By Donald Liebensen
There is a Ravinia connection to Botero, a documentary currently playing at the Wilmette Theatre. It is a multi-nominated profile of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. If his name doesn’t sound familiar, one of the octogenarian’s impressive, imaginative, and imposing sculptures most likely is to anyone who has picnicked on Ravinia Festival’s lawn. The Festival grounds’ Harriet and Harry Bernbaum Sculpture Walk includes Botero’s inflated form of the “Standing Woman.”
Installed at Ravinia in 2005, “Standing Woman” is one of the Sculpture Walk’s most identifiable and accessible works. Located just inside the East Gate, the large bronze sculpture is my wife’s and my rendezvous of choice when meeting friends inside the park: “Meet us at the statue of the big lady.”
How big is she? She’s over 10-feet high in her high-heeled shoes and can’t be missed with her full, rounded figure, clutch purse, and tiny hat. The statue was created in 1989 and was donated to the park by Joyce and Avrum Gray and their family in memory of their parents, Mae and Joseph Gray.
I don’t know art, but I know what I like (and sometimes, not even that), and Botero the documentary was as eye-opening to me as is “Standing Woman” to passersby. According to the film, there are more books in print on Botero than on any other living artist. In 1992, he was the first artist—French or non-native—invited to exhibit his work along the Champs-Elysees. Closer to home, there was an exhibition of 17 of his sculptures mounted in Grant Park in the summer of 1994.
View, looking northeast, at the installation of Fernando Botero's bronze sculptures for the exhibition "Botero In Chicago" hosted by the City of Chicago in Grant Park. The exhibition ran from April 29 through August 14, 1994.
Photo Credit: The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts
As “Standing Woman” demonstrates, Botero is his own thing. One art expert in the documentary observes that Botero never belonged to any art movement; he was his own movement. Proving that art truly is in the mind of the beholder, one college professor interviewed in the film derisively compares Botero’s figures to the Pillsbury Doughboy. I tend to side with the speaker who attributes Botero’s decade’s long success and popularity to the fact that unlike much of contemporary art, his sculptures were not created to provoke or shock the viewer (his series of paintings inspired by the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison are another matter, as the documentary notes).
But above all, Botero tells an inspiring immigrant story and in the process, may enhance your appreciation of what has become one of Ravinia’s most valued art treasures.
See you at the “Standing Woman.”
Botero is scheduled to run at the Wilmette Theatre through at least March 12. Call 847-251-7424 for showtimes.