gates

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Arts Gates by Gert Innsry A great gift in a particularly New York Style was given to the city by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Part hype, part happening, part art and part silliness, The Gates were a wholly successful event. New Yorkers and tourists alike strolled through avenues of 15 foot high saffron colored rectangles with waving cloth hangings of the same color, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. February, that most dreary of city months for once felt festive.

Part of the enjoyment was the anticipation generated by a well-funded publicity campaign. For several months prior to the actual event, TV news features and magazine and newspaper stories told us the Gates were coming, that its was a massive undertaking, and that it wasn't costing the city anything. Local community residents were hired, trained and formed into teams for the task of putting up the Gates. Drawings of the finished project were put on display at several locations.

In the week leading up to the Gates' official unveiling, the wooden foundation blocks that were to support the Gate uprights were distributed along all of the pathways in Central Park, and the uprights and crossbars were brought in by a huge fleet of trucks, a sight rare to the truck-restricted park drives. A few days before G-Day, the neighborhood teams fanned out to their appointed park areas and erected the Gates by capping two 16 foot uprights with an eight foot crossbar and stepping the bottoms of the uprights into metal fittings set into the foundation blocks. A gentle rivalry broke out among the teams to see who could erect the most arches in the time allotted.

Finally, at 8:30 AM of unveiling day, crowds gathered at the park entrances to see the fabric panels come down from the crossbars and view the Gates in all their glory. The crowds were quietly festive; people came with their babies in strollers, with their dogs, and with their cameras. Strangers spoke happily to each other, a rarity in New York. Promptly at 8:45, a member of each team used a long, hooked pole to unzip the shroud covering the crossbar of the first Gate of each area, freeing the saffron cloth panel to drop down between the uprights and wave gently in the breeze. One by one, the giant rectangles of the arches were turned into bannered Gates.

What did the experience of the Gates feel like? Before the banners dropped, the Gates were a study in geometry. Looking down a straight path, the arches formed an ever-diminshing series of nested rectangles. Where the path curved, the rectangular patterns became more complex. Visually, this truly was a work of art. After the banners dropped, walking in the park became a peaceful experience not unlike walking through a brightly lit saffron tunnel, with panels above and before you waving gently in the breeze. The effect was oddly moving, relaxing and at the same time cheering. New Yorkers and tourists alike were taken by surprise at the positive emotions evoked.

From outside the park, from the street or the buildings overlooking the park, the saffron lines of banners and Gates contrasted with the winter brown and later snow white of the park landscape, adding a visual depth not often seen in the park in winter.The feeling was of a park under siege by an army of sumurai, encamped with clan banners flying. Both from with and without the park, a definite Japanese feeling was evoked. This is sort sort of installation that Yoko Ono might have done, had she any talent. We are grateful that Christo and Jeanne-Claude had the talent and money to bring us this brief celebration.