Polyester Parades

One of the first cities to use polyester or fibreglass animal figures to liven up its streets was Zurich in Switzerland. Many towns in the US have followed suit. With the variety of animal life we have, this is a great idea for civic bodies in India to take up, writes Lalit Mohan

Go wild with plastic: Polyester animal figures lend a feline charm to the streets of Chicago and Zurich. — Photos by the writer

IT was funny in a surreal kind of way. A pink polka-dotted lion reared on its hind legs next to a mannequin on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. A cow with zebra stripes and pink udders walked coyly on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. A moose looking like a roadmap stood by in the main square of Bennington, Vermont. And now, park benches painted with bizarre messages beckon in downtown Freeport, a small town in Illinois.

In the summer of 1986, Zurich was to celebrate its 2000th birthday. Somewhere along history two lions had crept into the city’s crest. Richard Sprungli, one of the city’s best known chocolate makers, thought it would be a good idea to have lions prowling all over the city’s main street as a part of the birthday bash.

About 100 hollow lions and lionesses were let loose in May that year on the main street, Bahnhofstrasse. And students from a local art school were then let loose on the big cats with freedom to paint them to their hearts’ desire.

The artists went on a binge. Painting on location, they showed little respect for the king of the jungle. They used loud colours and soft; floral designs and abstract styles; painted them full or left them half-dressed in themes as outlandish as imagination permitted.

Many of the plastic jungle royalty were dressed in a manner appropriate to their location. One outside a photo shop had a film wrapped around it. Lions in a fountain had blue, fish-like fins growing on them. One next to a mannequin outside a boutique was attired in sequins.

The big felines could be seen climbing up the façade of one department store, waving flags above the portico of another, or just strolling along Bahnhofstasse. At the end of the season they were auctioned, fetching 2000 to 4000 Swiss Francs each, all going into the civic kitty.

Such a display was seen next in the Illinois metropolis of Chicago, in 1999. Being a farming state, the chosen animal was the cow.

‘Cows on Parade’ was the name of the show and they were on display all around the down town area. Said Michel Lash, Director of the city’s Public Art Programme, "It seemed a silly idea. Of course, we went for it." There were 300 of them, dressed with an imagination run riot. And they soon had people mooing over them.

There was a platinum blonde bovine with fetching eyes, a movie-goer with its bag of pop corn, one jumping over the moon, another as a F-22 jet, a butterfly cow, a waitress, in fact, anything as long as it was bizarre.

Punsters had a field day. There was an arty ‘Picowsso’, a ‘Limoosin’, a ‘Chi-cogow’, a ‘Moollennium Cow’, a ‘Cowch Potato, another on a ‘Mooooonwalk’, or just ‘Udderly Chic’. And, of course, a few were later housed in the State Bridge Gallery ‘Moooseum’.

The ultimate exhibit was the plastic cow with realistic operating parts kept at the Daley Plaza. It was filled with a water and milk powder mix and was available to anyone who wanted a hands-on experience of milking a cow.

Local businesses, large and small, sponsored these bovines, which cost anywhere between $3,000 and $ 10,000 each. Despite efforts to keep advertising out, it did creep in, leading the Chicago Tribune’s art critic, Alan Artner to call the entire project "a lot of bull."

Several other towns in the US have been jumping on the polyester bandwagon. Lexington, Kentucky, which prides itself as the horse capital of the world, made this animal the subject of civic display. Bennington, Vermont had its Moosefest last year where the big-antlered stag was the star of the show in similarly riotous designs.

Even small towns which cannot afford large, specially crafted displays have unleashed artists’ creativity in a different form. Freeport in Illinois, which has barely 30,000 people living there, has asked local designers to paint all benches in the townmain square in zany themes. With no fixed bench-marks, once again, artists have had a ball. These benches were on display this summer, but after that they were auctioned to collect money for the local art centre. Another small town, Brandon, did it with pigs and one of the first to greet visitors was Petunia holding her pocket book.

Madison, Wisconsin is putting up another cow parade organized by the state’s Milk Marketing Board "to honour the state’s more than one million bovine residents and raise money for charity." The cow appears to the favourite subject of public art because another similar herd will soon be grazing the urban pastures of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Each exercise of this kind generates not only funds through auctions, but gives a fillip to tourism. Apart from attracting visitors, memorabilia such as T-shirts, calendars, mugs, key chains, post cards and glasses have a brisk sale.

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