Reactions To Christo's "Gates"

By Erik Skindrud, landscapearchitect.com, Photos by Sonia Skindrud Covell

The fabric gates flapped and fluttered during windy weather, sometimes agitating canine visitors.

One group was unanimous in its response to Christo's "Gates," the orange-toned fabric drapes that adorned New York City's Central Park for two weeks in February.

The city's dogs, it turns out, seemed spooked as they passed along the 23 miles of footpaths where fabric flapped and shadows flashed on the pavement.

Some human visitors seemed annoyed by "The Gates" too, with many calling into question the project's value and even the assumption that it qualifies as art.

"'The Gates' has transformed Central Park into a sea of man-made steel and fabric," complained one of many letters on the subject to the New York Times.

"They're squares with curtains hanging from them," Judith Eisenberg Pollicy told NBC News.

In the Feb. 28 issue of the New Yorker, art critic Peter Schjeldahl had harsh words for the work, completed by Bulgarian-born Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife and collaborator.

"'The Gates' succeeds precisely by being, on the whole, a big nothing," he wrote.

The concept is weak, Schjeldahl said, because it is more of a public spectacle than a unique artistic creation.

"Comprehended at a glance, it lets us get right down to being crazy about ourselves, in a bubble of participatory narcissism that it will be pitiable to be missed."

More than one million people visited the park during the event's first five days, many times the normal number for February, the Central Park Conservancy estimated.

In the end, many folks considered the installation a not-to-be-missed event. On Feb. 13, for example, close to 450,000 people visited the park, which is almost seven times the normal number. The Central Park Conservancy estimated that more than one million people entered the park during the event's first five days.

Writing in the New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman agreed with Schjeldahl that "The Gates" is public spectacle, but said that might not be a bad thing.

"Even at first blush, it was clear that 'The Gates' is a work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century," he said.

Christo's "The Gates: Central Park, New York, 1979-2005" spiced up the park's drab winter palette with spots of bright orange.