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| The Fountain of Time by Lorado Taft (JWB Photo) |
On this date in
1922 Lorado Taft’s monumental sculptural piece The Fountain of Time was
presented to the public in a formal ceremony at the west end of the Midway
plaisance at Cottage Grove Avenue.
Charles L. Hutchinson, the president of the B. F. Ferguson fund, made
the principal speech of the day. John
Burton Payne, the president of the fund’s board also spoke as did the sculptor
and the president of the University of Chicago, Dr. Harry Pratt Judson.
The sculptural
group consists of a 120-foot long fountain with a figure of Time in human form,
watching from the east side of the fountain as a procession of humans parades before
him to the west. Explaining his inspiration for the
work, Lorado Taft said:
A vagrant line or two of Austin Dobson’s
once made a great impression on me –
Time goes, you say? Ah, no
Alas time stays; we go.
The words brought before me a picture which
speedily transformed fancy into a colossal work of sculpture. I saw the mighty crag-like figure of
time . .
. leaning on his staff, his chin upon his hand, and watching with cynical,
inscrutable gaze the endless march of humanity – a majestic relief of marble I
saw it, swinging in a wide circle around the form of the lone sentinel and made
up of the shapes of hurrying men and women and children in endless procession,
ever impelled by the winds of destiny in the inexorable lock-step of the
ages. Theirs the fateful forward
movement which has not ceased since time began.
But in that crowded concourse, how few detach themselves from the
greyness of the dusky caravan! How few
there are who even lift their heads!
Here an over-taxed body falls – and a place is vacant for a moment;
there a strong man turns to the silent, shrouded reviewer and with lifted arms utters
the cry of the old-time gladiators:
“Hail Caesar, we who go to our death sault thee” – and presses forward. [Lorado Taft’s “Fountain of Time Done in
Concrete by John J. Earley: A Triumph in Application of Concrete to the Uses of
Art. Concrete,
Vol. 21. December, 1922.
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| Time stays; we go . . . (JWB Photo) |
Named the Earley
method for its originator, John Joseph Earley, himself a sculptor, the process
uses aggregate in the concrete mix that is no larger than three-eights of an
inch and requires the percentage of cement in the mix to be at an absolute
minimum on the final surface of the piece.
The process saved a whole bunch of money, but Chicago winters have their
way with concrete and the most recent renovation of the piece in 1999 required
over a million-and-a-half dollars.
The Fountain of Time was just the beginning of a massive
sculptural continuum that would have swept along the Midway plaisance from east
to west. The Fountain of Creation was originally supposed to have faced
toward the Fountain of Time, standing just west of the Illinois Central viaduct
on the plaisance. That sculpture would
have used the myth of Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, as they stepped out of
their boat on the top of Mount Parnassus, the only mortals saved by Zeus after
the flood that destroyed humanity. The
sculpture would have depicted the moment when the stones that the two survivors
were directed to throw behind them began to turn into men and women.
Just The Fountain
of Time saw completion, though, and it is a most impressive piece of work as it
assays the value of human life on the edge of Washington Park.
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| The concrete aggregate from the Potomac River lends texture to the surface of the sculpture (JWB Photo) |
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