"The Gates" - A Review

By St Vandoofus, Senior Art Correspondent, The Circus

CENTRAL PARK, New York – What is normally an inartistic, eyesore in the centre of Manhattan could be thought of as quite a waste of land filled with boring foliage, lakes, rocks and particularly painful groups of noisy kids running around with their dogs. But all that changed last weekend when Christo and Jeanne-Claude, after 20-some years, and some help from a man named Bloomberg with a passion for modern art, managed to bring their exhibit to New York's Central Park. Soon the park was besieged by the art-loving public of Manhattan and the rest of the world and in a moment, the glum, depressing serenity of the park was transformed into what could be described as a circus-like atmosphere. For me, an art-lover who lives a stone’s throw from the park, the event is a rare opportunity to witness and experience the best of what modern art has to offer. So needless to say, I walked over to the park to experience the amazing work of art brought to us by Christo and Jeanne-Claude and sure hope it won’t be the last time I get to cover a humongous-objects-covered-in-fabric kind of art in the future.

Each exhibit can be described as an extensive virtuosity of subjectivity created to counteract the sublimation of the irreversible nature of the objects that includes the ambience of the park. As Jon Stewart’s chief art correspondent best described it, it's a whole transformation of the “whereness” to “nowhereness”. Personally, I think the exhibit depicted the evolvement of the public space and the physical aurora into a private spatial dimension that can be perceived as the celerity of the affection transcended by an inamorata. Each magnificent object which made up the 20-million dollar exhibit that covered the 850 acres of the park resembled a curtain hanging on a steel rod. Unlike the one hanging from my bathroom door, these were fabric banners suspended from 16-foot-high frames. And they were... orange.

The exhibits on the west side of the park transpired a saffron-colored light throughout the park, creating a majestic command over the surroundings which reduced the 19^th century buildings in the neighborhood to a diffident obscurity. The striking landmarks such as the Dakota were reduced to a mere concrete structures lamenting for attention. As I walked over to the east, the objects were more saffron in color and the fabric hanging from a steel frame was vastly different to the exhibits displayed on the north side of the park which were saffron in color suspended from steel frames. The south-west corner of the park was scattered with saffron-colored cloths while the south east… and so on.

I would love to go on, but, alas, I have run out of a month’s supply of word-a-days from dictionary.com. I don't really understand what they mean. But they sounded perfect to describe something I understand even less. So signing off from New York, this is the senior art correspondent for Circus, St. Vandoofus.