The Modern Art genre will forever have enthusiastic critics, people who cannot find the meaning in found object art or interpretive dance probably make up 51% of this country, and I do not claim to have any true understanding of any type of art, so this piece is not meant to be an art criticism piece. What I would like to do is briefly look at this strange piece of natural accentuation, and to look at it from the eyes of a media critic, asking myself is this work informational, persuasion, or entertainment. With the uproar that this piece has caused, and the amount of people whom Christo, and his wife Jeanne-Claude, communicated their message (whatever it may be) to, I think it is worthy of analysis from a layperson such as myself.
To understand the project and its impact on the public, we must note not only the projects specific visual aspects, but also the individual reactions in the public as well as the climate of opinion. For a city whose last major public event was a divisive and terrifying national political convention, not to mention the horrible solidarity and fear citizens were forced through on 9/11, the climate of opinion seems to be razor sharp and to the forefront in minds of the public. Even though this project was envisioned in 1979, it is impossible to attempt to analyze it without a current perspective. To make the situation on the city even more stressful, when I visited “The Gates” last weekend, the countries terror alert had been elevated in all major cities, and while New Yorkers have
an extremely tough and unafraid demeanor, I would imagine that most of them were as slightly preoccupied with the possibility of an attack as us tourists. This raises the interesting question of Why? Not only why build such a grouping of structures, but why would so many people flock to a public park in the middle of both a terror level increase and a thirty degree February weekend to see what some consider to be futile and useless art? And eventually, of course we must ask ourselves what the message is, what is this visual imagery meant to convey.
To give the reader a quick impression of the project so that the message may be decoded, I will attempt to recreate some of the scenes I encountered while strolling through perhaps 5 miles of the 26-mile installation, and a few quick overheard descriptions. Central Park is certainly one of the most famous parks in the country. Designed by Olmstead, a man who gave many cities, including Buffalo, their amazing public parks, Central Park would be the ideal place for any artist to display their wares in the nakedness of nature. Walking through the entrance “ The Gates”, the viewer is confronted by the first and largest of the over five thousand gates that line the parks walkways. The Gates, which are all meticulously adjusted so the tops of the structures are level at roughly sixteen feet no matter what the slope of the walkway, were all the same color of saffron. The Curtains and the posts were painted, one post to each side of the walkway, about eight to ten feet, with a curtain hanging over the walkway, it’s bottom about nine feet off the ground. Each gate follows the next by about six feet, and the effect is similar to a theatre curtain opening upon another, and another, and another. There are
gaps when there are trees along the path, but standing almost anywhere in central park, the scene is overwhelming. Descriptions that I picked up from articles and other people in the park ranged from “ A giant home depot ad” to “ An invading Chinese Army” to “ Man, the light from the sunset coming through those things is like, freaking beautiful.”
All are accurate, and valid interpretations of artistic intent. My perspective was that although the gates were beautiful and strange, the true beauty that surrounded us was the park itself, and with the reputation that Central Park has garnered in the media as essentially a deathtrap, I believe the artists, who are famous for drawing people’s attention to things they normally overlook, simply wanted to give the park some sort of unique and diverse attention. I think they created the work so that viewers would have a positive experience in the park and enjoy it and the other people of the Big Apple.
The aesthetics of the piece were tremendous, and I felt that one of the things the artists were attempting to do to viewers was to create an alternate reality. One of the things that helped achieve this was the height of the curtains, which drew the viewer’s eyes constantly upward to the vinyl fluttering in the strong breeze. The function of this particular aspect of the project seemed interesting to me. We could use the word persuaded, as in the curtains persuaded the eyes upward, but what it really did was two things. One, it created the slight feeling of limbo that one gets when walking while looking upward, a slightly unsure and uneasy feeling that you may step on dog droppings
or off the face of the earth at any moment. Two, and I think that this is again the intention of the artists, especially in a town as diverse as New York, the height of the curtains forced you to look into the faces and eyes of the people passing you, to exchange smiles or cursory nods, when in most circumstances passersby simply stare at the ground in an attempt to avoid eye contact. By doing this, the artists not only made their “Gates” the art, but also all the faces of the people that you pass, their families, their fur coats, their groovy walks. Because you were constantly smiling at strangers you passed, it became easier to simply smile the whole time, and the park was full of good spirits and cherry cheeked hipsters diggin the scene.
The individuals who experienced the gates are only a part of the public that was affected by this project. In New York City and many others around the country, papers brought the news to less art-oriented communities and many other diverse opinions were heard. Some criticisms, such as “ Why are we wasting tax money on this?” were ignorant, (Christo and His Wife paid for the project with about 21 million dollars in private funds raised by the sale of other Christo works.) while other’s like; “ Why is this considered art?” were more valid. I personally wish that the people who would decry this project had a chance to experience it personally during it’s sixteen day run (One of my friends, a huge fan, paid 430 dollars to fly in from Denver.), but even native New Yorkers could be heard grumbling over the futility of the project. I would have to agree, but not because I think that the purpose of the art is futile, but because I think Christo has a firm
understanding of the art of futility and what an excellent metaphor it is for the human experience. Many critics are quick to say, “ Hell I coulda thought of that.” In fact in the Syracuse Post Standard on Monday, there was a photograph of a man’s living room where he had built a tiny replica of the gates, bragging that it only cost him three dollars and fifty cents and inviting everyone to his website entitled not_rocket_science.com. But, I doubt his miniature version could give him the gorgeous sight of one thousand bright orange flags, blazing with color from the sunset, floating in unison with the wind.
While Christo envisioned the gates in 1979, it is impossible in this post 9/11 world to not examine the design of the individual gates and, in context, compare them to the World Trade Center. Perhaps this is an abstract interpretation, but 300,000 New Yorkers a day walking in between two posts of identical height with a billowing sheet of what could be symbolically interpreted as flame, creates an image that is difficult for me to ignore. One might venture to say, had this been planned post 9/11, that Christo was attempting to give New Yorkers another catharsis, a cleansing of the evil and horror that their last catharsis wrought. I will just have to chalk this up to good fortune, because whether or not “ The Gates” were a comment on the police state that New York City has become since 9/11, it succeeded in gathering the many diverse tribes of New Yorkers into a public display of wonder and interaction. Even though the subways were jammed with tourists, terrorism, fear, and politics were the furthest things from people’s minds.
Art is not the same form of mass media as advertising or television news. Art is a more abstract message that individuals decode themselves, delving as deeply as they can into the unknown psyche of the artist. Art, such as this, also has the ability to make artists out of its viewers. Everyone had a camera, and it occurred to me that, knowingly or not, “The Gates” had brought out the inner artist in its viewers, an artistic anomaly that my friends and I attempted to define as “ participatory art” or “ exponential art”. I believe that was also part of the message, that art begets art.
The first message that most artists try to convey is that art is universal. Christo ensured the diversity of the public at the exhibit by not only paying 21 million to create this installation, but also by offering it for free to all to come enjoy. While some skeptics and critics claim that the money will be returned tenfold when the pieces are sold off after it’s sixteen day run, the lack of an admittance fee brought families, couples and friends from every different ethnic group in the city. Every language could be overheard as you walked along the path, and the limited presence of police made the exhibit a miniature society, where all the different makes and models of humans were interacting in a friendly, relaxed manner. The second message I think the artists in this case were attempting to get across was an anti-fear message. Not necessarily in the context of terror and 9/11, but just the general fear that keeps people from interacting with one another on
the streets. The exhibit created an atmosphere of mutual interest and an easy topic of
conversation for strangers. Also, if one considers it an experience, it gifted New Yorkers with a topic of conversation with strangers that will last long after the saffron poles are broken up and shipped to storage. The third message has to do with persuasion more than entertainment I believe. Art is always entertaining, but Christo persuades his fans and viewers to view scenes they have become accustomed to in a new light, scenes that have long since seemed boring and that have lost public interest redefine themselves with the help of Christo’s surreal installations. Plus, this media artifact persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to spend two to five hours in the freezing, dead winter of February, in a brown and slushy park simply because it was there. Any advertiser would kill for that kind of effective public persuasion, but there was nothing besides food and hot chocolate being sold. The third message, I believe, is get out of the house and go to the park, it should be unnecessary for there to be some special circumstance (such as a free art installation) to get the public to take notice of the beauty it has been taking for granted.
The fourth message I believe is simply an homage to the greatness of Olmstead, and his vision. One must assume that the artists picked central park in particular because of it’s intricate and complex design, and as Christo has a history of trying to bring attention to objects of beauty that people have forgotten or overlooked, it is safe to assume that just as he has given the gift of “ The Gates “ to the people of New York for 16 days, Olmstead
gave the city the everlasting gift of the park.
I believe that as a media artifact and as an artistic expression, the gates were extremely successful. It embodies every part of the information/persuasion/entertainment trilogy, utilizing the entertainment of the park and installation to persuade people to experience it, and then educating the viewers as to what else they have been missing by not appreciating the natural beauty of the park that already existed. With the current climate of opinion New York City may not see another unifying experience like this until the 2012 Olympics, and I believe that “ The Gates” installation proves the effectiveness of art to promote and distribute a message of peacefulness and catharsis to a nervous and jaded city.
To understand the project and its impact on the public, we must note not only the projects specific visual aspects, but also the individual reactions in the public as well as the climate of opinion. For a city whose last major public event was a divisive and terrifying national political convention, not to mention the horrible solidarity and fear citizens were forced through on 9/11, the climate of opinion seems to be razor sharp and to the forefront in minds of the public. Even though this project was envisioned in 1979, it is impossible to attempt to analyze it without a current perspective. To make the situation on the city even more stressful, when I visited “The Gates” last weekend, the countries terror alert had been elevated in all major cities, and while New Yorkers have
an extremely tough and unafraid demeanor, I would imagine that most of them were as slightly preoccupied with the possibility of an attack as us tourists. This raises the interesting question of Why? Not only why build such a grouping of structures, but why would so many people flock to a public park in the middle of both a terror level increase and a thirty degree February weekend to see what some consider to be futile and useless art? And eventually, of course we must ask ourselves what the message is, what is this visual imagery meant to convey.
To give the reader a quick impression of the project so that the message may be decoded, I will attempt to recreate some of the scenes I encountered while strolling through perhaps 5 miles of the 26-mile installation, and a few quick overheard descriptions. Central Park is certainly one of the most famous parks in the country. Designed by Olmstead, a man who gave many cities, including Buffalo, their amazing public parks, Central Park would be the ideal place for any artist to display their wares in the nakedness of nature. Walking through the entrance “ The Gates”, the viewer is confronted by the first and largest of the over five thousand gates that line the parks walkways. The Gates, which are all meticulously adjusted so the tops of the structures are level at roughly sixteen feet no matter what the slope of the walkway, were all the same color of saffron. The Curtains and the posts were painted, one post to each side of the walkway, about eight to ten feet, with a curtain hanging over the walkway, it’s bottom about nine feet off the ground. Each gate follows the next by about six feet, and the effect is similar to a theatre curtain opening upon another, and another, and another. There are
gaps when there are trees along the path, but standing almost anywhere in central park, the scene is overwhelming. Descriptions that I picked up from articles and other people in the park ranged from “ A giant home depot ad” to “ An invading Chinese Army” to “ Man, the light from the sunset coming through those things is like, freaking beautiful.”
All are accurate, and valid interpretations of artistic intent. My perspective was that although the gates were beautiful and strange, the true beauty that surrounded us was the park itself, and with the reputation that Central Park has garnered in the media as essentially a deathtrap, I believe the artists, who are famous for drawing people’s attention to things they normally overlook, simply wanted to give the park some sort of unique and diverse attention. I think they created the work so that viewers would have a positive experience in the park and enjoy it and the other people of the Big Apple.
The aesthetics of the piece were tremendous, and I felt that one of the things the artists were attempting to do to viewers was to create an alternate reality. One of the things that helped achieve this was the height of the curtains, which drew the viewer’s eyes constantly upward to the vinyl fluttering in the strong breeze. The function of this particular aspect of the project seemed interesting to me. We could use the word persuaded, as in the curtains persuaded the eyes upward, but what it really did was two things. One, it created the slight feeling of limbo that one gets when walking while looking upward, a slightly unsure and uneasy feeling that you may step on dog droppings
or off the face of the earth at any moment. Two, and I think that this is again the intention of the artists, especially in a town as diverse as New York, the height of the curtains forced you to look into the faces and eyes of the people passing you, to exchange smiles or cursory nods, when in most circumstances passersby simply stare at the ground in an attempt to avoid eye contact. By doing this, the artists not only made their “Gates” the art, but also all the faces of the people that you pass, their families, their fur coats, their groovy walks. Because you were constantly smiling at strangers you passed, it became easier to simply smile the whole time, and the park was full of good spirits and cherry cheeked hipsters diggin the scene.
The individuals who experienced the gates are only a part of the public that was affected by this project. In New York City and many others around the country, papers brought the news to less art-oriented communities and many other diverse opinions were heard. Some criticisms, such as “ Why are we wasting tax money on this?” were ignorant, (Christo and His Wife paid for the project with about 21 million dollars in private funds raised by the sale of other Christo works.) while other’s like; “ Why is this considered art?” were more valid. I personally wish that the people who would decry this project had a chance to experience it personally during it’s sixteen day run (One of my friends, a huge fan, paid 430 dollars to fly in from Denver.), but even native New Yorkers could be heard grumbling over the futility of the project. I would have to agree, but not because I think that the purpose of the art is futile, but because I think Christo has a firm
understanding of the art of futility and what an excellent metaphor it is for the human experience. Many critics are quick to say, “ Hell I coulda thought of that.” In fact in the Syracuse Post Standard on Monday, there was a photograph of a man’s living room where he had built a tiny replica of the gates, bragging that it only cost him three dollars and fifty cents and inviting everyone to his website entitled not_rocket_science.com. But, I doubt his miniature version could give him the gorgeous sight of one thousand bright orange flags, blazing with color from the sunset, floating in unison with the wind.
While Christo envisioned the gates in 1979, it is impossible in this post 9/11 world to not examine the design of the individual gates and, in context, compare them to the World Trade Center. Perhaps this is an abstract interpretation, but 300,000 New Yorkers a day walking in between two posts of identical height with a billowing sheet of what could be symbolically interpreted as flame, creates an image that is difficult for me to ignore. One might venture to say, had this been planned post 9/11, that Christo was attempting to give New Yorkers another catharsis, a cleansing of the evil and horror that their last catharsis wrought. I will just have to chalk this up to good fortune, because whether or not “ The Gates” were a comment on the police state that New York City has become since 9/11, it succeeded in gathering the many diverse tribes of New Yorkers into a public display of wonder and interaction. Even though the subways were jammed with tourists, terrorism, fear, and politics were the furthest things from people’s minds.
Art is not the same form of mass media as advertising or television news. Art is a more abstract message that individuals decode themselves, delving as deeply as they can into the unknown psyche of the artist. Art, such as this, also has the ability to make artists out of its viewers. Everyone had a camera, and it occurred to me that, knowingly or not, “The Gates” had brought out the inner artist in its viewers, an artistic anomaly that my friends and I attempted to define as “ participatory art” or “ exponential art”. I believe that was also part of the message, that art begets art.
The first message that most artists try to convey is that art is universal. Christo ensured the diversity of the public at the exhibit by not only paying 21 million to create this installation, but also by offering it for free to all to come enjoy. While some skeptics and critics claim that the money will be returned tenfold when the pieces are sold off after it’s sixteen day run, the lack of an admittance fee brought families, couples and friends from every different ethnic group in the city. Every language could be overheard as you walked along the path, and the limited presence of police made the exhibit a miniature society, where all the different makes and models of humans were interacting in a friendly, relaxed manner. The second message I think the artists in this case were attempting to get across was an anti-fear message. Not necessarily in the context of terror and 9/11, but just the general fear that keeps people from interacting with one another on
the streets. The exhibit created an atmosphere of mutual interest and an easy topic of
conversation for strangers. Also, if one considers it an experience, it gifted New Yorkers with a topic of conversation with strangers that will last long after the saffron poles are broken up and shipped to storage. The third message has to do with persuasion more than entertainment I believe. Art is always entertaining, but Christo persuades his fans and viewers to view scenes they have become accustomed to in a new light, scenes that have long since seemed boring and that have lost public interest redefine themselves with the help of Christo’s surreal installations. Plus, this media artifact persuaded hundreds of thousands of people to spend two to five hours in the freezing, dead winter of February, in a brown and slushy park simply because it was there. Any advertiser would kill for that kind of effective public persuasion, but there was nothing besides food and hot chocolate being sold. The third message, I believe, is get out of the house and go to the park, it should be unnecessary for there to be some special circumstance (such as a free art installation) to get the public to take notice of the beauty it has been taking for granted.
The fourth message I believe is simply an homage to the greatness of Olmstead, and his vision. One must assume that the artists picked central park in particular because of it’s intricate and complex design, and as Christo has a history of trying to bring attention to objects of beauty that people have forgotten or overlooked, it is safe to assume that just as he has given the gift of “ The Gates “ to the people of New York for 16 days, Olmstead
gave the city the everlasting gift of the park.
I believe that as a media artifact and as an artistic expression, the gates were extremely successful. It embodies every part of the information/persuasion/entertainment trilogy, utilizing the entertainment of the park and installation to persuade people to experience it, and then educating the viewers as to what else they have been missing by not appreciating the natural beauty of the park that already existed. With the current climate of opinion New York City may not see another unifying experience like this until the 2012 Olympics, and I believe that “ The Gates” installation proves the effectiveness of art to promote and distribute a message of peacefulness and catharsis to a nervous and jaded city.
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