Monday, February 21, 2005
Through the Gates
I was in New York City this weekend, and was able to make some time to go see “The Gates” at Central Park. For those who aren’t in the loop of the most esoteric part of the art world, this is a $22 million public art project by some dudes named “Christo” and “Jeanne-Claude” or something—the same guys who wrapped the Reichstag in cellophane a while back (but not, as I have learned, the artist(s) who made the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake). Basically, it’s a series of a few thousand orange posts, suspending bright orange fabric curtains. Gates, they’re supposed to be.
The thing I was the most surprised about was how many gates there were. You really couldn’t have any view of Central Park at all—even looking down a cross-street from a few blocks away—without seeing at least a couple of saffron banners waving in the wind. They line just about every pathway in the entire park, spaced about fifteen to twenty feet apart. The burst of orange in the drab winter environment of the park is quite arresting.
So yes, it’s pretty. It’s prettier than I thought it would be, and I liked it better than I thought I would (I’m not usually one for these kind of weird projects). It was kind of fun to wander around the park, looking for good vantage points for photographs, seeing how the setting sun was playing off the textured fabric, reaching up to touch the bottom hem, and—particularly—running down a path, so the gates swooped over me like some maze-based computer game.
The reaction to it, I found, was quite varied. Some people were anxiously snapping as many pictures as they could—on everything from professional television cameras to that old-time kind of camera you hang from your neck and look down into. Central Park was crawling with more people than I had ever seen there before (I’ve never been to a Simon & Garfunkel concert). I heard some people had come to New York with no other purpose than to see the gates (I wondered about them, because although I enjoyed myself for half an hour in the park, it did get old after a while—I can’t imagine spending an entire weekend looking at nothing but orange cloth in the park).
On the other hand, I heard it proclaimed that the project looked like “a bunch of shower curtains.” As my bus driver cut through the park on the way home, he said, “You might as well just go over to Brooklyn or the Bronx on laundry day—it looks the same, except there’s more color!” Most humorously, one man was riding his bike through the park, shouting to everyone as he went past, “What a waste! What a waste!”
Maybe so, but I was a part of it.
The thing I was the most surprised about was how many gates there were. You really couldn’t have any view of Central Park at all—even looking down a cross-street from a few blocks away—without seeing at least a couple of saffron banners waving in the wind. They line just about every pathway in the entire park, spaced about fifteen to twenty feet apart. The burst of orange in the drab winter environment of the park is quite arresting.
So yes, it’s pretty. It’s prettier than I thought it would be, and I liked it better than I thought I would (I’m not usually one for these kind of weird projects). It was kind of fun to wander around the park, looking for good vantage points for photographs, seeing how the setting sun was playing off the textured fabric, reaching up to touch the bottom hem, and—particularly—running down a path, so the gates swooped over me like some maze-based computer game.
The reaction to it, I found, was quite varied. Some people were anxiously snapping as many pictures as they could—on everything from professional television cameras to that old-time kind of camera you hang from your neck and look down into. Central Park was crawling with more people than I had ever seen there before (I’ve never been to a Simon & Garfunkel concert). I heard some people had come to New York with no other purpose than to see the gates (I wondered about them, because although I enjoyed myself for half an hour in the park, it did get old after a while—I can’t imagine spending an entire weekend looking at nothing but orange cloth in the park).
On the other hand, I heard it proclaimed that the project looked like “a bunch of shower curtains.” As my bus driver cut through the park on the way home, he said, “You might as well just go over to Brooklyn or the Bronx on laundry day—it looks the same, except there’s more color!” Most humorously, one man was riding his bike through the park, shouting to everyone as he went past, “What a waste! What a waste!”
Maybe so, but I was a part of it.
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