The Gates

The Gates is a large-scale piece of performance art in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne Claude, the artists who, among other things, wrapped the Reichstag in plastic. The premise is that 23 miles of walking paths in Central Park would be lined with large orange gates 12 feet high, and from those gates hang large swaths of orange canvas. The artists have been interested in this project since the 1970s, and it finally came to fruition this year. It was only scheduled to run from February 12th through February 27th, so I thought I'd stop by and take a look. The hours for Toy Fair prevented me from going in the daytime, unless I went in the morning, so I got up early on Monday, was greeted with a nice dusting of snow, and set off.

Unfortunately, either through my own technological ineptitude, my shivering hands, or something else, I was only able to snap one decent picture:



Click on the picture for a high-resolution version.

The Gates seems to be an interesting experiment. The most striking thing about it is that it's a bunch of giant orange metal-and-canvas things in the middle of the only green area on Manhattan, a man-made intrusion into nature. But Central Park itself is a natural intrusion to an island that has become, for better or worse, almost entirely man-made. And Central Park itself is suspect: the entire park (or the park south of the reservoir anyway) is not natural, but completely man-made, too. Every path, every tree, every hill was graded and planned with precision.

I'm not sure what it all means, but it did require me to think a little.