could produce many editions of that cross. Pictures of these sculptures can be viewed at www.kavigupta.com/artist/tonytasset. If one does not think the sculptures I described are unusual enough works, one only has to look at the picture on this blog. It is called, “I peed in my pants.” It is a dye bleach print of the artist with urine on his khakis. I could not find the price that someone paid for this picture taken in 1999, but it was sold at the famous auction house, Christie's New York, in 2006. My friend Linda has a great-niece, Talia, who just celebrated her one year birthday and pees in her diapers every day. Linda sends me pictures all the time of Talia. The Chicago Loop Alliance is the organization that paid for the EYE, maybe I can convince them that a droopy diaper picture of Talia is worth six figures! Diet Coke for everyone if I get the commission.