Eye Surgery proves Terminal

Eye, we hardly knew ya.

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It seems like just yesterday that Tony Tasset's 30-foot-high Eye came to State Street to start creeping us out.  Over the summer, Eye became an almost soothing presence.

We grew accustomed to, even expecting of, his protective gaze over our shoulder as we sat reading in Pritzker Park and he scanned and transmitted all our personal information to a server farm somewhere in Virginia. 

And then, yesterday, this . . .

When you say you've got something in your eye, it doesn't usually mean a construction winch or a swarm of workmen tearing it apart.  Like the Furies shredding Dionysus, just more methodical and workman-like.

We knew this day was coming - the sculpture actually was supposed to be gone at the end of October - but there was still a bit of anti-climax in the way the slicing open of Eye yielded, not a Bunuel/Dali-esque rush of viscous ooze sliming its way down State Street, but a simple steel structure looking a bit like a hat rack . . .

. . . with the inverted bottom dome of the Eye an igloo . . .

. . . and the individual panels, slices of bloodshot raw bacon . . .

 All the while, area pigeons gazed down disdainfully at the destruction of the bright orb they had also grown to love . . . to poop on.

If it's any consolation, if you happened to be a giant red Chinese Windy City Dinosaur in Millennium Park . . .

. . .  Wednesday also turned out to be a pretty sucky day . . .