2002-12-26 "Park Christo Plan Advances"
It is very nice to hear again about Christo
and Jeanne-Claude on NYT and Kurie.
In year 1991,Autumn, I saw the umbrella exhibition
near my town about 20km of distance.
So many people wanted to see them, and traffic
congestion was terrible.
Subsequently, getting up early morning of
5 am, I saw them, blue umbrellas
in the field. I went to three times. Unfortunately,
the exhibition was terminated earlier because
of
accidental death of person with umbrella
from strong wind.
This exhibition was commemorating the start
of pacific war of year 1941 between
Japan and U.S., and in California same kind
of exhibition was held same time.
Many volunteers helped it. This was the most
impressive art exhibition for me.
NYT 2002-12-24 "The Fabric of Life in
the Park Christo Plan Advances"
The Fabric of Life in the Park Christo Plan
Advances
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude came
up with a plan 23 years ago to erect gates
draped in saffron-colored fabric in Central
Park. Thousands of them would meander along
pathways for two weeks during the winter
when the trees are bare so the gates could
be seen. Then they would be removed. A simple,
slightly mad idea, and beautiful.
Since then this husband-and-wife team has
wrapped buildings, surrounded islands with
pink floating fabric, installed giant blue
and yellow umbrellas, and strung miles of
curtains at locales from Florida to California
to Japan to Europe, turning doubters into
converts, while New York City, art's supposed
capital, has dragged its heels.
Until now. Maybe.
Last week the Central Park Conservancy passed
a resolution giving its support, basically.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude said yesterday
that they still had not heard from the conservancy,
a private organization, which donates millions
to maintain the park.
Meanwhile it turns out that the artists have
been negotiating a contract with the Parks
Department. They are reluctant to talk about
it. They don't want anything to spoil progress,
having got so close to approval after so
many years. Yesterday they told me that an
announcement by the city may come very soon.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has already said
he likes the idea.
Charlatans? Shamans? With their hard-sell
tactics, their followers trailing them like
Deadheads from one gig to the next, their
feel-good populism and phenomenally expensive,
grandiose ambitions, it's no wonder Christo
and Jeanne-Claude have made skeptics of people
who haven't seen their work, don't understand
it or don't want to, and who won't take them
seriously.
I remember going to the "Wrapped Reichstag"
in 1995, expecting the worst. Then, like
so many people, I was won over by the whole
giddy event: the revelers who turned the
fields around the Reichstag into Woodstock
East, the art students sketching the building,
the street vendors, the grumpy politicians,
the store windows full of wrapped objects
Eabove all by the beauty of the project.
Briefly the hulking building became a kind
of shimmery gift to the city, swathed in
a million square feet of silvery polypropylene
fabric held in place by 10 miles of bright
blue rope. When the last roll of fabric was
unfurled by a crew of climbers resembling
Lilliputians atop Gulliver, someone cranked
up a hurdy-gurdy. The crowd applauded.
Then the building was unwrapped a few weeks
later, leaving nothing behind except the
economic benefits of tourist dollars: Christo
and Jeanne-Claude always pay for their own
projects by selling his art. The Reichstag
wrapping cost $13 million.
Berlin, a German newspaper said, made about
$700 million in increased tourism. The artists
also bequeathed to the city the worldwide
afterimage of a gentler Reichstag. The symbolism
was a new Germany emerging from the chrysalis
of the wrapped building.
They came up with the Reichstag idea in 1971.
Resistance and negotiation are part of their
work: everything that happens from concept
to completion belongs to the project, they
say; this is a basic tenet of Conceptual
Art. They have been pondering something big
in New York since the mid-60's, shortly after
immigrating from Paris. First Christo proposed
wrapping two downtown buildings, then wrapping
the Museum of Modern Art, One Times Square
and the Whitney Museum.
By the 70's they imagined the gates to celebrate
the rambling, organic system of pathways
through Central Park, in contrast to the
grid of streets. This interaction between
order and disorder encapsulated art at that
moment. The rectangular shape of the gates
combined with the windblown fabric made a
classic Post-Minimalist statement about man-made
systems and nature.
The project was turned down in 1981, when
the Parks Department feared it would damage
the grounds and set a dangerous precedent.
Gordon J. Davis, then the parks commissioner,
produced a report arguing against it.
The Fabric of Life in the Park Christo Plan
Advances
(Page 2 of 2)
Mr. Davis is now a conservancy board member,
and he voted for it this time. In 1995 Disney
showed "Pocahontas" in the park
on four 80-foot-high screens to tens of thousands
of people crammed onto 120,000 square feet
of artificial turf under 56,000 watts of
light, listening to a 400,000-watt sound
system before a gigantic inflatable Mickey.
So much for dangerous precedent. If the legacy
of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux,
the park's legendary designers, could survive
that, what's the problem with the gates?
Anodyne, critics say about Christo. But public
art does not consist only of artists leaving
black boxes with "Fear" on them
in subway stations. There's a fruitful territory
between yelling "Fire!" in a crowded
theater and erecting a statue of a forgotten
hero holding a sword. Christo's work derives
from 60's happenings and Earth Art, from
the general move out of galleries and museums
into the real world, and from the utopianism
of Socialist Realism (he was born in Bulgaria
in 1935), with its belief in art for everyman,
agitprop and the gigantism of Soviet monuments.
He has transformed all this into a transient
brand of visual entertainment.
A little of that wouldn't hurt New York City
now. After 9/11 the project can show the
world the city's creative vitality, emotional
health and sense of humor, and be a complement
to the proposals for downtown.
It would require at least another year, and
probably a few years, for the project to
be realized even if a contract were signed
today and no legal hitches occurred. (They
better act while this mayor is still in office.)
Besides the money to be raised (Jeanne-Claude
mentioned to me $20 million as a possible
amount), there are 74 tons of steel to be
designed, around a million square feet of
fabric to be woven, cut and sewn, and workers
to be hired and trained. And more planning.
Last June, with Douglas Blonsky, the Central
Park administrator, Christo and Jeanne-Claude
surveyed the park, recording the precise
width of walkways and heights of the lowest
branches.
The present plan is for about 7,400 gates,
each 16 feet high (a foot higher than they
originally proposed), with an average of
12 feet between gates. (There will be some
gaps to avoid branches and other obstacles.)
The widths of the gates will vary from 6
feet to 18 feet, to match the widths of walkways.
Instead of slender steel poles, as first
proposed, the gates are now to be 5 inch
by 5 inch fabricated recyclable vinyl poles
extruded in the saffron color of the fabric,
which is no longer attached like a shower
curtain but built right into the frame, like
sails into masts.
Each gate will have a slender one-ton steel
base. The gates will rest only on walkways,
so no holes with be dug or grass disturbed.
Teams hired by the artists will take about
six weeks, using small forklifts, to install
the bases, another week to raise the gates.
The park will be open as usual. Then the
fabric will be unfurled in a day, ceremoniously.
The teams will maintain and guard the gates,
hand out fabric samples as gifts, act as
docents to the curious, then take the gates
down after two weeks. Six weeks later everything
should be gone.
At Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's studio I
watched a short video of models of the gates,
tested in Washington State, where the artists'
chief engineer, Vince Davenport, lives. A
van drove through the gates to make sure
emergency vehicles wouldn't be obstructed.
The fabric (it doesn't hang lower than seven
feet) billowed nicely in a breeze. Christo
pulled out some drawings and a book about
the project. The gates are shown to fill
the park, drawing orange paths up and down
hills and stairs, around the lake, zoo and
Met Museum Ea vast, whimsical abstraction
in the land.
To the city, as "Wrapped Reichstag"
was to Berlin, "The Gates" could
be more than a popular attraction and profitable.
Art, even a temporary installation, maybe
especially a temporary installation, when
it is good has a way of leaving an indelible
mark on a place and the people who see it.
Its value is civic and psychological. As
a successor to the image of the collapsing
Twin Towers, the picture of a winter park
filled with people streaming through gates
of fabric could be priceless. At the least,
it would show New York City was willing to
take a gamble on art.
Here's hoping a contract is signed. Then
it will be up to private donors to decide
whether the project is worth the cost. Museums
pay millions for some exhibitions. Knicks
players are paid millions and lose. Who's
to say what's too much? Considering how much
money street vendors make hawking postcards
and geegaws of the World Trade Center these
days, it shouldn't be too hard for Christo
to sell images of his project to raise cash.
Meanwhile temporary public sculptures, as
part of the last Whitney Biennial, have proved
that Central Park can accommodate art and
survive. The park is gorgeous without gates.
It might be gorgeous with them, too.
There's only one way to find out.
<Kurie, Austria> 24.12.2002 14 : 38
Uhr
Christo will Central Park verschleiern
New York - Der "Verpackungskunstler"
Christo und seine Frau Jeanne-Claude wollen
den New Yorker Central Park verschleiern.
Das Paar hat der Millionenstadt vorgeschlagen,
7.400 Pforten aus Stahl und safranfarbenem
Stoff in dem Park aufzustellen. Sie sollen
das "bunte, organisch gewachsene Netz
von Pfaden" - im Kontrast zu der schachbrettermusterartigen
Strasenfuhrung in Manhattan - zelebrieren,
schreibt die "New York Times".
Kreative Vitalitat
New Yorks Burgermeister Michael Bloomberg
finde die Idee hervorragend, schreibt die
Zeitung, die Verhandlungen mit der Stadtverwaltung
verliefen positiv. Das Projekt konnte die
wieder gewonnene kreative Vitalitat und den
Humor der Stadt nach den Terroranschlagen
auf das World Trade Center am 11. September
vergangenen Jahres verdeutlichen, hies es.
20 Millionen Dollar
Nach Christos und Jeanne-Claudes Vorstellungen
wurden die Tore im Winter errichtet, wenn
sie das Laub der Baume nicht verdecken kann.
Das Kunstwerk durfte etwa 20 Millionen Dollar
(19,5 Millionen Euro) verschlingen. Christo
und Jean-Claude wurden dafur selbst aufkommen.
Die Vorbereitung erfordere noch wenigstens
ein Jahr, schreibt die "New York Times".
Lange Erfahrung
Das Kunstlerpaar hat in der Vergangenheit
etliche Gebaude sowie Inseln mit Stoffen
"verpackt". Darunter befanden sich
der Berliner Reichstag. die Berner Kunsthalle
und die Pariser Brucke Pont-Neuf.
Mehr im Internet:
www.christojeanneclaude.net
apa/dpa/aho