Michael Workman

In 1916, amidst exploding bombs and machine-gun fire, Ludwig Wittgenstein filled notebooks with his thoughts on philosophy and religion. After his capture by the Italians, these writings became the basis for the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," an extraordinary book that changed the practice of analytic philosophy forever. But much of what he wrote over the course of his travels with a howitzer regiment evolved out of an earlier book called "Logik," written during long periods of seclusion in Norway. Wittgenstein was famously manic about his pursuit of knowledge. Much of his time was spent immersed in the academic environment at Cambridge, though its politics and intrigues were often a distraction. Eager to work out the more difficult problems in logic away from the social dramas of the university, Wittgenstein often traveled back and forth from a mountain cabin in Skjolden, bounded by mountain ranges and plunging valleys, reachable only on horseback.

For the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Cologne-based artist Doris Frohnapfel traveled to document his Norwegian getaway. Her choice collection includes a handful of digitally manipulated color and black-and-white Lambda prints, the black-and-whites numbered in a sequence that resembles the Tractatus. Prefixed with an acronym of Tractatus, or "T-LP," each also carries a whole value and then a tenth, hundredth, etc. Among the shots are included almost incidental images of sprawling chateaus, tilting mountains and deep, lush valleys. All have been manipulated into a harrowing blur: buildings shift and change against immovable backgrounds, creating the illusion of a perception in flux. It's a fitting tribute. Each shot moves across the surface of the world as viewers must imagine his mind did over the problems of language and logic.

Neither has she neglected this inward-looking place as having a whiff of the ossuary: in the midst of this distorted landscape, she situates "TL-P 2.16," a center-swirling image of what looks like a mountain path. A distinct sense of vertigo informs the shot, hewn in with trees and dirt and rimmed with a tuft of thick, lingering cloud. Can this illusion of motion mimic the acid ambition of such a lonely, brilliant thinker? Not exactly. But this distant, churning view of a world moving at top speed does suggest painful exile and a desire for stillness in the eye of an intelligent storm. Frohnapfel's prints are ultimately a satisfying examination of the role Wittgenstein wished his Tractatus to play: a reminder to those whose minds have been polluted with the traumas of life that the possibility of a solution and eventual solace remain.

Haymarket memorial

Historical trauma also underlies the City of Chicago's unveiling on September 14 of Mary Brogger's bronze Haymarket memorial at the intersection of Randolph and DesPlaines. Built to commemorate the Haymarket Incident of May 4, 1886, it's a story that's pure Chicago. On that night over a century ago, men gathered in the Haymarket to protest the deaths of fellow workers at a labor conflict the night before. A tense group of Chicago police officers challenged the crowd and called for them to disperse before an unknown assailant lobbed a bomb, killing scores of police and protesters alike. In the aftermath of the bombing, a bloodthirsty public went ahead with a highly questionable trial that ended in the execution of four men and jailing of three, with yet another dying under suspicious circumstances.

Because of this disturbing story, the Haymarket has taken a place in history as a celebrated symbol for the social and labor reform movement. Brogger's choice of delivery wagon works to combine these unnamed men's labor at the nearby Crane's Factory with the desire for fair treatment represented by their using the wagons as platforms from which to address the crowd. A few of the worker figures are crushed in the wheels, while others stand tall above them.

It's a basic gesture of loss and triumph in a city whose history brims with sad stories of blood payments for power. This craggy bronze marks another event in that consistently grisly past, another failure to treat one another with decency. Does it matter we'll never know the name of the bomb-thrower? No. It's a long-overdue replacement for the Chicago Landmark Commission's easily overlooked sidewalk plaque, too cheap a solution for such a significant event in this nation's slow, reluctant and often violent embrace of labor rights.

Doris Frohnapfel shows at the Illinois Institute of Art, Mart Center, 350 North Orleans Street, (312)432-3972. Through September 23.

(2004-09-08)

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