"The Gates"

By Rita J. King

The Gates in Central Park brings up a debate that has long been buried in the plastic glare of corporate chintz that too often passes for creativity in America.

An artist I interviewed for an article about the project said the real question is not, “Is it art?” but, “Is it good art?”

Good art, this particular artist argued, is not about a massive use of materials (two thirds the amount of steel used to construct the Eiffel Tower was used for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s project, and that’s not even counting the vinyl tubing used for the actual gate pieces or the fabric flapping in the wind). Rather, the artist argued, good art is measured by the magic, the alchemy, of creating something from nothing by manipulating a medium.

I think the issue is trickier than graphite versus saffron-colored vinyl, or volume versus simplicity.

Many years ago I went to the Museum of Modern Art and saw an “organic sculpture,” which was literally nothing more than candy in shiny wrappers tossed on the floor. Accompanying the piece was an explanation that the sculpture would change shape over time as people took candy. This, I gathered, was what made the pile of candy art.

As I walked around MoMA that day with my young cousin, we saw another exhibit that caught us off guard and has stayed with us all these years since. It was a stone painted with a phrase, and while I can’t remember it exactly, it was something like, “All moments stop here and together we are everything that ever was.”

I still associate that stone with my cousin passing from adolescence, and it has come to stand in my mind as an example of great art because of the power of the message.

But what about the candy? Was that really an “organic sculpture?” If so, is every delicious, buzz-producing Halloween bag an “exhibit” worthy of such a famous museum?

Science and art are parallel paths, one changing the path of human evolution with ever greater discovery while the other comments on the transformation. A single quote can be great art.

“All that we do is touched with ocean,” the poet Richard Wilbur once wrote, “yet we remain on the shore of what we know.”

This simple idea might have been inexpensive to create, as compared to the $21 million necessary to construct The Gates, but experience can’t be measured in terms of money.

A friend asked me what I thought of the timing of The Gates so soon after the tsunami, and if I thought the expense could be justified. The fact is, if necessity was always covered before creativity was considered, there would be no art, and certainly no museums or galleries in which to exhibit it.

On Sunday, when I visited The Gates, I was attracted to the color and shape of the piece, which reminded me of monk’s robes or stage curtains. But is it a great work of art? I thought of the candy scattered on the floor of MoMA, and the people who removed pieces of it, thereby creating the sculpture’s “organic” nature.

Thousands of other people were also visiting The Gates. I saw a child drawing them, and heard a man say to a woman on his arm, “Shouldn’t we be having an important discussion?” She laughed. There is such a thing, after all, as taking life too seriously.

It is impressive that Christo and Jeanne-Claude are persistent enough to make their projects come to life. I was moved by the sheer force of this human effort, and by the interest of the people who turned out to see the fleeting phenomenon. The consciousness of those who pass under The Gates give the project a mind, and it can be argued that those myriad thought processes are a part of the piece, the same way those who take candy from the floor of MoMA are contributing to the overall art of that sculpture.

But can the artist be given full credit for a process that doesn’t result directly from manipulation of a chosen medium? I don’t think so. A poet wouldn’t become a Nobel laureate for leaving blanks for readers to fill in. It goes without saying that Christo and Jeanne-Claude have provided people with an intriguing rush as they walk through the saffron-colored vinyl piping and fabric, but I don’t think they’ve necessarily created great art. What they have done, however, is still important.

In an increasingly homogenous culture, The Gates is a strange and wonderful fleeting moment. People have been discouraged from expressing that mystical part of human nature that makes each of us so different from everyone else, and this project is a reminder that such expressions can’t be prevented, the same way negative actions are unpredictable and often unstoppable.

The last time so many people came to see something in New York City, it was the site where the World Trade Center once stood. In contrast, The Gates is so positive that it’s difficult to criticize such an effort, and it gives the city a flash of intrigue in the heart of winter, which is always a welcome diversion.

Many people are toiling over the intended meaning of The Gates. This is impossible to decipher, any more than the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile can be interpreted. Life is that way. Sometimes a strange aesthetic gets stamped over twenty-three miles of trails in Central Park, and all you can do is walk through it on your way through life, not wondering too much what it means, if it’s art, if it’s crazy or sane or if you’re hip enough to get it.

Nobody gets it, and that’s the commonality of the human experience.

originally published in the North Couty News

Rita J. King lives with her husband, musician and writer WB King, in New York.
She can be reached at dancingink@hotmail.com