The Fighting Yank

I spotted this aggresive sculpture while strolling on Devon Avenue recently. "The Spirit of the Fighting Yank" by Harry A. Cooper is a life-sized bronze figure on a high pedestal protected by an iron picket enclosure. The figure, a fully geared army soldier, is striding forward, about to lob a live grenade with his taut right arm, staring out intently at his target. The figure is located at the corner of Devon Avenue and Fairfield in Chicago's "Little India" neighborhood, outside of Republic Bank, this branch of which is housed in a brick colonial-style building inspired by Independence Hall in Philadelphia, site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the original home of the Liberty Bell. It is especially significant, then that the plaque on the Yank's black granite base reads "Lest We Forget They Died...That We Can Live in Independence." The dedication date is May 30, 1958, the same day that unidentified veterans from WWII and The Korean War were interred at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. Unlike most other memorials to war veterans, though, this figure is frozen in a perpetual pose of impending violence, suggesting that there is no restful peace for the dead of wars. This violent posture is particularly disturbing given that the figure's apparent target, identified by his line of sight, is the street sign for Devon Avenue at the corner, above which is the city placard identifying this section of the street as memorial "Gandhi Marg [Way]." The threat of violence as a remembrance of independence is, of course, the antithesis of Gandhi's way. So, every August when thousands of people process down Devon Avenue celebrating Indian Independence Day, the disconnect between militaristic patriotic fervor and the true spirit of independence is most acute. There must be a reason there is a protective iron fence around this sculpture, but this year, hardly any of the apparently peace-loving paraders of Indian origin and descent even glanced at the fighting Yank. His grip on the grenade, though, never loosened.

Oz Park

This summer I stumbled on a northside Chicago park with several public sculptures made by John Kearney from 1995-2007. The sculptures in the park were paid for by a partnership of public (Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce) and private ( Oz Park Advisory Council) founders. In 1995 the Oz Park Advisory Council commissioned the Yellow Brick Road installation of paths through the park, beginning to shape the theme that would crystallize over the next 12 years with the intermittent installation of four sculptures, all characters from the 1939 MGM masterpiece, The Wizard of Oz. The main entrance to Oz Park seems to be the yellow brick plaza on the intersection of Webster, Larrabee and Lincoln Ave. Passers-by see the Tin Man sculpture pictured here. Other entrances to the park sport sculptures of Dorothy with Toto and The Cowardly Lion, while the Scarecrow is on a interior path opening, aptly near the garden area of the park. The park also has a verdant playfield and state-of-the art children's playground. The residential areas around the park are patrolled by calm processions of mothers and nannies with modestly pimped-out carriages. The occasional young couple or single pedestrian walk right by the park, the local businesses rather than the wonderland of Oz having most probably attracted them to this corner. However, the mothers and nannies and children seem drawn to them. I see a few groups milling around the lion, meeting up with friends. Several strollers linger by the Dorothy with Toto sculpture, perhaps drawn in by the sparkling slippers. The sculptures take a very traditional figural monument form, but are monuments, as it were, to a fantasy, a cine-fied version of the world in which Dorothy (somewhere...) is a figure of historical importance. This displacement of the significant historical figure with one of cinematographic importance reinforces the dominant cultural paradigm. That is, what we see on television and in movies both reflects and dictates what we think is important. If the reproduction rights of contemporary children's movies weren't so heavily guarded, this could easily have been Finding Nemo Park. They would have needed a founding wizard to fund a gift store as well. Perhaps the bronze Wizard of Oz characters here serve to memorialize the way kids' movies (and lives) used to be...Before characters in Disney movies began to be sold in McDonald's Happy Meals before the movie is even released...Before Wicked's Original Broadway Cast Recording was released on itunes...Before children's leisure time was consumed by live virtual (oxymoron?) combat on PSP...a time when you as a child were content with a stroll in a quiet, simple, pristine green, neighborhood park with a view of bronze sculpture, trees, and your mother, nanny, or your Auntie Em. Remember? It was a long time ago.