Christo and Jeanne Claude

glad to see you Joe! I so love the images of kids with the Gates.

Peter Schjeldahl has a "Talk of the Town" piece about "the Gates" in this week's issue of The New Yorker that I thought made a lot of sense, especially in its conclusion that "'The Gates' succeeds precisely by being, on the whole, a big nothing." And am I imagining things, or is he paying a subtle homage to Joe's "bandana on an Irish setter" comment when he says, "As for the sometimes heard praise of the work for framing and, in the process, revealing unsuspected lovelinesses of the Park?-C'mon, people! You don't need artificial aids to notice things"?

Anyway, here's the whole piece:

GATED
by Peter Schjeldahl
New Yorker Issue of 2005-02-28

An art critic was testily perambulating "The Gates," in Central Park, with his wife and a friend from Texas on the first Sunday afternoon of its installation when he suddenly got a load of their thousands of fellow-walkers and registered the common mood?-a sort of vast, blanketing, almost drowsy contentment. He couldn't think of any other occasion on which he had witnessed so many New Yorkers moving slowly when they didn't have to. Each person looked strangely, nakedly personal: not a New Yorker at all, or anything else in particular. The crowd's many-voiced sound had an indoor intimacy, like the bright murmur in a theatre, during intermission, when the play is good and everybody knows that everybody knows it. The over-all social effect, which was somewhat like that of an electrical blackout or a major blizzard, minus the inconvenience, was weird and terrific. (You could give yourself a nice scare imagining "The Gates" magically removed, and leaving the people looking as they looked?-a goofball "Night of the Living Dead.") The voluble disaffection of the art critic, me, collapsed, to the relief of my companions. I had to admit the reason for it, which was that "The Gates" is a populist affront to the authority of art critics, and to accept being just another shuffling, jostling, helplessly chummy citizen.

Of course, "The Gates" is art, because what else would it be? Art used to mean paintings and statues. Now it means practically anything human-made that is unclassifiable otherwise. This loss of a commonsense definition is a big art-critical problem, but not in Central Park, not this week. What the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been doing for three and a half decades is self-evident. They propose a grandiose, entirely pointless alteration of a public place, then advance their plan in the face of a predictable public and bureaucratic resistance, which gradually comes to seem mean-spirited and foolish for want of a reasonable argument against them. They build a constituency of supporters, including collectors who help finance the project by buying Christo's drawings and collages of it. What then occurs is like an annual festival?-Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a high-school prom?-without the parts about its being annual or a festival. It feels vaguely religious. The zealous installers and minders, identifiable on site by their uniforms and chatty pride, are like acolytes. As with any ritual?-though "The Gates" can't be a ritual, because it is performed just once?-how people behave during the installation is what it is for and about. Then it's gone, before it has a chance to become boring or, for that matter, interesting.

Those who deplore "The Gates" as ugly aren't wrong, just poor sports. The work's charm-free, synthetic orange hue?-saffron? no way?-is something you would wear only in the woods during deer season, in order to avoid being shot. The nylon fabric is sullen to the touch. The proportions of the arches are graceless, and dogs alone esteem the clunky bases. As for the sometimes heard praise of the work for framing and, in the process, revealing unsuspected lovelinesses of the Park?-C'mon, people! You don't need artificial aids to notice things. "The Gates" does trigger beauty when, as on the aforementioned Sunday afternoon, a low sun backlights the fluttering fabric, which combusts like stained glass in a molten state. This effect lasts all of about two seconds?-the time span suggested in the observation of the art historian Kenneth Clark that we can enjoy a purely aesthetic sensation for only as long as we can keenly savor the smell of a fresh-cut orange. (Yes, he said an orange.) "The Gates" succeeds precisely by being, on the whole, a big nothing. Comprehended at a glance, it lets us get right down to being crazy about ourselves, in a bubble of participatory narcissism that it will be pitiable to have missed.

Observations From A Barbarian at the Gates--

Remember, I'm a word person, not an art person. When I lived in New York in the 60's the apartment was on 105th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue. Except for one memorable October dawn, my sentimental attachments are to Riverside Park, not Central Park.

For me Public Art is as much a stage set for People Watching as a pure aesthetic experience.

Because of a complicated schedule, I saw The Gates on Monday--the park paths (as well as some of the city sidewalks) were covered with snow and slush, so my opinions are based on observation and contemplation rather than exploration.

The first glimpse I had of the gates was riding shotgun in a compact car looking for a parking space. As we circled the park we had glimpse after glimpse of square-shouldered, saffron rectangles.

Digression on the color saffron. I learned from the NYT's that the chefs of the city were perfectly willing to invent saffron flavored dishes as a part of the Gates Experience. Unfortunately, saffron in the kitchen is a yellow color. Talking to artists I learned that most of them felt The Gates fabric was somewhere between tangerine and salmon rather than a true color-of-monks'-robes saffron.

On my first glimpse I was reminded of driving through Wiltshire on a night with a full moon and scudding clouds and catching a glimpse of Stonehenge (before the roads were rerouted). The first glimpse or so suggested grandeur--but grandeur, by its nature, cannot be repetitive.

I was reminded of nomadic tents and great unwieldy migrating birds--or perhaps pterdactyls--but when the metaphors settled, I was happy with the notion of a very large, old fashioned circus with the Big Top somewhere off in the distance at the other end of all the carny booths.

Incidently at every entrance, hogging premium parking spaces, were dozens of police cars. I assume that this was a pre-emptive effort against terrorism. Unfortunately, police cars are now part of public art.

More sure-footed people than I were daunted by the slush on the park paths. I'd guess that 90% of the viewers at the shank end of Monday's daylight hours were milling around the entrance arches (which were exactly like the arches further in). The fashionable color in NYC for winter viewing is windbreaker charcoal. Many children were wearing pink or orange or blue-green pastels, but the predominant costume was a semi-gloss charcoal giving the spectators a flavor of well-organized meandering such as you might find in a long-established ant hill.

The skies were overcast. The paths were slushy. Off the paths, the park was covered with city snow, more light gray than white. The square frames of the gates emphasised the paths of the park.

Olmstead was a talented creator of landscape. The paths of Central Park were laid out to fit into the contours of the land--which had been bullied and bulldozed into assuming attractive vistas. The Gates--and the weather--confined people and leashed dogs to the paths. The leashed dogs seemed more natural than the charcoal people who were also confined to the paths.

Most adults that I talked to felt the exhibit fell short of inspiring grand rapture. I'd guess that nine out of ten adults wanted to fiddle with the exhibit--more colors, more opportunity for play in the fabric, change the ratio between fabric and frame.... One woman made a point of varied viewing: early morning, sunset, sunny days, cloudy days, night with flashlight, east side, west side, crowds, solitude....

She insisted that the view from the Upper West Side park on a sunny day just after seven in the morning when people weren't in the way was worthy of slightly subdued grand rapture.

Ten out of children that I talked to felt the whole project was rather silly. The eleventh, prompted by her mother who was determined that a Cultural Experience should not be wasted on her ewe lamb, said "Very moving", but was flummoxed when asked to provide details.

Like nomads and dinosaurs and old fashioned tent shows, the structures of The Gates is temporary. I wasn't moved to rapture, but I enjoyed my view of flawed grandeur. I still wonder where the Big Top might have been.

words are very definitely your thing! I enjoyed reading that

Vivien--

Thanks for the kind words. By the by, I'm rereading Dorothy Dunnett's Francis Crawford saga and hope to move on to some of her later books.

Had Ms. D not described French royal spectacle so well, my view of The Gates might have been more contented....

Thank you Noddy! I feel like I have been there through your eyes. I am a big fan of Christo since the 70's, and I especially liked the umbrella project. Now THAT one was grandeur. I see that I would have still been happy to see the Gates, but I can also see that I would have had some disappointment. Yet, it is only in experiencing the "final product" that would be the case. For me, the art process of doing and experiencing is far more meaningful. I would have really enjoyed watching people and children play. To see all the various twists and turns of path, the differing light and shadows, and all the orange curtains as stage after stage, backdrops to human life, that would be my loss that I missed it. That part of the experience was really caught in the photo gallery of the smilingfgoat website with her sons.

Noddy - what a wonderful essay on The Gates.




My manager came back from NYC yesterday - spent 15 minutes at The Gates. So, what did he think? "It sucks. It's just cheap orange shower curtains. I don't get how that's supposed to be art."

Noddy, your writing about your experience iwith the Gates of Renown is a treasure.

Cobalt, ehBeth, Ossobuco--

Thanks for the kind words. Kind words from experts mean a lot.

Wow Noddy I really appreciate you insight. I am a fan of Cristo even though many artists are not. I like his interaction with different landscapes and do not consider it a infraction against nature since they are meant to be temporary color.

Joanne--

Thanks for the kind words.

Re-reading Noddy's essay.

Really hoping that I'll have the opportunity to see a part of New York with Noddy beside me. Really.

ehBeth--

We'd be a perceptive pair. I'm crossing my fingers about the timing.....

May Eve in the Big Apple...

Oh, I'd like to be a fly on the wall for ehBeth and Noddy in NY.

Joanne, it's great to see you.

Here's a link to a visit to the park from my fav architectural website, ArchNewsNow.com -
http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature159.htm

This is an interesting (to me) review, and has some good pictures.

huh

where'd my shoebag post go?


hmmmmmmm


mutter

After the party is over:

://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-3gatesmar16,0,1942025.story?coll=all-businesslocal-hed

From The Morning Call


From public art to plastic pellets


By Tom Coombe
Of The Morning Call

March 16, 2005

Most of Nicos Polymers & Grinding's plant in Plainfield Township looks like the clandestine government warehouse at the end of the first ''Indiana Jones'' movie.

And even though the plastic processing company doesn't house anything as top secret as the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, it is home to a treasure being kept out of the public eye: ''The Gates'' of Central Park.

More than 4 million people visited New York City last month to see the exhibition. It consisted of 7,503 16-foot-tall orange gates designed by environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, famous for wrapping the Reichstag in Germany in fabric and placing thousands of umbrellas along highways in California and Japan.

Only a few dozen people will see ''The Gates'' in their final stages, as the company grinds and shreds them over the next few weeks. Once that happens, Nicos will sell the material to another firm that will recycle it. Until then, company officials said, the project must remain under wraps.

''Fortunately, we haven't had anybody on the doorstep asking for samples,'' said Barry Friedman, Nicos' sales manager, as he walked the factory floor Tuesday afternoon. Nicos opened its 180,000-

square-foot Plainfield Township plant in 2001; prior to that it had been in the Palmer Industrial Park in Palmer Township, and before that, West Babylon, N.Y.

At one end of the plant, workers unloaded a truck from New York City, filled with sheets of the orange fabric and plastic poles that had made up the gates.

A few feet away, another worker fed the poles ?- known as ''verticals'' and ''horizontals'' ?- into a grinder. Each piece made a sound like a metal trash can falling down a flight of steps as it went through the machine, and came out in chips the size of corn kernels.

The fabric will be shredded, Friedman said, but only after workers go through each sheet, one by one, and cut out a strip of vinyl inside. It can't get mixed in with the shredded fabric, he said.

The company has 71 full-time employees, according to operations manager Dan Sheehan. In addition to those handling the gates, workers on Tuesday were stacking large blocks of shredded cardboard and grinding plastic buckets into white chips.

Sheehan said the company initially had set aside a large section of the plant for the gates, but abandoned that idea when the materials didn't arrive as rapidly as expected. It could take another two weeks to get the project done, depending on when the materials arrive.

''That's really in their control,'' Sheehan said.

When work ends for the day, the unprocessed material gets locked up. A large swath of souvenir ''Gates'' cloth seems like something college kids would love to have in their dorm room, but Friedman said that's not what the company, and the artists, worry about.

''Their major concern is with eBay,'' Friedman said.

Pieces of the gates could become a ''cottage industry,'' he said, if they made it to the online auction site.

And that's not the way Christo and Jeanne-Claude ?- a husband and wife team who use just their first names ?- operate, according to Vincent Davenport, engineer for ''The Gates'' and other Christo/Jeanne-Claude works. It's not just potential copyright problems ?- people marketing recycled plastic products as ''a piece of 'The Gates.' '' There's a deeper reason, Davenport said, speaking on the phone from New York.

''In all of our lectures, in all of our contributions, we tell everyone we recycle all of our materials,'' he said. ''It's just important that we do what we say we're going to do.''

For that reason, the artists chose Nicos, said Davenport. They had asked around and learned the company had a solid reputation, and felt they could trust it to process the material and make sure none wound up in the wrong hands.

For now, it's not clear who will end up with the recycled gates. Sheehan and Friedman, both natives of New York, said they'd like to see the materials used for construction in the city.

''It would be like a homecoming,'' Friedman said.

[email protected]

610-559-2157
Copyright © 2005, The Morning Call

(And now a "Christo and Jeanne-Claude The Gates" wrist watch is on my left arm..)

Yaaaay!



And, so, does it tell time?

Yeah, but it has no numerical display, is quite analog..