Shots of the Day – 23 - The Gates
The Gates, Central Park, New York City (25 February 2005)
On the next-to-last day of my working life, I took a vacation day and went to New York City to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s latest monumental work right before it was dismantled. The two artists are known for their heroic fabric expressions…like wrapping the entire German Parliament building or placing floating pink aprons around eleven islands in Biscayne Bay.
The Gates, Central Park, New York City (25 February 2005)
Throughout Central Park, over 7500 steel archways were positioned along 23 miles of paths. The installation, in place for only 16 days, cost many millions of dollars and employed hundreds of people to put it up and take it down. Each archway or gate had a curtain of bright fabric that was untethered and hung still or blew with the wind. The sophisticates among us might say the color of the panels was saffron. I suspect the rest of us (especially Syracuse and Tennessee fans) would call it orange.
The Gates, Central Park, New York City (25 February 2005)
The artists’ statement for The Gates says, “The…free-hanging saffron colored fabric panels seemed like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees”
The reviews of the project ranged (as one might expect) from a delightful and colorful addition to the bleak winter landscape to an abomination. I’ll certainly agree the lines of warm color stood out across the barren fields, through the leafless trees and from the tall buildings.
The Gates, Central Park, New York City (25 February 2005)
This was my first serious outing with a digital camera…a Nikon D-70. It was four months after it was purchased and had been taken to Monument Valley and Vienna…but I was too timid to fully commit to this new technology. Computers intimidate me and a digital SLR is just another computer. I relied on my film camera and took only a few shots with the new kid in town. But now it was time to take the plunge…’no guts, no glory’ and all that.
Glad I did.
posted by Ted Ringger @ 10:31 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Glad you had the opportunity to play with your new toy. Sorry you made the trip for such a worthless project. Really? Millions of dollars, hundreds of man-hours for art that can be enjoyed by very few for a grand total of 16 days?
The installation was inspired by the tradition of Japanese torii gates, constructed at the entrance to Shinto shrines. The custom to donate a torii has spread since the Edo period (1603 – 1868) and now along the main path to the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan there are around 10,000 vermilion-colored torii gates (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha).
Millions of worshipers visit the shrine every year. Now, THAT’S art to celebrate! THAT'S art to fund!
Jack - I certainly respect your opinion but the first thoughts that come to mind are [1] I'm certain that more people saw the Central Park gates than most of the other Christo installations like the Biscayne Bat Islands or the curtains strung across some remote western hills; [2] I'm surprised that they found the funds for this extravagance somewhere and I suspect the sources were private...but can't say for sure and [3] if the Shinto want to festoon their shrine with thousands of torii gates, that's their business...As with our Constitution, I do not support using public funds for religious expressions.
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