The transcendence of Chicago’s gyro signs

Here’s an exhaustive collection of Chicago’s gyro signs, lovingly kept by the Gyros Project. They make a case for these things being “accidental art,” and they lay it on a little thick, suggesting “these masterpieces of prosaic art, in which anonymous artisans lovingly render a staple of the culinary underclass, put transcendence on the street corner.” Right. So if you thought these signs were just by-the-book depictions of food that always looks like dog-doo on a stick, and that this project is an amusing result of too much free time, you may be an artless philistine. Then again, maybe they’re on to something here. Chicagoans certainly know great art when they see it.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

May 23, 2007 in Kiefaber | Permalink