2008 Woodie Awards
Re-envisioning Central Park through The Gates
Meredith Veto
Issue date: 2/25/05 Section: Features
|
The Gates in Central Park has everybody talking. Startlingly vibrant saffron-colored fabric panels drape from over 7,500 orange steel frames standing 16 feet tall. Placed at 12-foot intervals, the gates straddle all 23 miles of pathways that run through the park. The Gates were completed on Feb. 12, and will remain in Central Park through the end of the month.
"It's absolutely spectacular," said Bunky Devos of Amsterdam, one of thousands of international travelers that came to see The Gates during its 16-day run. "It's like flames. It tickles the imagination."
"The fact that the work does not remain creates an urgency to see it," Jeanne-Claude told a reporter for Eye-Level art journal. "For instance, if someone were to tell you, 'Oh, look on the right, there is a rainbow,' you will never answer, 'I will look at it tomorrow.'"
"I've got people from all over the world-from Europe, from Jersey, from Oregon," said Adam Delia, a Central Park bicycle taxi driver. "A lot of people get in my cab and say, 'I don't get it. It's just a shower curtain.' I tell them that the fact that there are 7,500 of them makes it artistic. Just like the twin towers: one of them alone is not special."
High art or shower curtains, the ephemeral installation cost the artists $21 million to realize-every penny from their own pockets. Christo and Jeanne-Claude accept no donations or volunteers; all workers are paid, including the multi-lingual NYPD cops.
Catherine Holly is one of the 300 monitors that peruse the walkways with long metal poles used to correct wind-tossed curtains. A tennis coach living in Hong Kong, she inquired about working for the artists over a decade ago before the project was approved.
"I love that it makes you look up and smile," said Holly. "It doesn't matter what we want to call it. It's more that people are out here having fun and enjoying themselves."
"It's a happy contrast to the bleak winter," said Bill Christian of New Jersey, walking his dog in the park. "It's like a carnival, like parading a flag."
