The Gates, Christo & Jean-Claude

[lescaret]

JLoco,
your Bowery sketch smokey grit the darkstained urban face with a watertower.
I can almost smell it.
And hear it.
The tiny white cross no bullwark against the sooty tide. Nor should it be.

Thanks for the image.

[jimboloco]

I am amazed that I put in the little details like that.

There is somerthing to be said for the performance, the organizing, they did, as well as the long dayz building

darkstained urban face with a watertower

I did follow your link and saw some images that I do like, like,
"Running Fence" out on the plains, hilly plains,
and "Valley Curtain" also.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113472/

.Think I'll have an orange.
An some vodka.
Here's one sweet toast
for you.

[lescaret]

Here's a link to a satellite image of the Gates:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... gates.html

[jimboloco]

nice.
here's smithson's "spiral jetty

and the one by Christo that really gets me,

also
http://christojeanneclaude.net/rf.html
His running fences.

I was not aware of his silent partner, Jeanne-Claude, before.

Now in retrospect, am detatched from my prior opinion, more like an onion, peeling away layers. Left with a residual calm.

[mousey1]

I don't want to be a sour note.....but I don't get this kind of "Art" and I use the term ever so loosely. If I hung this stuff in my yard 'twould merely be called "laundry"

Ah well, I'm glad you and others seem to be enjoying it.

I don't want to be a wet blanket, a soggy wet orange blanket!

[jimboloco]

expanding the bounds of art.
legions of ribboned marchers
embracing earth and form.

[lescaret]

I don't want to be a sour note.....but I don't get this kind of "Art"

Mousey1, there's really nothing to "get". No hidden meanings, no complicated symbolism built into these installations (at least regarding of The Gates, perhaps even more generally ala Smithson's work like The Spiral Jetty - thanks for posting that, JLoco! - though I'm not familiar enough with Smithson to know if he was going for "deep meaning").

Here's the thing. These sorts of installations are all about the viewers and what they bring to it and how it affects them. The Gates is a great example. Okay, if you reduce it to its mundane components - 7500 vinyl gates, scads of orangey fabric, a brigade of workers putting it all up - it doesn't seem like much. Or rather, it seems like a lot of STUFF for no apparent reason. BUT - look what happens when it's all assembled.

Aesthetics aside, here is an installation that brought literally hundreds of thousands of people together in a wintery public place in a city with famously guarded and suspicious citizens. That's pretty amazing. And guess what? Most people enjoyed it, enjoyed the park, enjoyed themselves and each other. Now really, in a world in a constant state of war (the unending war on terror), how cool is that?

Aesthetically speaking, I suppose, when looked upon in photos and from afar, one might not be so moved by The Gates (or the Spiral Jetty or Andy Goldsworthy works, etc). Though actually I don't think that's true across the board, I think they reproduce well and seem VERY cool in photographs. But my point is this - if you actually experience them (which I was lucky enough to do), you get an entirely different perspective on them.

You hear the soft swish of the fabric, you touch it, you enjoy 360 vision and see the gates amid the trees, the rolling hills, the rocks, the sidewalks, the people, you begin to see the park in ways you never have before, the landscape comes alive because its highlighted by the color and the serpentine meandering of the gates, you see rises and falls where before you just saw a sidewalk, you see the bare winter trees starkly black in beautiful harsh contrast to the explosion of orange/saffron. In short, you have a very tactile and stimulating experience. And, in addition, you can laugh and be delighted because there is WHIMSEY at work here - this work isn't all about SERIOUS matters and SERIOUS global problems and ARTIST ANGST. It's playful and joyous and celebratory!

If I hung this stuff in my yard 'twould merely be called "laundry"

Probably so but that's because you'd probably be thinking of it as laundry. But you could call it art if art it was to you, if your intentions were pure, if you conceived of it, designed it, lived with it, loved it, and then produced it.

Art emenates from the artist's soul, methinks. By that I mean that when someone with pure intent and sincerity of action consciously produces something and calls it art then, voila, it is art. Who is to say otherwise?

People create art for many reasons (hmmmm, that sounds like a worthwhile thread to start - why create art? what drives the artist to do so?). I think Christo & JeanClaude produce wildly eclectic, interesting, whimiscal art that is imbued with a twinkling eccentric sincerity. It's refreshing!

How easy it is for people to criticize the likes of Christo & JeanClaude, complaining about "all that money" and "all that effort" put into what? A bunch of dumb ugly Gates.

So why don't people criticize the relentless amount of completely banal, insipid, mind-killing schlop that oozes out of the television set? Much money and hours of people's time go into producing television shows. Or how about the time & money & energy going into space-based weapons systems? Jeez. And Christo & JeanClaude are wasting money & energy? I don't recall the Strategic Defense Initiative bringing smiles to 100,000 faces.

Anyway. To get back to answering your completely reasonable commentary. The best way to "get" these sorts of art installations is to be open-minded about them, to see them with a spirit of generosity, humor, and delight, and not to get hung up about their meaning or how much they cost.

Does that make sense?

[jimboloco]

Thanks for your persistance, les

you carry the day

I have got to admire your persistance in this, which is an art experience in itself.

You won me over.!

Here's the thing. These sorts of installations are all about the viewers and what they bring to it and how it affects them. ...You hear the soft swish of the fabric, you touch it, you enjoy 360 vision and see the gates amid the trees, the rolling hills, the rocks, the sidewalks, the people, you begin to see the park in ways you never have before, the landscape comes alive because its highlighted by the color and the serpentine meandering of the gates, you see rises and falls where before you just saw a sidewalk, you see the bare winter trees starkly black in beautiful harsh contrast to the explosion of orange/saffron.

Actually, ostrich person, who calls yourself mousey, I like your smile, and folks have painted laundry, by the way, flappin in the breeze
http://www.brankoparadisart.com/gallery2.html

and does smithson want deep meaning in his spiral jetty?
I'll have ta get back to you on that.

LEZCARET!

[lescaret]

Cheers to you, Jimboloco.

I think I started this thread by saying that I used to dismiss Christo & JeanClaude but then underwent a mental conversion after reading about & talking with people who saw the wrapped Reichstag.

I'm sympathetic to people who "don't get it" or who question these installations.

But at the same time, I'm euphoric now that I was able to actually experience a project like this, and I wish other skeptics could experience one too.

Last week the letters to the NYTimes responding to the front page column about the Gates were roughly 60/40 for/against. I actually felt bad for the people who so staunchly denounced it. They sounded so bitter, so stuck in their own cynical cages. I thought, "that's no way to live".

I thought, "give me miles of saffron gates over hunched pot roast dinners anyday".

[Lightning Rod]

hey, lescaret

don't put down pot roast

I did an art installation one time

where I nailed a pot roast to the wall of the museum.

Then every day I would go and slice off a piece and eat it

It was a good concept for about the first three days.

Then the whole thing started getting gamey.

Next time I'm going to stipulate that the gallery be refridgerated

[lescaret]

Heh heh heh, good one LR!

Wasn't meaning to slam pot roast really I just liked the sound of "hunched pot roast dinners". What the hell is a "hunched pot roast" anyway??

True: tomorrow is my father's 81st birthday. I'm making him a braised buffalo pot roast.

My father grew up in Chicago 'til he was 10 and then upstate Minnesota. Hunted, trapped, and fished like you read about now in folklore books and occasionally in history books.

He never nailed a pot roast to the wall but he did nail down racoon & fox hides to the wood floor of our attic (to stretch them, before selling them to the furrier).

[jimboloco]

How's about this for art?
Mischief of 12 and 13 year old boys.....

.....we also snuck into the municipal swimming pool, scaling the tall chainlink fence and jumping off the high board in the middle of the night was glorious, but then the dogs barked, the sirens whined, and we scrambled away to safety, dodging headlights as we made our way back to the hideout....we also committed missdemeanors, i confess, i left my mark, charcoal plucked from a backyard grill, slazhed giant zorro "Z"s across suburban garage doors, we hoisted the school zone policeman statue up to the roof at the school where it watched over us every morning peering down,, our silent partner in crime as we went inside.....stayed there a good while too, the two story building where nodody looked up except us, it remained there in broad daylight for the entire school year....and the demonic, when we'd pour a gasoline trail across the road, hiding then light it as cars approached a line of flaming luciferian enlightenment from our dark souls, but the scariest was when we tossed water balloons at cars but were chased by an angry motorist at full blast down the hill, right through my own back yard, the madman in close pursuit, a full screaming scared sprint, we finally lost him at the bottom of the hill where we ran off the road into the woods and up a secret embankment.....we finally got nabbed, tho, coming back to the tents one night to find the cops waiting....and were called in for skinney dipping in the local pond, spied upon by viscious girlies.....and when we crushed stinkbombs in a not-so-convenient store.....

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1845

We had no summer art camp

They nailed Jesus to the cross. He died for our sins.
Structured brainwashing. Lemme out!, screamed the kids,
and they were free.

[mousey1]

Lescaret, nicely put. I am glad for the positive effects this artful display has had.....

Maybe I just hate to see the hand of man so prominent in nature, even for the sake of art, even for the grand purpose of teaching us something about ourselves. That nature, in and of itself is not enough to draw out wide-eyed wonder, the explorer in us. I know all will be returned to normal, for good or for bad, but this treatment somewhat rankles me. Perhaps I just can't get past the fact that it is despoiling to my eye to see human gaudiness so flagrantly flapping amidst nature's wonders, be it only a park.

I am a country person....and a bit of a hick. City dwellers are a different species to me. Whether that has anything to do with anything.....I do not know, just thought I'd throw it in.

Lescaret, I see your point of view and appreciate it, thank-you. Your descriptions are vivid and lovely.

Jimbo, glad you like my smile, my best quality actually. Psssst, just between you and me, I look nothing like me. I do however have some of my qualities.
Nice painting. Painted laundry is good, has a certain aestheticness.

ps: Deep meaning? I am too shallow to search for deep meanings, I surf the surface, I'm all about eye candy. Well, when it comes to art that is. Otherwise I like delving, like delving very much. Do I make any sense at all?

[jimboloco]

well, delving can be like getting out of the box
the structured brainwashing.............................
otherwize, skimboing th surface is what I do
mozt of the time,
how I teach, when I do, break it down into the most simple
assessment, thenn rebuild it drom there,
how to understand almozt anythink,
I think,

[lescaret]

M1, I meant to reply to your comments on nature but the whole HST thing overwhelmed my posting bent.

Nevertheless.

It's hard to beat Nature when it comes to crafting the perfect beauty. A nautilus shell? The colors of sunlight setting through various clouds? A Redwood?? A mountain range???

No Picasso, Christo, de Kooning, Pollack, da Vinci, O'Keefe, Grandma Moses gonna' approach any of that!

And that's fine, art isn't there to one up the Big N.

Art is the artist's medium through which to communicate their own singular vision, their experience on the planet.

If I were to take a guess, I'd say Christo and JeanClaude had no intention of making Central Park any more beautiful or creating something that rivaled, say, the stately presence of a 100 year old oak tree, or the peculiar dignity embodied by the thick and scaled trunk of a mighty Sycamore.

Indeed no. My guess is that they were going for something less ambitious, perhaps nothing more than a momentery splash of color (or, 7500 splashes of color) that, if nothing else, caused us all to see the oak and the sycamore and their place in the park just a little bit differently than we did before. Perhaps we smiled, or chuckled, or, in some cases, wretched, but, for a moment at least, we SAW rather than just ambled along, eyes to the sidewalk.