Gated Community

I went with some friends this weekend to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's famed "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005." While I am generally skeptical of things that have such widespread support (I constantly worry about being one of those never-questioning royal subjects who won't acknowledge that the emporer has no clothes), I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this massive public art experience. (My friend said that it looked like a giant Hindu wedding celebration.)

I think that Michael Kimmelman put it well in the New York Times when he wrote: "[e]ven at first blush, it was clear that "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."
 
It reminded me of John Updike's New Yorker review of the newly renovated MoMA, where he discusses the role of art museums, and art in general, in the modern world:

"The art museums, once haunted by a few experts, students, and idlers, have become the temples of the Ideal, of the Other, of the something else that, if only for a peaceful moment, redeems our daily getting and spending. Here resides something beyond our frantic animal existence. Leonardo spoke scornfully of those men who do nothing in their time on earth but produce excrement.

Art, in its traditional forms of painting, drawing, and sculpture, is a human by-product whose collection, in homes, galleries, and museums, lightens the load, as it were, of life. By its glow we bask in the promise of a brighter, more lasting realm reached by a favored few—St. Vermeer, St. Pollock, St. Leonardo. In Paris and Florence, tourists from Japan come by the busful, pose giggling for a photograph in front of the “Mona Lisa” or “The Birth of Venus,” and hurry on their way, blessed."

And so after my visit through Central Park today, I too felt blessed. 

 

Comments

[Teresa]

Such gorgeous photos! Thank you for putting them up! I'm taking in the Gates this Saturday...might stop by sometime at night, too, to see the difference in the exhibit when the sun isn't shining...

[Audrey]

Perhaps the author is trying to place something glaringly ugly in Central Park to say something about humans' encroachment on nature? If so, he has succeeded. The bright orange gates are visually unappealing and obstruct the view across the park. I agree it might be fun to have a giant exhibit that brings people together to view it and talk about (as our friend Betsy noted) but why not something more visually appealing? I cannot believe the artist prepared for this for years and THIS is what he came up with.