NEW YORK — You could see it in the faces of the people in
Central Park: the absence of any expression, save, perhaps, mild
befuddlement, or vague disappointment. “The Gates,” Christo’s big
ballyhooed Central Park project, had promised so much, but on
Saturday, when it was finally, completely installed, it just stood
there, 23 miles of what looked like pleated orange bed sheets,
flapping listlessly on orange vinyl frames. From a distance they
looked like traffic signs. Mayor Bloomberg said this would be
“innovative, provocative art,” and that everyone would be talking
about it; but, in fact, hardly anyone knew what to say.
Think of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
A couple of sharpies tell the emperor his new robes are so special
that only the most discerning can see them. “The Gates” is a little
like that. A $21-million project, 26 years in the making, the art
world and its cheerleaders pronounced it a success in advance. When
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife, held a news conference at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday — the museum has been
peddling “Gates” souvenirs — they attracted journalists from
around the world. According to the Times, the journalists
represented some 200 media outlets, including Bulgarian national
television.
“It has no purpose,” Jeanne-Claude said, referring to “The
Gates.” “It is not a symbol. It is not a message. It is only a work
of art.”
Christo, however, said that when the fabric panels — the orange
bed sheets, that is — waved in the wind they were meant to remind
us of tree branches and Central Park’s twisting paths. But when the
journalists pressed him further, he grew testy.
“This project is not involved with talk,” he said. “It is real
physical space. You need to spend time walking in the cold air…It
is not necessary to talk.”
And indeed when people showed up Saturday to walk in the cold
air and gaze at what Christo had wrought, they did not find it
necessary to talk. What could they possibly say? Christo once said
“The Gates” would be his “homage” to Central Park, but the
charmless eyesore had nothing to do with Central Park; it was
Christo’s homage to himself.
Still, the die had been cast, and the fix was in. The
cheerleaders had spoken, and there was no turning back. The
Times coverage of the Saturday opening, in yesterday’s
paper, was, shall we say, overheated.
This is some of what the paper’s chief art critic declared in
his review, which ran at the top of page one: “‘The Gates’ is a
work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple
eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century,”
and so on. The rest of the review and an accompanying news story
filled up an entire inside page.
The sad thing is, you wanted to like “The Gates.” Mayor
Bloomberg said it would attract many out-of-town visitors before it
was dismantled on Feb. 27; the city’s Economic Development Council
estimated that they would spend $80 million. Moreover some 650
“paid volunteers” — one of them Ann Richards, the former governor
of Texas — had worked for days on the installation. And the
statistics were impressive: 5,920 tons of steel, 60 miles of vinyl
tubing and 116,389 miles of fabric were reported to have gone into
the construction process.
But none of that mattered. “The Gates” is a flop. The
Times’s critic also said the “skirted gates…appeared to
shimmy like dancers in a conga line, the cloth buckling and
swaying” — he really did say that — and that the “paths have
become like processionals,” where “everyone is suddenly a dignitary
on parade.” He really did say that, too.
Perhaps “The Gates” might have been saved, or at least redeemed
a little, if there had been a touch of whimsy somewhere, but there
is none. The 16-feet high vinyl frames that straddle the park paths
range in width from 6 to 18 feet, and the narrower ones create a
traffic problem. Forget about processionals and dignitaries on
parade. Pedestrians bunch up, and there is a claustrophobic feel.
The cloth fabrics overhead don’t help.
In the drawings that depict “The Gates” — the Metropolitan
Museum has them on sale — the fabrics, almost diaphanous, billow
gently. But in Central Park the real things hardly billow at all.
Mostly they flap and wave, like laundry on a clothesline. It’s good
that Christo raised the $21 million himself.
