In his collage project, “The Wonder—Portraits of a Remembered City,” contemporary Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick includes this panel, “Hannibal of Chicago: remembered outside the Stadium.”
Formerly a tattoo artist and semi-professional boxer, Tony Fitzpatrick is considered a renegade in the contemporary art scene. His imagery is inspired by street life in Chicago, childhood encounters with Catholic icons, superheroes, industrialization and contemporary politics. Fitzpatrick’s work can be found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, and many other public collections.
Fitzpatrick weaves objects reminiscent of cheesey but charming old Chicago entertainments, thoughts of circus elephants outside the old Chicago Stadium at 800 West Madison Street with thoughts of Hannibal, a general and leader of Carthage, a once powerful ancient North African city and challenger of Roman supremacy in the Second Punic Wars in the 3rd century BCE. Hannibal famously marched his army, which included elephants, into Italy. Though Roman forces under Scipio Africanus defeated him, Hannibal is remembered as a brilliant military strategist and tactician. Does Fitzpatrck’s recollection of Hannibal the circus elephant prompt us to recall the great victories in professional sports (Blakhawks and Bulls) as well as wondrous public spectacles (political conventions and the circus) that took place in the old stadium?
We believe that there was an actual circus elephant named Hannibal.
Read a Chicago magazine profie of Tony Fitzpatrick from 2014.
The Stadium was demolished in 1995 and replaced by the United Center. (see photo of the stadium standing and undergoing demolition below).
