Chicago Picasso

The unnamed Chicago monument by Picasso does not resemble one specific thing to me.  I see a few different animal characteristics when I look from different angles.

I see the curiosity of a monkey when I look at the eyes, nose, and cables resembling the lines on a monkey's face.  The curious eyes are penetrating when I view of it this way.  That is as long as I am looking close up from the front.  

When I look at a picture taken from the front but farther away, my focus goes down to the bottom and it reminds me of the patience of a dog sitting, waiting for its master's next command.  Then when I look up I can even see the playful and floppy ears of a dog.

Yet from a close-up 45 degree profile, I see a majestic bird perched with its wings open and ready for flight.  It shows strength and gentleness.

At a very particular angle, a view of the sculpture could look like a woman's face, but it's only the tiniest portion of the monument that does reveal a woman's nose and mouth.  This is only seen if you ignore the rest of the statue in its entirety.  If Picasso really modeled this after a woman, she must not have appeared that attractive to him if he only showed the lips of a woman's face and the tip of her nose.

The size and weight of the statue don't register as a part of the picture to me; it seems more to be sized to the city of Chicago so that it is large enough for people to notice.  Picasso designed it for the people of Chicago to assemble and to share so it had to be large. 60 tons doesn't make a curvy and womanly sculpture seem graceful, and it doesn't add to the views that I pointed out, so that is the only explanation I can come up with for the massive amounts of steel.

I'm really not a fan of Picasso or even abstract art in general, so this monument doesn't really strike my fancy. But it definitely gives people something to wonder about while walking the streets of Chicago.