The Gates

The Gates. An art project by Cristo and Jeanne-Claude which involves filling Central Park with giant saffron gates with curtains hanging from the top. There are thousands of these gates lining every walk way of Central Park. The one question that every one in New York and around the country seems to be asking is: "Why?" The only adequate response I've heard is: "Why not?"
Cristo and Jeanne-Claude says The Gates only serve and aestetic purpose to the park. They struggle over three decades to construct these gates because they would look cool. Yet, this answer doesn't seem to satisfy anyone and I ask: Why not? Why do teenage girls pierce their bellybuttons or bleach their hair blonde? Why do mid-aged men drive Corvets and wear sunglasses? Are they trying to make statement? The teenage girls and old men do it because it looks "cool" by their standards. So, Cristo and Jeanne-Claude think the saffron gates covering Central Park in February looks cool. Who's to question their personal taste? I'm not defending Cristo and Jeanne-Claude's actions nor am I denouncing them, I'm just presenting a side that I feel hasn't been addressed.
Let me start at the beginning of my experience with the work of Cristo and Jeanne-Claude. I was seven. I was sitting in a hot Honda Accord with my mother, my father and my annoying younger sister sweating beside my in the back seat. As a side note, I don't find my sister annoying anymore, we've both grown up a lot since then. So, my parents loaded my sister and I into the car one morning and drove into the middle-of-California-nowhere. Let me set the scene for you. Me, my family, a hot car, a two lane highway weaving through the California plains and giant yellow umbrellas. What would you think? I had no idea why they were there. To a seven year giant yellow unbrellas in the middle of nowhere is VERY confusing. I wanted to know WHY there were unbrellas in the plains and WHY they were open when it was sunny and WHY we drove in a hot car for hours so see them. To a seven year old they didn't make sense. Now, as a nineteen year old aspirering writer I understand that they don't have to mean anything, but it took twelve years to figure that out. So seven year old me needed a reason. The umbrellas needed a reason. So I came up with a reason. The umbrellas were there because a big company was having a company picnic. I picture lots of men and women in suits milling around eating picnic food while enjoying the shade of the giant umbrellas. For a seven year old this was enough of a reason and when I had my reason I was ready to go home. Now, I back to the umbrellas and the few visual memories I have of them stretching out across the grasslands. Then I understand something, its not a point or a reason, just a something. The presense of the umbrellas emphasized the endlessness, expansiveness and exposedness (I know this is not a word, let's pretend) of the plains of California. Before they were just plains, but now the complete nothingness of them seems so evident.
How does this relate to The Gates, well aside from the fact that the two projects are by the same artists, The Umbrellas is the one project that is remotely similar to The Gates. The other projects of Cristo and Jeanne-Claude generally involve what the media calls "wrapping", a title that Jeanne-Claude does not hestitant to label rediculous. The Gates are thousands of individula structures, alone they might be cute and not given much notice, but when thousands of them line every walk way of such a public space and Central Park people stand up and take notice. As I walked through Central Park the first afternoon that The Gates were "opened" other things began to jump out at me. On previous visits to Central Park I has seen the joggers and the trees and the ponds and they were very nice. When I visited with The Gates the bright saffron invading this place of nature jumped out at me. It was intruding. It forced this unnatural creation of man into nature, almost like Frankenstein's Creature. Yet, when I started to look for The Gates as I walked beneath then and tried to see where the other paths lead, I didn't see The Gates anymore, I didn't see the saffron billowing in the wind. I saw the trees. I saw the mud. I saw the tourists. I even saw th Hawk that lives in Fifth Avenue. The Gates slowly disappeared and everything else popped out, particularly people who were wearing any shade of orange. I had never noticed so much orange before in my life. It was overwhelming and I'm not sure I care to see that much ever again, but something calls me and even now as I sit here typing with my still busted hand I have a great desire to go back to Central Park and just watch The Gates and beyond The Gates. I'm not the only person to notice that you seeing orange more because of The Gates, one of my teachers was talking about it too.
The idea that The Gates makes everything around them more visible is a really interesting and confusing idea. I feel I can see Central Park better because The Gates are there. Maybe its because they offer a gateway for my to see the park through or they make me really look at the park, or more likely, because The Gates are in the park and I'm looking at them as if they are an art object, so I see the space around them like an art object too.
Either way I think that it is very important that I have taken these experiences in. I hope that one day they will be of value to me as a writer. Or in the very distant future, my god-children (because I refuse to have my own, but I have already been promised god-parent status to some) will come up to me and say "Auntie, what was it like seeing The Umbrellas and The Gates by Cristo and Jeanne-Claude?" and I will NOT say 'pointless', like so many people are apt to predict, I will say "I was an event that define a period and a generation, but it was not my generation. However, I feel lucky to have been there and I feel that in someway it impacted me. I'm not sure if it was for the better or the worse, but it did, for how could something like that not?
Today I heard someone say that they thought The Gates was funded my Osama Bin Laden and was an act of "artist terrorism". I would like to refute this statement. I do not see how, to any stretch of the imagination, anyone could believe that The Gates had anything to do with terrorism. Cristo and Jeanne-Claude themselves say that The Gates are not a statement of any kind and have nothing to do with politics. I understand. Firstly, they were first designed in 1979 (I think, I might be a year or two late), so for them to represent present terrorism is rediculous. Also, if The Gates represent anything, whether the artists say it or not, it has more to do with peace then anything. People from all over the country, all over the world, I'm sure are focking to New York City's Central Park to see them. If anything The Gates are bring people together and into a place where they discuss art open, whether they like it or not. Mostly, whatever The Gates may or may not represent or what you think they may or may not mean, doesn't matter, whether you think they are pretty doesn't even matter, they are opening a public forum on the discussion of art, which is important.