The gift of Christo and Jeanne-Claude to New York

I have this vague, flickering memory of neon orange that is impossible by worn trees, such as the Penumbrian paths of large, unusual fireflies. I would have been seven years old when the late Christo and Jeanne-Claude “The Gates” installed-7.503 16-foot gates decorated with fabric that flocked along 23 miles of walkways 16 days in Central Park in 2005. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates and Unrealized Projects for New York Citya pay-what-you-wish exhibition At De Schuur, the temporary project – 26 years old – commemorates on his 20th birthday. It consists of preparatory drawings and collages, video interviews projected on the walls, models, a real port with information about the logistics of the installation and an augmented reality version of the project that can activate viewers with iPads. The CPR, if you are a cynic, conjures up a vision of the city, people and art inspired by ambitions other than gathering ever greater wealth.

When Central Park was built in the 19th century, the idea of ​​a public park was new. The few green spaces in the city were locked up behind the gates of private owners (see the still-private Gramercy Park). When the Park Commissioners chose an extravagant design by Richard Morris Hunt on his gates-with fountain kicks, a cave in honor of Neptunus architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux dismissal in protest. In the end, the commissioners recovered the couple and agreed with their vision of a park for the people: “To New Yorkers”, the board said in the annual report from 1862: “It is entirely heard.” As such, the 20 gates to Central Park – so modest that you may not notice them – ordinary people in their inscriptions: “Merchants” (Central Park West), “Artisans” (Sevth Avenue), “Artists” (Sixth Avenue), and perhaps the most moving, “Strangers”, dedicated to those who came elsewhere).

Christo and Jeanne-Claude-Strangers, under the dedication of the gates, as the first was born in Bulgaria and the latter in Morocco a work of art within a work of art, in which the populist impulse of the gates of Central Park were registered in their own vision. They illuminated the paths of Olmsted and Vaux in municipal Orange, making the park’s plan visible to a visitor, which is again described as a public artwork. The gates emphasize the movements of both visitors that go through and the wind waves their dust, suggesting that the people, the Civic and the Natural were all part of the same living, breathing, organism. They refer to Japanese Torii Gates, purchased by customers as gratitude to the god of prosperity and founded at the entrance of Shinto saints, but were fully paid by the artists, a gift to the public. I am thinking of the entrance of medieval churches, with their layers of cut stone – often called ‘portals’ – that create the illusion of tuning in a holy place. The layered portals of “The Gates” structure a secular spiritual experience.

“The Gates” are clearly no longer today, although visitors to Central Park can scan the QR codes on pillars set between East 72nd Street and Cherry Hill to gain access to an augmented reality version of the installation via the Bloomberg -app, coincidentally or not, was the mayor who is the project green). Instead of the real work, the large-scale preparatory drawings of Christo and Jeanne-Claude catch the heart of it, the experience from the perspective of a visitor. The gates cast warm orange shadows on the paths while they bloom around the silhouettes of fellow visitors, a counterpoint in shape and shade to the Blokky Skyline behind it. There is a heartbreaking tenderness for them, partly because of their contrast with the cold of digital views: the hulling detail of each tree carefully crossed in graphite, couples or solitary figures that make their way through the portals, the reflection of orange on nearby surfaces.

On the day I visited, the crowd was on the older side, and the Luna Luna Exhibition next to the door seemed to have caught the tourists. I felt or put the silence of the company of others who had gone through these gates – not at an exclusive club, which had struck about four million. I felt that with these many strangers I shared something so vulnerable and intangible as a memory, that these neon Oranje gates not only expelled our past in the park, but in my past. As a part of that larger organism of the city, I felt “part” as being chewed halfway and shit -out, as I often do. On the augmented reality station at the back, I focused my iPad on one of the icons on the model map that indicated a panoramic photo of “The Gates” in 2005 and was transported. It was just as years of a smothered life suddenly- pouf – Fading and I fell into a version of myself that was small and clean and stunningly conductive, like a living thread, a raw nerve. I think I almost cried.

Yet it felt shocking to have this experience in the barn, from all places, part of Hudson Yards, a private -luxury development. Against the back of the exhibition, almost hidden behind a vast wall, there is indeed a narrow corridor of non -realized projects. Behind them, seen by the large windows, the ship and the surrounding square are somewhat misleading ”Public square and gardens“Because it’s what New York mentions”Private public space(Pops).

But maybe I am just. New Yorkers can always be counted for their bad mood, as can be seen in video interviews with visitors who respond to the project of Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the end of the exhibition. “It can be a positive experience,” the interviewer gently suggests a particularly striking visitor.

“Positive?” He responds. “That’s nonsense.”

Another interviewee seems to agree. “Artistic?” he asks. “You have to be very modern to find this a real artistic achievement.” Then he tilts his head, as if he thinks about it. “Maybe,” he admits.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates and Unrealized Projects for New York City Continues in the barn (545 West 30th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) until March 23. The exhibition was compiled by Pascal Roulin.