Central Park is a wrap
Mrs Rainy Day: "My favourite Central Park memory is from the time I was working in Mount Sinai Hospital. It was a gorgeous day and I decided to walk down through the park to get the express train on Lexington Avenue at 60th. On my way down, I came across a film crew and stopped to stare. And there was Woody Allen directing Mia Farrow before my eyes. I watched, totally excited, until a crew member cruelly moved me on. That's New York for you."
The logistics of "The Gates" installation are impressive. Since 3 January, eight trucks a day have been delivering steel structures and rolls of luminous saffron fabric to Central Park. Since Monday, 700 workers in teams of eight have been fitting 46 miles of cloth over 7,500 16-feet-high steel gates standing 12-feet apart. The unfurling of the fabric starts today and once it's done Central Park's paths from 59th Street to 100th Street will be transformed into golden, billowing rivers for 16 days.
The conceptual artists Christo and his wife Jeanne Claude brought Paris to a standstill in 1985 with "The Pont Neuf Wrapped", and their "Wrapped Reichstag" attracted five million visitors to Berlin in 1995, but "The Gates", which has been 25 years in the making, is set to be their superlative work. It's also a tribute to their adopted city where they have lived in the same fifth-floor walk up studio apartment for 40 years. Not that the couple are short of money. They just have a different business model, that's all. "The Gates" is going to cost $20 million to stage but the resulting spectacle will be free to everyone. Christo and Jeanne Claude don't accept sponsorship and they finance all their projects themselves. Once an installation has been completed, museum directors and wealthy private collectors vie for their drawings, their plans and their materials. Licensing of the couple's designs is global and the market for the images is strong. Simple. Effective.
Mr Rainy Day: "My favourite Central Park memory is from November last year. It was the Friday before the New York City Marathon and we decided to have a look at the preparations near the finish line. It was a beautiful day and we ended up in a part of the park known as the "Literary Walk", a kind of "sylvan tunnel", to use an expression favoured by the piper Seamus Ennis. Anyway, the elm trees were still shedding their golden-red leaves and a wind was whipping them into all kinds of shapes. It was magical."
Comments
Mark Hurst says of the Gates that...
- The artists' purpose (as I understand it) is to create something beautiful for people to experience.
- While there's no stated meaning, there's an open invitation for
everyone to find their own meaning, have their own experience, and
interpret it as they choose.
- Everyone is invited. The work is neither esoteric (and so attractive only to the elite) nor low-brow. To the contrary, it is
accessible to *everyone* who comes to experience it, and it is rich
enough to pay dividends to the most discerning or interested
visitor. No wonder a cadre of paid workers have followed Christo and
Jeanne-Claude across the globe, and across the decades, to work on
each project!
- The elements are relatively simple - steel bars, saffron fabric -
yet the results are rich, complex, and beautiful.
- The work itself doesn't call attention to itself as much as it calls out the beauty in what it surrounds. It feels positive.
- The project is environmentally friendly, financially sound
(there's no cost to the city or visitors), and aesthetically
beautiful.
That's the best summary of The Gates I have read anywhere.
Posted by: Alain Roth | February 12, 2005 8:31 AM
That is the biggest fucking waste of $20m I have ever seen.
Conceptual artists should be burnt at the stake as a deterrent to anyone thinking of becoming a conceptual artist themselves.
$20m on a pointless ego-trip.
Posted by: Twenty Major | February 12, 2005 6:31 PM
When I read this in the newspaper and saw the words "cloth-wrapped", one name sprang to mind: Christo. And so it proved.
Conceptual artists should be burnt at the stake as a deterrent to anyone thinking of becoming a conceptual artist themselves.
While I agree with the sentiment, I think you're being a bit harsh. Couldn't we just make them spend a day in the stocks, and allow the multitudes to point and laugh? Rotten tomatoes on sale, suitable for throwing: five bucks each.
The problem with "art" like this is that 1) anyone could dream it up, and yet 2) the artsy fartsy crowd claps its hands in delight at the genius of the artist. There have been times when I have thought that the colors in a bowl of M&Ms or the bits in the paper shredder were beautiful, but it never occurred to me to shout, "Oh my God I have created Art! Praise me now!" (Perhaps I should have.)
In this case, though, it's their $20 mil; they can spend it how they like. That doesn't mean NY has to go along with it, though.
Posted by: Angie Schultz | February 13, 2005 12:12 AM
Yes, the artists paid for it with their own $21 million. The question is: where did they get $21 million?
Posted by: Stumped | February 13, 2005 4:03 PM