Open Air Art #5: At the Unfurling of the Gates

It is Saturday morning in Central Park. Like many others, I am tantalizingly drawn here for the unfurling of The Gates. Some of us are at the trail by the frozen lake near 77th Street when we see about a half-dozen gray-vested volunteers arriving. We gather around as one volunteer lifts a pole to hook the orange nylon loop hanging from one of the gates. With a pull of the ribbon, a pleated nylon curtain is unfurled, the first we’ve seen this morning. Some people clap, one small girl squeals in delight. As the morning moves on, a hundred gates are unfurled and then a thousand. Helicopters are buzzing above but there no announcements; no other sounds except a city park’s cold breeze and the mingled voices of conversations.

As the unfurling proceeds, I begin to gain a feeling of the scope of the artist’s vision now that I can move around in it. The span of gates proportionately fills the scale of this generous swath of natural landscape within its global city. Elegantly conceived and simple to the eye, gate after gate is unfurled and the installation begins to exert its force of connectiveness within the park

I stop at a bench and take in some of the particulars. The installation does not seem to stand still. Within each vibrantly colored vinyl frame an atmospheric performance is taking place: the pleated nylon curtain will hang still momentarily, then breezily float or billow in an updraft, partially lit by fleeting sunlight.

I sense a feeling that this show is meant to be enjoyed right now. Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s vision and execution and New York’s accommodation have combined for a fully successful art-happening. Any questions about artistic pretensions, city precedents, aesthetic intentions, revenue generators, etcetera, seem like just a lot of talk.

For me, it feels unusual in today’s corporate era to be granted this simple freedom to contemplate an artist’s efforts completely unstuck from any hint of commercialism or outside promotion. I am reminded of when I visited Portugal in 2003 and saw the astonishing display of ancient petrographic art in the Coa Valley. Obviously, there was no commercial intent when those rock outcroppings were etched so beautifully with their images of animals and symbols.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude are demonstrating that public space, even at one of the world’s busiest crossroads, is yet to be considered for purely artistic visioning and expression. In 1981, New York cited the fear of precedent in denying approval for the original Gates proposal. That finding is now completely turned over. The Gates can be viewed in context to its antecedents, reaching all the way back to the post Ice Age.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, with their thirty-plus years of experience, probably intuited precisely how long this installation could retain its stimulating sense as an art-happening event. Its brevity is part of its art. The Gates will be in Central Park for 16 days and then removed and recycled, as if plowed back into the earth, insuring that its lasting images will be unfazed from time and familiarity. The Gates will retain much from its first impressions, never needing repair or restoration.