Outside Counsel

Viewed at a distance--—glimpsed from outside Central Park, say, perhaps a block or so away, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s New York City installation “The Gates” had a somewhat tacky look, like orange plastic snow fencing, or the barricades around an excavation site. We had come to see this project on its last day, and I was trying to be open-minded, but my first glimpse was not encouraging.

I was living in New York City when the artists first proposed erecting a series of arches draped in fabric along the park’s pathways, and although I was initially a skeptic, seeing photographs of the “Wrapped Reichstag”, and “Running Fence”,, installed in Sonoma and Marin Counties, California in 1976 persuaded me that a temporary work like this might be worthwhile. New York was a very different place when “The Gates” was first proposed in 1979. Central Park was a very different place, a kind of synonym for mugging and danger and violence. Back then, a project like “The Gates” seemed like a way to make the park accessible again.

I aquired a better understanding of Olmsted’s conception of public green space when we moved to Buffalo, particularly once A. became involved with the Olmsted Parks Conservancy. When I learned that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a long-time patron of the arts, had given “The Gates” a green light, my skepticism returned. We’'d had a sort of installation in Delaware Park for several winters, featuring neon snowmen, and the like, and I knew that this sort of artificiality was antithetical to Olmsted’s vision. I was worried that deploring illuminated reindeer and applauding Christo and Jeanne-Claude’'s project at the same time would make me the sort of snob that boasts about never watching TV.

As I got nearer to the 97th Street entrance to Central Park the appearance of “The Gates” improved. The play of light on the fabric, and the effect of movement and shadow made it appear less garish, and the scale of the thing became more apparent once I was close enough to see people interacting with it. The orange fabric cast a warm light on the people walking through the arches, and I realized that there were scores of people walking, talking, taking photographs and otherwise enjoying the sort of clear cold February day that might otherwise have been spent doing whatever it is that people do on late winter Sundays. These people, it soon became apparent, had come from all over the country, and all over the world to be in Central Park enjoying the experience of this artwork.

Listening to other people'’s conversations, it became clear that quite a number of the people present were German, and had witnessed “"Wrapped Reichstag"”. One of the volunteer docents told me that many of the Germans he’d spoken to felt that the Reichstag project represented an important transition for their country, and that many other people had told him that, for them, “"The Gates"” represented a transition from the post September 11 world. Perhaps so, but more than anything else what I found remarkable about "“The Gates”" was that the experience of participating in it seemed to create a kind of community. In a way that was very different from what Fredrick Law Olmsted would have imagined, thousands of people were enjoying his park in a way that he would have recognized in a heartbeat. The experience of “"The Gates”" was the experience of being at a party or a festival. People stood patently on line to climb the stairs of Belvedere Castle; everyone was at pains to stop to allow someone else to take a picture; we all smiled at people coming towards us from the opposite direction.

“"The Gates"” were a remarkable piece of engineering and logistics, and the evanescent quality of the project gave the whole thing a slightly intoxicating air: we all knew we’d never see anything like this again, and I think that feeling must have been present from the moment the installation went up. Inherent in the nature of the installation was that the elements would affect the texture of the cloth, and the movement of the drapery. There were traces of rust on the black steel base supports, and the orange rust was like the orange scarves and sweaters that people seemed to be wearing, or the Cristo Orange buzz cut we spotted one guy sporting. The installation had an organic quality in that sense: it changed over time, and it worked change on the people who were exposed to it.

I have more to say about "The Gates", and a chance to get paid to say some of it, so I'll let go of the topic here. It was worth the trip.