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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 2003
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 9:09 pm: |     |
I was there Saturday. Blake Gopnik, writing for the Washington Post, is in sync with my reaction:
Christo's Gates: A Little Creaky
By Blake Gopnik
NEW YORK, Feb. 12 -- They're way, way better than the pandas, pigs, cows and other fiberglass tchotchkes that have "decorated" our cities over the past decade.
But it's only a difference of quality, not kind.
The 7,500 fabric "gates" unfurled Saturday in Central Park, courtesy of local artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, are charming bits of civic ornament. They're drawing New Yorkers out in crowds to stroll among and under them, and should continue to do so for the two weeks that they're up. But as a work of outdoor art, in competition with the best of Bernini or even Henry Moore -- and especially compared with some of the couple's earlier projects -- they're unusually slight. It's amazing how small the artistic return can be on a piece that fills 850 acres in the middle of one of the world's great cities and looks set to cost $21 million before it's done. (But then, that's only one-fifth what has been paid for a mediocre Picasso, so maybe that return is about right.). . .
It's very pleasant to walk through the park and watch as the sun bounces off the sparkling fabric or shines through it. The wind sometimes stirs up impressive nautical effects. A field of orange specks processing to the far horizon makes for some grand, intensely photogenic vistas. On the morning of the unfurling, the vibe was great as well, as families came out to take the air and take in the latest oddity on show in their town.
Overall, the event reminded me of a festive parade of flags, such as towns put on to mark important civic holidays. Or of a tall ships' day, or a kite festival, or some newfangled kind of daytime fireworks display. Or, best of all, it reminded me of how nice it feels at Christmastime when lighted garlands stretch out across downtown streets. What it didn't remind me of, much, is the kind of puzzling, complex, probing experience we're supposed to get from significant art. . . .
There's not much tension between nature and man-made in this project, since Central Park is about as unnatural a bit of landscape as you could ever come across. The artists' gates just add an extra bit of decorative artifice to spaces that are pretty artificial, and decorative, anyway.
The project encourages New Yorkers to come out and socialize -- but so does any decently sunny Sunday.
I can't see any lack that the gates fill in Central Park. They just turn up the volume a bit. (As though that's something New York needs.)
The truth is, by New York standards the gates are even a touch dull. Watching families promenade, you realized that after a minute or two of oohs and aahs, they switched back to their previous, more compelling subjects of conversation. ("Chloe, I've had about enough of your attitude." "I don't haaaaave an aaaattiTUDE.") After decades living in New York, Christo and Jeanne-Claude should know how much it takes to get a rise out of Manhattanites. It takes more than an orange schmatte or two.
(Oddly, this time the bland finished project looks like a 3-D illustration of the piles of equally genteel drawings that Christo made to pay for it. In the past, it was the drawings that seemed like watered-down versions of the more complex, finished projects.). . .
The gates are often said to be a classic "saffron" color, but to my eyes that's a much warmer, more flamboyant hue than what's now hanging in Central Park -- "saffron" ought to be the color of paella at midnight in Valencia or of the robes on an Eastern divine. Central Park's PVC archways, it seems to me, are an almost perfect, very modern, slightly pinkish "hazard orange."
(I had the chance to match a gate against a nearby piece of public-works equipment, and the tints were uncannily close.)
If these gates evoke current affairs, an "orange alert" is the only thing that springs to mind. (The news helicopters hovering above the project on its opening day contributed to the post 9/11 feel, which may dissipate once they are gone.) But overall, "The Gates: Central Park" is so clearly about lighthearted civic celebration that, as I said, it's quite a stretch to give it topicality in our troubled times.
There is an era in which the gates seem to belong, but that's three decades back. They remind me of a certain kind of celebratory public sculpture that you could see in the 1970s, and that represented a kind of last-gasp moment in grand modernist abstraction. Imagine huge sheets and beams of brightly enameled steel, set down in public plazas everywhere, and you'll get the feel I mean. Postwar optimism still hung on in this art, mingled with a bit of flower-power energy: It was the Mary Quant moment in public sculpture, and it didn't last. Of course, as the full title of the Central Park project indicates, that's about when the gates were first conceived. The only reason they're up now is that it took 30 more years of lobbying to get them approved.
It strikes me as passing strange than any artist would imagine that a piece that might have been a good idea at one moment would still matter just as much half a career later. When the "Gates" project was first proposed, New York was near bankruptcy, the middle class had fled and the filthy walkways of Central Park were where you went for a good mugging. The idea of using cheery orange fabric to lure strollers up to Harlem Meer had all the ludicrous energy of a bedsheet strung up across the West. Now, with Meer-view condos going for a few million bucks, the artists' gates just seem like the latest thing in bourgeois beautification. (Crate & Barrel must be due to launch a home-and-garden version any day.)
Actually, there's one other era that the gates brought to mind. In one of those strange eureka moments that sometimes comes when you're looking at art, I realized that all that deeply pleated orange fabric, coming partway down its two supporting poles, reminded me of the deeply pleated, below-the-knee skirts the well-dressed woman wore in 1950s middle America. Images of Julianne Moore in "Far From Heaven" came pouring in, and I found myself feeling a bit sheepish as I walked between some of those 15,000 legs and under all those flicking hems. Needless to say, I stopped looking up. I did, however, think back to the day before, to a stroll along Lexington Avenue and to the revival of just those same pleated styles in women's stores along the way.
Somehow, despite seemingly unending war and nuclear-armed tyrants and gaping social safety nets, we've decided that it's time to revive the look and feel of America at its most buttoned-down. And Christo and Jeanne-Claude have managed to channel our complacent retrospection.
Or maybe it does not have much to do with them at all. After all, it was New York's corporate mayor, and the gentry that he leads, who decided that the time at last had come to fill the park with elegant day wear.
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Starr
Citizen
Username: Starr
Post Number: 74
Registered: 9-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 9:17 pm: | |
We went today too. The multiplicity of the gates is awesome. Everywhere you walk you see new vistas of gates. The saffron color of the fabric and the gates is breathtaking. I couldn't get over how the gates are the exact same shade as the fabric. I agree with jeffl, it's a must see.
By the way, the project didn't cost $35 million. I think the figure is closer to $20 million. |
Zoesky1
Citizen
Username: Zoesky1
Post Number: 706
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 9:20 pm: | |
I am going to go at lunchtime this week...really excited, and plan to bring a camera. I do feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be had. |
Hank Zona
Citizen
Username: Hankzona
Post Number: 2028
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 - 11:59 pm: | |
we went today...specifically, this morning. Got there by 1015 and already people were streaming about. Heard lots of foreign languages being spoken, including familiar strains of various New Jersey dialects. Im looking at a swatch of the fabric that two of the "Gatekeepers" gave to my kids. It was a great contrast to a park of stone, and mostly frozen water and bare trees. It pulled in people from all over and seemed not to keep those who use the park regularly away..plenty of skaters, runners, dog walkers. Id go back again...and if the weather and schedules are right, will probably do so. Id love to see how it all looks if there was a thin blanket of snow on the ground...anyone have a heads-up from the Farmers Almanac? And in a city and area that can be expensive, except for the expense to travel in, its a free event.
We discussed before and after if it was art. I suppose if it is someone's creative vision, then it is. Funny, of all the people we walked past and overheard, only one person was heard saying, while looking at a double line of gates, "now I get it!". I guess it is art as an event, as a happening, as much as it about the lay-out of these gates. And walking through Central Park in February was alot of fun, for the adults and the kids. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5274
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 12:24 am: | |
I heard that when the first gate was unfurled, the cardboard tube came down and conked Bloomberg on the head. Now if that isn't art, I don't know what is. |
runon
Citizen
Username: Runon
Post Number: 97
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 9:30 am: | |
David Buckley,
To clarify, Christo *did* speak at the graduation. He just didn't say *anything* that had to do with graduation. It was as if he was asked to speak to a group of his fans about the latest details of his fight to get approval for the Gates - he did that with vigor. He didn't offer any encouragement, advice, or acknowledgement related to the fact that he was speaking before a few hundred people who had studied for years, gone into debt, etc to pursue careers in the social sciences. That said, I will visit Central Park next week and will bring my son and an open mind. |
drewdix
Citizen
Username: Drewdix
Post Number: 829
Registered: 7-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 9:35 am: | |
Also took advanatge of the sunny day yesterday to bring the family in.
For me the gates were reminiscent of the Golden Gate bridge in SF, which is the man made structure most harmonious with nature that I've ever seen.
Part of the intent is surely to watch the watchers- the smiles, the thinking, the touching.
My 3 year old son sat on my shoulders for a stretch and from that height could gently slap each hanging.
I wondered- why do it in the cold, dead of winter, and then realized that the lack of leaves and foliage allowed you to glimpse the gates far into the distance. Summer would not have allowed that perspective. I also understand the predictable Feb. tourist lull had something to do with it.
But very impressive and well conceived.
The Sabrett's were flying out of the carts all day.
Then strolled over to Rain, a (mostly) Thai place on W. 82nd St. to cap off the day. Love that place. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5275
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 9:49 am: | |
Speaking of the most harmonious-with-nature man-made structure you've ever seen…
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steel
Citizen
Username: Steel
Post Number: 635
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 10:25 am: | |
Dear Harpo,
-When I saw the "Pieta" in Rome I had a great sense of awe. When I saw the "Gates" I had, well, fun! -Nothin' wrong with that. Sometimes I think that many people, (especially artists) take art entirely too seriously. The review you posted above from the Post is exactly why the world of art has become so cloistered, -It's like Gopnick couldn't be happy unless Christo's work did EVERYTHING for him, yet he doesn't even seem to notice how much the work made him think or how much fun he had, -he was so busy forming a grand opinion to keep his perch.
He essentially says that the project does not work, (as it might have thirty years ago) and yet hundreds of thousands of people appeared as evidence to the contrary. He says that,: "If these gates evoke current affairs, an 'orange alert' is the only thing that springs to mind." as he strolls amonst thousands of people delighted to have their minds taken off current affairs for a single sunny afternoon.
He additionaly can't see the irony of saying, "it takes more than this to impress New Yorkers" as he wanders about, (terribly alone) amonst zillions of New Yorkers and others who where so very obvisously impressed!
Also, this quote from the review:
"It strikes me as passing strange than any artist would imagine that a piece that might have been a good idea at one moment would still matter just as much half a career later." strikes me as a VERY odd thing for any so-called art reviewer to say.
The whole article reminds me of why so many people can recite entire line-ups of sports teams including statistics yet would struggle to name five famous artists and most of those five would have been dead for hundreds of years.
-Regards,
-Steel,
(I'd best hurry I'm going to be late for work!) |
steel
Citizen
Username: Steel
Post Number: 636
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 11:03 am: | |
PS: Also regarding, (in reaction to) The Washington Post review above:
Here is a pic of a couple of my New York friends that I strolled around with Sunday.
-Note their, (happily) distinct lack of, "puzzling, complex, probing experience we're supposed to get from significant art. . . . "
PS, PS: Dave, -Weren't they supposed to take that Wall- thing down after a couple weeks? |
ril
Citizen
Username: Ril
Post Number: 289
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 11:13 am: | |
Boy, people don't waste a moment! Do a search for Christo swatch on ebay--lots of people rushing to resell the little fabric samples that the volunteers were giving out over the weekend.
(by the way... we thought it was fantastic and can't wait to go back later in the week. Hoping it snows a bit--the orange will look awesome against the white.) |
mooewe
Citizen
Username: Mooewe
Post Number: 233
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 11:21 am: | |
Excellent come back, Steel, thank you.
My cynical teenage son didn't "get it" either - thought it was stupid (but he did enjoy all the walking in the Park). My husband was, "eh, it's OK". My take was that it wasn't so much what it looked like, as what it did. It brought people out, it made an otherwise ordinary (but beautiful) day a bit more special, and as you said, it was FUN. It made me feel good. It seemed to make a whole lot of other people feel good, too, which is always a good thing.
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harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 2004
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 1:20 pm: | |
Steel,
Hope you have better taste in window treatments. ;-)
Even if you don't take art as seriously as I do, you're always welcome at any party I throw. I'm thinking I may invite mooewe's husband and son next time too, since we don't need no stinkin' orange gates to have fun and feel good!
Dave,
Don't give Christo ideas! Your pic reminds me that one main purposes of gates is defensive. |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 848
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 1:33 pm: | |
The "gates" look like unfinished construction, or worse, unfinsihed scaffolding. Just what New York needs... |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5280
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 3:40 pm: | |
We know Bill Gates, but this is The Gates' Bill. Someone researching the cost of The Gates puts it at a quarter of what Christo says:
quote:Using the Christos' own descriptions and published reports of the installation, I priced out The Gates. Let me just say that to get to $20 million requires some rather creative--maybe even artistic--accounting. Whatever else they may accomplish, Christo and Jeanne-Claude may have also created a unique approach to the subjective and often arbitrary exercise of valuing a work of art.
The Gates Direct Expenses:
Direct Materials
Steel - 5,390 tons @ 1Q04 price=$350/ton*: $1,851,000
Vinyl Tubing - 315,491 feet @ $0.75/ft: 237,000
Fabric - 99,155 sq m @ $6/sq m: 595,000
Brackets & Hardware: 15,000 sets & $6 ea.: 90,000
Subtotal: $2,774,000
[less recycling revenue: 1Q05 price for scrap steel=$200/ton= $1.06mm]
Net Direct Materials Expense: $1,708,000
According to their website, C&J-C ordered this raw material in the fall of 2003 when the project was approved. Since that time, steel prices have nearly tripled to over $900/ton. If they bought the steel late last year, it could have cost nearly $3 million more.
All components of the gates were put together in a 25,000-sf facility in Long Island before being shipped to the Park for installation. C&J-C point out that materials were made in local workshops, not factories. So far, it seems, the mega-installation art industry has not been relocated to China.
Fabrication Costs
Bases - est. 25% of materials cost, or $27/base: $394,000
Gates - est. 30 min. labor/gate @ $10/hr: 75,000
Curtains - est. 30 min. sewing @ $6/hr: 22,500
Warehouse & Shipping: 350,000
Subtotal: $841,000
C&J-C used both skilled and unskilled labor to install the gates. Bases were set with forklifts. The Times reported that after the snow, an additional $250,000 was spent on 150 people over six days to snowblower and dig out the bases.
Direct Labor
Base Placement & Removal - 20 5-person crews moving 4 bases/hr, avg $30/hr: $1,125,000 (2x $562,500)
Snow Removal: 250,000
Installation & De-installation - 5-person teams doing 25 gates/9-hr shift @ $5.40/hr: 788,000 (2x 394,000)
Maintenance & Daytime Non-NYPD Security - 150 people @ $5.40/hr for 16 days: 143,000
Subtotal: $2,265,000
C&J-C will also pay for NYPD to patrol the park and for Gates-related expenses of the Parks Dept. & CP Conservancy. I used $500,000, or half of the Conservancy's $1mm/month on maintenance and operations budget for the entire park, as a plug. Other expenses include: liability insurance indemnifying the City and the Conservancy and a restoration bond to ensure the Park is returned to its pre-Gates state.
The total, then, for what you see: around $5.3 million.
http://greg.org/archive/2005/02/13/the_gates_bill.html |
harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 2005
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 4:47 pm: | |
Since Bloomberg estimates NYC will get $60 million out of this, perhaps not a bad investment. Hey, instead of banning multiple nail salons and pizza parlors in Maplewood, could we get Christo to wrap them? How about wrapping the whole town? Springfield Ave? Or just the 2 Arts plus the TC?
And then, instead of asking art critics to review it so as not to offend steel, we can call in Michael Musto! |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5488
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 5:56 pm: | |
We can't have a bicycle race go through without the local merchants losing money on it. Though there is plenty of hope that we could do this sort of thing right. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5283
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 8:13 pm: | |
I began to wonder if we could see the art from space.
The answer, is yes:
http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/spacepics/central_park_12Feb05.jpg |
laugh
Citizen
Username: Laugh
Post Number: 8
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 8:23 pm: | |
i hope this doesn't mean there are oompah loompahs running around naked! |
jeffl
Supporter
Username: Jeffl
Post Number: 983
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 8:38 pm: | |
Dave, if that was done of the 5th of February it was before these things were unfurled, no? |
ffof
Citizen
Username: Ffof
Post Number: 3354
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 9:13 pm: | |
Dear Mr. Gopnik:
"What it didn't remind me of, much, is the kind of puzzling, complex, probing experience we're supposed to get from significant art." I don't think even C-JC had any pretensions of it being particularly significant - it's temporary for gosh sake.
"it's quite a stretch to give it topicality in our troubled times." So why try? and who cares?
"There's not much tension between nature and man-made in this project, since Central Park is about as unnatural a bit of landscape as you could ever come across" Go back to Walden Pond already! And take your copy of Ohmstead Parks Illustrated with you!
Love, ffof
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Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5284
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 9:28 pm: | |
Jeff,
That's 12 Feb 2005. |
harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 2006
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 10:38 pm: | |
The name of the designer of Central Park is spelled "Olmsted." Frederick Law Olmsted.
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ffof
Citizen
Username: Ffof
Post Number: 3355
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 8:55 am: | |
Harpo- thanks for the enlightenment. I did mean Ohmstead. Everyone knows there is no such thing as "Olmsted Parks Illustrated". |
steel
Citizen
Username: Steel
Post Number: 637
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 9:25 am: | |
Harpo,
-I have an excellent idea for your window treatments!
-However, they will cost you $20 million dollars, (or $5.3 according to Dave's discount numbers), and you can only have then up for 16 days, (I hope you like "hazzard orange").
PS: Dave, I have reviewed your figures and I can assure you that I did not receive $1.8 million dollars from Christo or I would presently be in Tonga swimming with the whales. |
jamie
Moderator
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 767
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 8:12 pm: | |
The gates are great - here are a few pics I took:
http://www.jamieross.com/gates/ |
jeffl
Supporter
Username: Jeffl
Post Number: 987
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 8:51 pm: | |
Nice job Jamie. |
Dave
Moderator
Username: Dave
Post Number: 5289
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 8:57 pm: | |
My favorite
 |
Lydia
Supporter
Username: Lydial
Post Number: 931
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 9:00 pm: | |
Christo has always said that the debate (pro or con doesn't matter) is as important as his installations.
The debate is part of the art, which is so wonderful IMO. Christo works on so many levels it's hard to put into words.
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5567
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 7:58 pm: | |
In this photo released by New York Citys Central Park Zoo, a mouse deer examines an organic model of The Gates, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005. For 16 days beginning with their unveiling on Saturday, Feb. 12, The Gates, by artist team Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be draped along 23 miles of footpaths in New Yorks Central Park. (AP Photo/Wildlife Conservation Society, Julie Larsen Maher)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/050211/480/nyr11802110043
What's a mouse deer? |
Mark Fuhrman
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 1318
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 18, 2005 - 8:21 am: | |
Native to Malaysia and Indonesia, nocturnal. |
DeborahG
Citizen
Username: Deborahg
Post Number: 1200
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 10:31 am: | |
When do the Gates close (so to speak). |
jamie
Moderator
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 774
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 11:52 am: | |
it started on Feb 12th and is up for 16 days which would make it up til the 28th. |
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