Thoughts on the lion sculptures that "guard" The Art Institute of Chicago

While scrolling through my twitter feed yesterday, I found a link to a post by WTTW Chicago titled: Ask Geoffrey: The History of the Art Institute Lions with the caption: Since arriving in 1894, the Art Institute's lions have become more than just statues - they're almost mascots for the city. Explore their storied history with a look back in time. 

Link: https://news.wttw.com/2019/10/02/ask-geoffrey-history-art-institute-lions

If you read any of my work or if you know me personally, you also know that I'm interested in my own personal history of the present. The lions have been iconic for me as a Chicagoan. Since I was very small, I've seen those lions and have been excited by them, because I knew what was past them through the glass doors. Huge green lions sculptures meant going into the Art Institute to see world famous art and explore an amazing building that filled me with a sense of awe. But I never really thought about what those sculptures might actually mean. Until yesterday. 

Keep in mind, even as a child, I knew the lions were symbolic. To me, they were symbolic of grandeur and power. Pride! Because they're ferocious animals and also because I was obsessed with the Disney animation The Lion King. But I'm less interested in my initial reactions to them, which are naive, to say the least, and also, the time of being a child is done now. It's time to really think and investigate. These all make up part of the reason why I clicked this link to their supposed history in the first place. 

The tidbits and information shared by the news people on WTTW was shocking to me. First of all, I very rarely watch television. I avoid it as much as possible. So when I saw how piecemeal the history of these sculptures was presented, I became a bit agitated. They mentioned the artist of course, a man by the name of Edward Kemeys, an amimalier (French for "sculptor of animals"), who was commissioned by Marshall Fields' wife (if you don't know, Marshall Fields was a huge department store magnate here in Chicago over a century ago) to sculpt these lions out of iron. They weigh tons. How do two fierce iron lions come to serve as a dedication to a man known for his fancy department store?

If the lions are symbolic of capitalist interest and capitalist prosperity, why don't these newsmen come right out and say so? A sort of Wall Street ideology in which the best hustler is the King of the Pride? I get that. I'd be OK with that explanation even. Now I don't know whether the newsmen don't say so because they are, well, not very bright - or - do they not say so because they think this a negative interpretation?

Negative interpretation or not, TRUTH is always appreciated. No matter what. Truth is also respected. I can't respect a news piece that doesn't at least attempt to cover the bigger picture; i.e. where are the critical thinking skills of the people on public television presenting us with news? This is part of the reason I really. really like watching John Oliver. 

Anyway. 

I looked up some other articles on the history of the Art Institute lions and didn't find anything worthy of sharing except for an article published by the Art Institute of Chicago itself, titled The Lions of Michigan Avenue by Paul Jones, published November of 2018. Again I was disappointed. Though I did find some interesting tidbits about Edward Kemeys' life, like the fact that he lived amongst the indigenous peoples of North America for some time to become closer to his "work" i.e. the natural world and the wild, there was nothing here that gave me any indication as to why he was interested in these subjects in the first place. I get the feeling that he was neither an advocate for the natural world or environmentalist nor an animal lover... at least in terms of the life of animals themselves.

Here's the link to the AIC article: https://www.artic.edu/articles/720/the-lions-of-michigan-avenue

From now on, every time I go to the Art Institute (which right now I'm averaging once a year, two times if I'm lucky), I'm going to look at those lions and say a little prayer. My prayer will include Africa (as they are African lions), all peoples from Africa and descended from Africans, and I also will include my private thoughts on the future of art and artistry (I might divulge these thoughts on the blog sometime later on). I'll end with this: how can two magnificently sculpted lions with two very distinct and beautiful faces carved from iron come to be a mascot for a city that resides in a country that have never, ever had lions native to its land? How can these lions hold any significance for the Art Institute which is a museum dedicated to classic and modern art? These lions are closer to a kitschy representation of some sort of contemporary ironic joke. Furthermore, the real, awful irony of the thing is that the lions do not represent anything within our culture... the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats because they cleaned up their mice problem (fact), so their architecture reflected that... Koreans still hold the tiger as a national symbol, as the tiger is a resident of their country, and their culture reflects that... the Middle East has used lions as a representation of power for centuries, but that's because these lions were such a mythology to them as they lurked in their landscape. 

So what the hell do these steel sculpted lions mean for a city that has no reason to worship nor respect nor appreciate lions in the first place? Those steel lions become an empty symbol of idiocy and a pathetic artistic attempt to display meaning. All I can hope is that if and when we create art, from now on into the future, especially for a public art commission, that it mean something for the geography in which it will be on display, that it mean something for the very people that will come to know it as a mascot or reminder of their surroundings... which should, in the best case scenario, mean home.