The Gates: Bonus Coverage

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger noticed that the Gates are still up (they’re being taken down s l o w l y) and checked in with critical bonus coverage:

I saw The Gates a week ago from a window on the edge of the Park, and they looked unimpressive. This past Monday, after a doctor’s appointment near the Park, I walked over for a better look. For sure, my experience of The Gates was unusual. The event had “closed” on Sunday, but it was still up.

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.

Even though Henninger enjoys the occasional “knee-jerk kick against hype’s fat backside” (note this glorious phrase for further use!), he found the Gates palatable:

Walking earlier this week in Central Park among the 7,500 cookie-cut “Gates” of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, my thoughts turned to Ed Banfield. Edward Banfield was a famous government professor at Harvard with zero tolerance for conventional wisdom. He was known for his unusual insights into the political and social life of cities, but in 1982 he upended the art establishment with an article in Harper’s titled, “Art Versus Collectibles: Why museums should be stuffed with fakes.” Stuffed with fakes?

Citing Picasso’s “Girl With Mandolin,” then valued at $2 million, Ed Banfield argued that nearly all of that claimed “value” was about scarcity and investment, while most of the work’s aesthetic appreciation could be had with a high-quality $850 reproduction. He proposed widely distributing the pleasure of Picasso’s painting “for only $850,” thereby giving most museums “$1,999,150 left over to purchase other sources of aesthetic satisfaction.” Needless to say, a Sistine Chapel’s worth of art-world rage fell on Banfield’s head.

Ed Banfield would have relished what has been loosed from The Gates of Central Park.

For 16 days, the masses flowed through and around Central Park’s 843 acres to see 7,500 replicates of what some called “art” and others “totalitarianism” or “defacement.” On the first weekend, 800,000 people showed up, about 790,000 more than show up at the upscale art galleries downtown on Saturday. A friend arriving from California that Sunday reported the airport aflutter with out-of-towners flying in for The Gates. Ultimately millions came.

Once out of The Gates, however, many headed for more–at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the newly upgraded Museum of Modern Art and the New York Historical Society. I assume nearly all those people thought the experience to be had in the museums was more or less the same as they’d just had among the waving saffron flaps in Central Park. How bad can this be?

Closing the Gates

As the snow comes down, workers are apparently dismantling Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates, which closed yesterday:

Art is long, and life is short, and city contracts are even shorter. The dismantling of the 7,500 gates was to start first thing today, and, Jeanne-Claude said, in keeping with her and Christo’s agreement with the city, it all has to be gone by March 15. That schedule is fine with her. February was the only month the project would work, she said, when the trees are leafless and row upon row of color can be seen in every direction.

The dismantling will be easier than the installation because there will not be any need to be careful. The 5,290 tons of steel will be melted down and recycled – “The aluminum is going to become cans of soda,” Jeanne-Claude says – and the fabric will be shredded and turned into carpet padding. Then all that will be left of “The Gates” will be the memories, and the T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, watches and baseball caps.

Typical Times color describing the scene yesterday:

It was a bright sunny morning, but cold, and the park was crowded, considering the weather. There were the usual joggers, cyclists and Chinese wedding ceremonies, but also, of course, the New Yorkers and tourists coming for a first or last look.

Everywhere she walked, Jeanne-Claude was followed by a constant stream of thank yous and butchered mercis.

Admit It: Central Park Sucks!

More Gates-related opinion, this time from the New York Observer’s Hilton Kramer, who is predictably crabby:

My own view is that the gates are nothing less than an unforgivable defacement of a public treasure, and everyone responsible for promoting it—including our publicity-seeking Mayor—should be held accountable, not only for supporting bad taste but for violating public trust.

What has to be understood about this whole affair is that it’s not only an assault on nature, but also the wanton desecration of a precious work of art. After all, Central Park is the creation of two of the greatest landscape artists in our history—Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux—and it’s entitled to the kind of care and protection that civilized societies normally accord to works of art that belong to the community. If some barbarian entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and proceeded to drape orange banners on the paintings and sculptures, we can be sure that the police would be called in to halt such a flagrant violation of a treasured art collection.

With sincere apologies to Joe Queenan (whose [blank] Sucks! series of articles in Spy Magazine were some of the funniest things I’ve ever read and remember), I want to clear up something that I’ve been saving up for a while: Face it, Central Park Sucks.

This is not to say that it’s not a lovely place, a treasured oasis in the middle of a busy city, a stunning achievement of design and reinterpretation of nature, or what-have-you. It’s just that sometimes I question whether it’s really the “big, beautiful canvas” folks like Hilton Kramer constantly say it is.

Let’s review:

It’s certainly overexposed; try finding some solace for contemplative communing with so-called nature there on one of a handful of pleasant spring or summer days. You can’t. Even in New York there are more pleasant natural settings to “get away from it all.”

As a stunning achievement in landscape design, I don’t think it’s a myth that Olmsted and Vaux preferred their design for Prospect Park to the earlier Central Park. (I will gladly revise this if it turns out this isn’t the case; I’ve heard it so often that I believe it’s true.) Sure, you move through the formalism of the park’s southern end towards the untrammeled beauty of the Ramble; big fucking deal — Van Cortlandt Park, for example, is basically the same thing! Plus there are those absurd transverse roads that cut up the “genius design.” A revolution in traffic flow, but not exactly picturesque. And that gaudy Belvedere Castle — come on! A model boat pond — please! Statuary to well-known greats like Giuseppe Mazzini — what exactly does he have to do with Central Park? Nothing! And don’t even get me started on Sir Walter Scott or noted Confederate gynecologist James Marion Sims. Face it, this park was “defaced” long before Christo and Jeanne-Claude got to it.

For all Kramer’s righteous indignance over the “precious work of art” that is Central Park, he is perhaps forgetting the myriad transgressions perpetrated on it over the years. I’ll take fifty years of Gates before another crappy-ass ice skating rink, volleyball court, baseball field or playground — not to mention the yearly commercialization of Summerstage concerts in the park. If Olmsted and Vaux could see it today, I’m sure they wouldn’t take too kindly the encroachment on their “design.” Which is to say, it’s a fucking park, dude — it’s meant to be used! I have to say, I don’t really care whether there are five more places for lawn bowling (think about that violation of “democratic ideals” for a second there). Parks are meant to be inhabited. Even by dog runs! Call it what you want, but it’s far from a painting in the Met.

From stoners lighting up in Sheep Meadow to the used condoms in the Ramble to the countless movie crews restricting access to the cabs speeding down the drive to the hippies playing bad folk music at Strawberry Fields to the parasitic vendors to the crowds, crowds, CROWDS, the park is not all it’s made out to be. Face it, Central Park Sucks!

(Again, apologies to Joe Queenan, but I’m typing quickly here.)

By way of a bonus, here are Excerpts from Queenan’s piece, posted on a newsgroup back in 1993 (I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it’s basically what I remember):

With one or two exceptions – Coltrane, Miles – jazz is an art form that has always been dominated by fat old men in sunglasses and ridiculous suits playing songs with names like “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Epistrophy.” And talk about role models: The most famous jazz musician of them all was a tubby old trumpet player who ended up singing “Hello, Dolly!” with Streisand while wiping his forehead with a soggy hankerchief like some lard-butt umpire at Wrigley Field on Nickel Beer Night. The second-most famous jazz musician was a self-anointed duke who wrote ghastly songs like “Satin Doll.” The third-most-famous jazz musician was an emaciated junkie who used to play with his back to the audience and occasionally sprayed the folks in the front row while spitting into his instrument. The list of deadbeats goes on and on. Stan Getz? Junkie. Chet Baker? Junkie. Charlie Parker? Junkie. Oscar Peterson? Fat, old, boring ivory-tinkler.

I wish, wish, wish someone would reprint these essays somewhere! “Greenmarkets Suck” was another hilarious one.

The Color Saffron

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s dirty secret emerges — The Gates aren’t really “saffron”:

When it comes to art and food, everyone is a critic.

That’s the case with “The Gates,” the public art snaking through 23 miles of Central Park through Sunday. The artists who produced this series of flags, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, say it is the color of saffron. New Yorkers who know their way around a kitchen disagree.

“Saffron produces a golden color, like a taxicab,” said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurant consultant and an expert cook who lives in Brooklyn. Like many other cooks, he was surprised that the artists called the fabric saffron. “This color is orange – more like a persimmon than saffron,” he said.

To the cook, saffron is the color of Provençal bouillabaisse, Milanese risotto, and Indian shrikhand.

It is not the color of a crossing guard’s safety vest.

It makes a difference when chefs are charged with devising saffron-related dishes to complement the event:

Not that a color correction would matter much in some New York restaurants, where any promotion in February can seem like a good idea. NYC & Company, a publicly financed organization that promotes the city, has encouraged restaurants to develop special saffron menus in honor of “The Gates.”

But a dish made golden with saffron does not look much like a “Gate.” So at Bolo, for instance, the chef de cuisine, Dan Mihalko, had to add carrots to his saffron sauce to produce the right color.

Bill Yosses, the chef at Josephs, runs his saffron Pavlova under the broiler to add some toasty hues to the meringue. “It’s the real saffron color – it’s yellow orange,” he said.

At Django the chef Cedric Tovar did his best to make the promotion work, though he said he does not understand the relationship between “The Gates” and the spice, or even between public art and his kitchen.

Still, he soldiered on. He put a bouillabaisse with saffron on the menu, then added an appetizer of grilled stuffed squid punched up with a sauce of piquillo peppers, vinegar and olive oil. The sauce, he says, is orange. And saffron-free.

“I guess the color is what they want,” he said. “I haven’t seen ‘The Gates’ myself.”

And with that, I see the true genius behind Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Just when you’re sick to death of reading about their installations, they’re over. Can I say it? I will: Please, Lord, make it stop! (And, God willing, Sunday it should!)

A Bubble of Participatory Narcissism That It Will Be Pitiable to Have Missed

The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl weighs in on The Gates:

Those who deplore “The Gates” as ugly aren’t wrong, just poor sports. The work’s charm-free, synthetic orange hue—saffron? no way—is something you would wear only in the woods during deer season, in order to avoid being shot. The nylon fabric is sullen to the touch. The proportions of the arches are graceless, and dogs alone esteem the clunky bases. As for the sometimes heard praise of the work for framing and, in the process, revealing unsuspected lovelinesses of the Park—C’mon, people! You don’t need artificial aids to notice things. “The Gates” does trigger beauty when, as on the aforementioned Sunday afternoon, a low sun backlights the fluttering fabric, which combusts like stained glass in a molten state. This effect lasts all of about two seconds—the time span suggested in the observation of the art historian Kenneth Clark that we can enjoy a purely aesthetic sensation for only as long as we can keenly savor the smell of a fresh-cut orange. (Yes, he said an orange.) “The Gates” succeeds precisely by being, on the whole, a big nothing. Comprehended at a glance, it lets us get right down to being crazy about ourselves, in a bubble of participatory narcissism that it will be pitiable to have missed.

I don’t have a problem with that reading of it!

Administrative Note: Remember “A bubble of participatory narcissism that it will be pitiable to have missed” for future reference!