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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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REVIEW OF CHRISTO’S “GATES”......

Many have heard about the “installation” in NYC’s Central Park, even if only through INTERNET PARODIES.

There are at least 64,000 GOOGLE ENTRIES that come up on a search, but WHAT to think about them…....?

No taxpayer money was spent, which is a big plus right from the beginning. And they’ve been
wildly popular, if attendance is the measure—with eight hundred thousand folk turning up just on the first weekend!! And many people are flying into New York from all over the world to “groove on the experience”. Of course, besides “art”, they’ve been called “totalitarianism” and “defacement”, but that doesn’t seem to be the majority opinion.

I didn’t get up there to see them—Running Fence was MY personal experience of a Christo installation—but THIS STORY gave me a great feeling about them. See if you agree:

As happens in February, the Park was bare, cold and gray. There was some snow, the trees and pieces of green. The apartment buildings along Fifth Avenue stood as they always do in winter—immutably concrete, like the grand, drab facings of inactive hydroelectric dams. The Park was quiet and almost deserted—except for The Gates.

If one opened one’s mind just a crack, it was hard not to be touched by them, and lifted.

The Gates had dignity. They stood still, moving just a little, like the leafless trees. The trees didn’t seem to mind their brief companions. Indeed, they tamed The Gates. Like this: Across a glade, rising to the clock tower by the Metropolitan Museum, the branches of the trees broke down The Gates’ stolid rectangles into glimpsed, cracked shapes of the branches’ choosing. Many people thought The Gates were made for walking through. I thought they were made for standing and staring, turning, and staring again. Amid bleak February it was hard there in the orange-tinged Park not to feel, well, happy.

Writing in this space recently, I suggested that a world made too fast by computers and too harsh by 24-hour news more than anything needed its artists and architects to provide it with respite, rather than the emotional or visual pistol-whipping of too much recent art. I do understand that Olmsted’s Park is self-sufficient solace. But by my definition, Christo’s Gates qualified.

Smithsonian magazine HAD AN ARTICLE about Christo and his partner, Jeanne-Claude not long ago. It it began the process of “opening my mind a crack” about these fascinating people and
their art…...I still laugh at the parodies, but I have a growing respect and admiration for the remarkable artists whose imaginations have conceived, and whose incredible work ethic and refusal to give up have created, such extraordinary and fascinating art.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/07 at 11:12 AM

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