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The 27th of February in Central Park was much like the 12th.
The crowds swarmed through the park, following the saffron trails.
Many gathered around the volunteers, talking to them, collecting
swatches of saffron fabric, discussing the Gates experience.
Children played with footballs, soccer balls. Amidst it all,
there were numerous sightings of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
And in truth, most of them were real. On the last day, the two
were in Central Park, still making sure that the last day of
the Gates - a project they had conceptualized nearly three decades
ago - went according to plan. Here's what the city of New York
had to say:
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An
art critic was testily perambulating "The Gates" in Central
Park with his wife and a friend from Texas on the first
Sunday afternoon of its installation when he suddenly
got a load of their thousands of fellow-walkers and registered
the common mood - a sort of vast blanketing, almost drowsy
commitment. He couldn't think of any other occasion on
which he had seen so many New Yorkers moving slowly when
they didn't have to. Each person looked strangely, nakedly
personal, not a New Yorker at all, or anything else in
particular. The crowd's many-voiced sound had an indoor
intimacy, like the bright murmur in a theatre, during
intermission, when the play is good and everybody knows
it that everybody knows it. The over-all social effect,
which was somewhat like that of an electrical blackout
or a major blizzard, minus the inconvenience, was weird
and terrific. |
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"The
Gates" began to close yesterday, as slowly and surely
as they began to open about three weeks ago, when the
first orange-colored nylon frames were hoisted into place
along the pathways of Central Park.
Yesterday morning, under gray skies, about 20 teams of
workers fanned out across the park's northern border,
near the Harlem Meers, to begin dismantling the 7,500
gates that together composed the artwork. They moved quickly
and smoothly, loosening the bolts that held each frame
to its steel base, easing the gates down toward the ground,
and wrapping the nylon-thread curtains around the crossbars.
"I don't feel emotional about it," said Alex Lockwood,
as his team helped remove the gates mounted on a stretch
of stairs near the ice-skating rink. "Putting it up and
taking it down was just a job."
But some visitors waxed more sentimental.
"I wish it could stay up forever," said Michael Davis,
who lives on the Upper West Side and went to the park
on his day off to see the installation one last time,
his fifth visit. Bundled up against the cold and impending
snow, Mr. Davis ambled along the curving paths as if it
were a warm, sunny day in May, gazing adoringly at the
threads of orange lacing the rise across the pond and
taking pictures in the gray light.
"He did New Yorkers a great favor by getting us all outdoors
and on our best behavior," Mr. Davis said, referring to
the artist Christo, who with his wife, Jeanne-Claude,
designed the project. "The whole thing was like pop in
the best sense - almost frivolous, but not quite. People
on Sunday were walking around with these happy, idiot
smiles, like we were all let out from the institution
for lunch."
Officials at the city's Department of Parks and Recreation
said that more than one million people had visited "The
Gates" during its 16-day run. (The individual gates themselves
actually began going up on Feb. 7, before the exhibit's
official opening, and will be taken down in roughly the
same order they were installed, so that "the gates each
have about the same lifespan," said Megan Sheekey, a city
spokeswoman for the project.) |
All said and done, The Gates Project was a celebration of nature.
Amidst the February barrenness, the unrelenting grays and the
unusually fickle winter, the saffron poles provided not only
relief and color but a new way to look at New York. Christo
and Jeanne-Claude have always talked about democratizing art,
providing everyone access to the experience. The Gates was really
about that access, providing an experience to millions of people.
But it was also an opportunity for the hundreds of thousands
who visited The Gates over the 16 days to place the art in the
context of an urban natural environment. It was art and nature
flowing together in a unique collaboration
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