Central Park gets a bad wrap

18 February 2005

NEW YORK - When I was a kid, I snuck out of the house one night, met up with some friends and proceeded to wrap a neighboring home and yard with 10 rolls of toilet paper.

We thought it hilarious. Our neighbors did not.

But when two artists did the same thing to New York's Central Park, the entire city thought it wonderful.

It's called "The Gates" and it's a sensation. Tourists are flying in from all over, visitors fill the park and New York is agog. "A work of pure joy," said The New York Times' art critic, "a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century."

Actually, more like meaningless, derivative and ugly.

The artists are the well-known Christo and Jeanne-Claude who, like all really important people (Madonna comes to mind), have no surnames. Married since 1958 (and, hey, what kind of coincidence is that - two people with no last name end up marrying each other), they've collaborated on most of their art projects, all of which are . . . how to put this . . . essentially the same.

Their first project? "Wrapped Objects." Later on, it was "Wrapped Woman." And who can forget 1966's groundbreaking "Wrapped Tree"? Or 1974's "Wrapped Roman Wall," 1985's "Pont Neuf Wrapped" or 1995's "Wrapped Reichstag"? There's a variation on this theme - as in "Surrounded Islands" - whose major intellectual distinction, as far as I can tell, is that the object in question is partially, as opposed to fully, wrapped. Still, like Jackson Pollack (once you've seen one spattered canvas, you've pretty much seen them all), Christo and Jeanne-Claude a long time ago had one good idea and have spent the rest of their lives cranking out seemingly endless permutations.

And people love the stuff - especially, apparently, people with disposable income, such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Every one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installations is enormously expensive - "The Gates" cost $21 million - and the couple raise the money through private donations. And what did that kind of money get Central Park?

A lot of orange shower curtains.

Actually, the artists would note, not orange but saffron (which looks orange to me, but hey, I have a surname so who am I to question). There are more than 7,500 of them, giant rectangles of fabric on 16-foot saffron stilts. They are lined up along 23 miles of pathways throughout every part of the park; one walks underneath them as if through a tunnel.

I spent hours traipsing through. The endless saffron was mind- numbing; the repetition wearying. At one point, by the Heckscher Playground, I thought I spotted something new: small saffron pyramids neatly processing down one path. It turned out, however, that they were orange safety cones marking a construction site.

So what's the point of "The Gates"? In true utilitarian fashion, the city talks about how much money the exhibit will bring in ($80 million in new business, $2.5 million in city taxes!). And there is an argument, I suppose, that once down (on display for just 16 days, it ends on Feb. 27), people will appreciate Central Park even more. Certainly, my reaction was almost relief when I arrived at areas, such as the Reservoir, where the orange - I'm sorry, saffron - was less in evidence and one could see trees, rocks and sky again. Moreover, supporters say, the event brings renewed attention to the place, luring people back in to rediscover the park's magnificence. True. Wars in distant lands, for example, do have the salutary effect of making us all learn a bit more about the world's geography. But that hardly justifies the war.

In fact, I'm not sure there really is a point to the project. Yet I walked out of Central Park with real admiration for Christo and Jeanne-Claude. My practical jokes as a kid got me into trouble; theirs have made them rich and famous. Even better, none of their victims seems to know they've been punk'd.