My Reflections on Chicago’s THE BEAN
Acclaimed Indian-born British sculptor-artist, Anish Kapoor called his masterpiece as Cloud Gate.
Chicagoans called it as, The Bean. Well, simply because it resembles like a bean.
Obviously, you can’t see why it’s a Cloud Gate, but you can easily guess The Bean, right? This smooth, metallic sculpture is actually inspired by liquid mercury. Can you see its mercurial-like appearance? No? you’re blind.
The Bean mirrors and distorts object and human reflections. When you see it at a far distance on a good day and its heavy metallic surface is directly hit by the sun it creates an otherworldly kind of feeling. The reflection of light bounces like it pierces your eyes. Backdropped by Chicago’s skyscrapers, The Bean sits there like it’s a UFO-kind of thing that landed on an empty space where people came, out of curiosity. They touch it, they wander around it and inspect it like a dog smelling for a weapon of mass destruction.
The elliptic side and upper part of the sculpture reflects the city around it. It distorts the structures that surround it. If you go around it and closer, everything bends to the power of The Bean. There’s an eerie feeling of looking at yourself in a different kind of reflection where it looks semi-perfect. Its metallic glass glistens and its curve grooves as you wander your hands on it. You feel like there’s an eternal madness inside / behind the reflection. Somehow, amidst the excited tourists around me, I felt the urge to go into its core, take a respite and out from its elliptic shape, my rebirth to this world.
Believe me, I observed, tapped, stroke and caressed The Bean like someone who didn’t know what he’s raving about. When I came back there on a foggy night and only few people were around, I was more reflective of its beauty and its purpose. For some it’s just a huge, gleaming sculpture, but for others, it’s an instrument to be child-like again, to be creative and to be reflective. The Bean showed me that things we see around may be perfect but when given with a different perspective, we realized and see its imperfections—and it’s ok.
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Hope you’ll enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed my experience seeing it real.
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