Christo’s “The Gates” Opens in Central Park

Most art worthy of the name is an experiment. It is an attempt to create something out of very little. Most often, these experiments fail because creation isn’t easy. In modern times, the camera, the computer and machine tools have made it easier to mass produce what previously a single artist would take months and years to create. In response, some artists have taken to efforts that previously weren’t considered art at all. Such is the latest from Christo. “The Gates” is 7,500 gates standing 15-feet tall, draped in orange fabric runing the length of all the footpaths in New York’s Central Park. The response by many was “my kid could do that.”

Christo has previously done such things as wrap the Bundestag in Berlin in fabric, as well as the Pont Neuf in Paris. For the 350,000 who viewed it over the week-end, it was a unique experience, but hardly an elevating or enlightening one. There is nothing particularly artistic about each individual gate. They were erected by construction crew volunteers, and guard rails on some California freeways are more intricate. But the crowds came to look at it, which only proves that people in New York, like any other big city, will stop to gawk at anything new.

The cost of the piece is around $21 million, which city fathers were at pains to point out isn't coming form taxpayers. Christo himself (and his wife who works with him) are paying for the 16-day exhibition. It is not clear who is paying the police who are making substantial overtime in patrolling every footpath in the park to prevent vandalism; they normally don’t do that. And while Mayor Bloomberg hailed it as another reason to come and spend money in his city, one doubts that people who hadn’t been planning on it are coming from very far away.

All right, the piece is a fraud like most modern art. It tries to shock or excite or something rather than rely on the artist’s technical abilities to create beauty, terror or fear. Art has moved on to an unpleasant place where emotional response in the viewer is the only objective for many.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though, there is one way to view the piece that few have discovered. Manhattan is, if nothing else, laden with skyscrapers. And some of these offer access to the public. From the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Christo’s “The Gates” weaves a brilliant orange dotted line through the park. And then, one can look at New Jersey and Brooklyn for the same price. He is fortunate that it is February and the trees are denuded of leaves. In the other three seasons, nature would overwhelm his efforts. Maybe, he should have used purple instead of orange.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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