Open Air Art: Clearing my mind of expectations
I’ve been thinking a lot about open air art lately; especially the kind of art anyone can walk up to outdoors in a public place. I can trace my thought process back to early this month when I saw the crews in Central Park begin bringing in the steel bases for the upcoming Christo and Jean-Claude installation. In the weeks since then, I find myself thinking more and more about open air art and my feelings towards it.
When it is unfurled next month, the Gates will update our notions of grandiosity for which New York is well known. Over one million square feet of fabric will be used for banners along 23 miles of footpaths in Central Park. This will be open air art that people will walk through.
The installation is happening because Mayor Bloomburg encouraged the artists’ to resubmit the project for city approval, in spite of the fact that many years earlier the city decisively rejected it. Problems were worked out—it was unacceptable for 30,000 holes be dug in the park as first proposed.—and this time the permits were granted.
I first became aware of Christo some 25 years ago with Running Fence, an installation of 24 miles of fabric running through California’s Sonoma County. A friend of mine who was an environmental planner told me about preparing the studies on the potential environmental impacts of the Running Fence.
I didn’t go see the piece, although I was in northern California. Back then, I just couldn’t grasp it, and I think I was typical of a lot of people. It says something, all these years later, that Christo and Jean-Claude can now put an installation in Central Park, with little problem about people grasping their concepts as art and not simply a stunt.
Since Running Fence, they have surrounded islands in Florida in fabric, wrapped a bridge in Paris, and planted hundreds of big umbrellas on the coasts of California and Japan. Christo and Jean-Claude own the spiritual copyright to art that juxtoposes fabric and geography, and have showed they are the right artists, perhaps the only artists, who should be granted permission to use Central Park as their canvas. .
Generally, I have mixed emotions about supersized art pieces. I’ve seen some very big pieces in warehouse galleries and other places. A lot of it seems to me to be the artist’s attempt to take a concept and somehow make it consequential through a scale of grandeur. I have been thinking about this, and also about other issues pertaining to the meaning of art to me and the context of public art in open air settings.
I don’t know how I feel about the Gates installation yet, and I won’t know until I experience it for myself. I hope to keep an open mind and a check on my real feelings as this project unfolds. I may come to love it. Or I may feel otherwise. Right now, I am trying to clear my mind of any expectations.
When it is unfurled next month, the Gates will update our notions of grandiosity for which New York is well known. Over one million square feet of fabric will be used for banners along 23 miles of footpaths in Central Park. This will be open air art that people will walk through.
The installation is happening because Mayor Bloomburg encouraged the artists’ to resubmit the project for city approval, in spite of the fact that many years earlier the city decisively rejected it. Problems were worked out—it was unacceptable for 30,000 holes be dug in the park as first proposed.—and this time the permits were granted.
I first became aware of Christo some 25 years ago with Running Fence, an installation of 24 miles of fabric running through California’s Sonoma County. A friend of mine who was an environmental planner told me about preparing the studies on the potential environmental impacts of the Running Fence.
I didn’t go see the piece, although I was in northern California. Back then, I just couldn’t grasp it, and I think I was typical of a lot of people. It says something, all these years later, that Christo and Jean-Claude can now put an installation in Central Park, with little problem about people grasping their concepts as art and not simply a stunt.
Since Running Fence, they have surrounded islands in Florida in fabric, wrapped a bridge in Paris, and planted hundreds of big umbrellas on the coasts of California and Japan. Christo and Jean-Claude own the spiritual copyright to art that juxtoposes fabric and geography, and have showed they are the right artists, perhaps the only artists, who should be granted permission to use Central Park as their canvas. .
Generally, I have mixed emotions about supersized art pieces. I’ve seen some very big pieces in warehouse galleries and other places. A lot of it seems to me to be the artist’s attempt to take a concept and somehow make it consequential through a scale of grandeur. I have been thinking about this, and also about other issues pertaining to the meaning of art to me and the context of public art in open air settings.
I don’t know how I feel about the Gates installation yet, and I won’t know until I experience it for myself. I hope to keep an open mind and a check on my real feelings as this project unfolds. I may come to love it. Or I may feel otherwise. Right now, I am trying to clear my mind of any expectations.
posted by Paul Cogley at 7:19 PM
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