Google wants a new head office in Chicago and what Google wants it gets so even though the Dubuffet sculpture weighs ten tons and it’s been there since 1985 it’s gotta go.
The Art Newspaper reports:
Jean Dubuffet’s 29 ft-tall sculpture Monument with Standing Beast (1984), a fixture outside Chicago’s James R. Thompson Center since before architect Helmut Jahn’s famous postmodernist building was even completed in 1985, will soon be standing elsewhere.
After the state of Illinois sells the Thompson Center to Google—via a consortium of developers who will retrofit the iconic building to the tech giant’s specifications—it will relocate the ten-ton Dubuffet sculpture about three blocks south to 115 South LaSalle Street, a former bank building the state recently purchased to replace the office space it is losing at the Thompson Center.
About the artist
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called “low art” and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favour of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement art brut, and for the collection of works—Collection de l’art brut—that this movement spawned. Dubuffet enjoyed a prolific art career, both in France and in America, and was featured in many exhibitions throughout his lifetime.
