That’s what the Gates Project has done to Central Park.

Saw it yesterday with a friend and thought it was like a Chinese procession, the bright color marching throughout the park. It made lots of people smile and think about the park in a new way.

Good for Christo and Jean-Claude!

and and more daily show clips .

Look, I don’t mind if Christo and Jeanne Claude make some money from this….why all the resentment?

I am not sure that the concept in this conceptual art is all that—well, conceptual, but its sheer ambition redefines the scale of public art projects.

So much of modern art seems to be parasitic on older art. What I see when I see St. Paul’s Cathedral wrapped in plastic is 1% the work of Christo, and 99% the work of Christopher Wren.

On my blog, I separated the technique from the work: the technique is not the work. But to appreciate a work you need to have some sense of the technique. Thick impasto or so flat you can hardly distinguish the brushstrokes makes a difference. It’s hard to talk about Childe Hassam without talking about his adopting impressionism.

Christo’s technique is politico-managerial rather than artisanal. But it exists as surely as Seurat’s dots.

One other point. Christo’s art is not conceptual. It is highly concrete. One experiences these particular gates, at this moment, in this place, against this sun, under these wind conditions, through these branches. A friend in LA who saw The Umbrellas said they were very carefully and specifically placed.

“No admission fee, no celebrity-studded opening gala, no obnoxious security pushing people around like cattle, no corporate sponsorship. In this day and age, it’s goddamn revolutionary.”

Well, until one blew over and killed someone.

Thankfully they will be gone soon.

I saw the Umbrellas, too, and in both cases was filled with delight. Why does art always have to be “serious”? I also went to a photo show while in NYC—several hundred dreary black and white photos of unhappy people and squalid settings, illustrating our current love for Deep Irony. Give me color, beauty, and joy every time. It doesn’t paper the world over or make me unfit for facing a rotten environment/government/job, but it gives me hope and vision to carry on with.

When you read a book, do you read it only for content? Do you read every book merely as a textbook or a manual?

When I read Shakespeare I think of myself as reading a story; as listening in on someone else’s conversation (and being a little guilty about it); as watching a craftsman at work; as feeling emotions I would not otherwise be feeling (or as watching myself being manipulated into feeling those emotions); as being in a museum of the Elizabethan world, and a museum of human behavior in all periods.

The Gates are not that interesting, but they’re not bad. They’re big budget popular art. What amazes me is that it is possible in this country to get an advanced degree in the humanities and know nothing about the ways and means, the function of culture.