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Love it or hate it, 'Oracle's Vision' is 30

Sculpture in front of City Hall was subject to much criticism when it was installed in 1981

BILL LACKEY "Oracle's Vision" survived once-vigorous criticism to become a major piece of public art that few people even notice.

ENLARGE PHOTO

BILL LACKEY "Oracle's Vision" survived once-vigorous criticism to become a major piece of public art that few people even notice.

ENLARGE PHOTO

BILL LACKEY "Oracle's Vision" survived once-vigorous criticism to become a major piece of public art that few people even notice.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Staff file photo Horror icon and art expert Vincent Price paid a visit to "Oracle's Vision" in October 1981, shortly after it was installed.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 3:39 PM Friday, November 4, 2011

SPRINGFIELD — It turns out the geometric metal sculpture in front of City Hall has more in common with the imposing alien monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey” than just the cheery color scheme of all black.

Both are products of the art movement known as minimalism.

And both are secretly responsible for the advancement of the human race.

After all, former Springfield mayor Roger Baker vividly remembers the fall day in 1981 that the sculpture called “Oracle’s Vision” first appeared to the citizenry.

“In my lighter moments,” Baker explained recently, “I refer to that as the biggest educational event in the history of the city.

“In one evening, people went to bed knowing nothing about art. They woke up the next morning and we had 80,000 art experts.”

It’s now been 30 years since “Oracle’s Vision” was dedicated outside of Springfield’s modern, new city building — an anniversary that likely will be met with a collective shrug of the shoulders.

“It’s accepted as part of the landscape now,” Baker said.

Despite the fact that it was always nothing more than an inanimate object, the abstract sculpture is now like any other old enemy of war — anybody remember why we hated it so much?

And in its day, “Oracle’s Vision” brought out the haters.

Some called it ugly, uninteresting, confrontational.

Some regretted buying it.

Some called it a waste of money.

Some acted as if the city had somehow been duped by the National Endowment for the Arts for choosing Ronald Bladen, a major sculptor and one of the key figures of minimalism, as the artist to craft something to adorn the space in front of City Hall.

Some tried to get rid of it altogether, only to be thwarted by Bladen himself.

Some, learning of Bladen’s death from cancer in 1988, tried to get rid of it again, this time suggesting that it was unsafe — someone might climb on it, after all, and fall off.

In the end, “Oracle’s Vision” survived everything to become a major piece of public art that few people even notice.

“I was kind of indifferent to the piece before,” confessed Kevin Rose, a 31-year-old local historian who started researching the work this year and stumbled across its anniversary date. “After looking into it, I have a newfound respect for it.”

But, as if the saga of “Oracle’s Vision” couldn’t get any weirder, even Vincent Price, the horror movie icon, weighed in at one point.

Seeing the brand new sculpture for himself in October 1981, while touring with a one-man drama, Price foretold the real drama to come.

“There are those, I’m sure, who will denounce ‘Oracle’ as inaccessible and ugly,” Price told the newspaper, “just as there are probably those who would attack Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’ as only something foul involving a nearly nude man lying across a lady’s lap.”

If you only knew Price from such film fare as “The Tingler,” you obviously never owned a copy of his 1972 book, “The Vincent Price Treasury of American Art,” or knew that he had a degree in art history from Yale, or knew that he consulted the Sears, Roebuck and Co. on buying art.

Then again, if you try to find any meaning in “Oracle’s Vision,” you don’t know enough about minimalism.

The vision

“With ‘Oracle’s Vision,’ you have metal, size, shape, a dull color, three-dimensionality and that’s about it,” said Mark Chepp, the former director of the Springfield Museum of Art who now teaches art history at Wittenberg University. “It doesn’t mean anything more than what you see. This is just there. It’s just a presence.”

Chepp has shown “Oracle’s Vision” in class as a successful example of minimalism — a movement in which work was purposefully unexpressive.

What you see is what you get.

When Stanley Kubrick made “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 1968, Chepp noted, minimalism was at its peak.

And Bladen, an abstract expressionist painter who was friends with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, had just devoted himself to minimalist sculpture.

A decade later, the National Endowment for the Arts paired Bladen with Springfield when the city went looking for art for its new building to be dedicated in 1979.

“Although they appear straightforward,” a New York Times art critic would later write of Bladen’s sculptural work, “they can be discreetly diabolical.

“They never allow us to feel in control.”

So who better to provide a giant sculpture for the public square?

The first design Bladen submitted was rejected by the city as “sort of a threatening piece.”

Titled “Black Lightning,” the rejected piece later ended up near the base of the iconic Space Needle in Seattle.

The city’s initial rejection led Bladen to visit locally to get a feel for the space — and he came up with “Oracle’s Vision.”

Of the $80,000 price tag, the city put up $20,000.

The NEA provided a $40,000 grant, and the rest came from private donations.

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