What I will remember most about The Gates is not how it looked but how it sounded. When the winds cooked up the sheets flailed, and a thick rumble grew from the movement. A pompous thunder like the sound a flag makes when blowing in the wind. But the sound was not of some tiny flag on a flagpole. The sound was deep and tremendous, made by dozens of these enormous and heavy sheets. You didn’t have to be under them or even too close to them to feel it. For lack of a better word that sound was simply awesome.
At its best The Gates heralds the joy of public space. At its worst it is a dump on Central Park of tacky Home Depot-colored metal. Visitors to the park, looking for whatever rejuvenation they may expect to find there, could rightfully be disgusted to find their place of respite taken over as a playground for the stupidly rich (Christo paid $20,000,000, more money than will pass through the hands of most people in their lifetime, to produce The Gates).
The Gates is gaudy, and from some vantage points an ugly eyesore. It is not profound but that does not make it meaningless. It is magnanimous, a spectacle sprawling yet uniform. It is a product of the 1970s, and I believe that had The Gates premiered in Central Park in 1979, or the early 1980s, it would have been a triumph still discussed today. It verges on anachronism in 2005, and thus some of its impact is lost, but it is a success nonetheless.
My take on the mood of the other visitors is anecdotal, but ordinary seeming people who I talked to were bubbling with enthusiasm for this project. A couple of men I talked to seemed to know every last detail of the event, down to what types of power tools were used, which warehouses in Queens stored everything, the density of the saffron, the weight of the lead stands.
I walked the length of the park and half way back, from Central Park South up the middle of the park to the Harlem Meer, then down the 5th Avenue side as far as 79th Street. The journey up to Harlem Meer was worth it for the view of The Gates from one of the high rocks.
On my way back home I saw this little salute to The Gates on a building at 5th Avenue and 91st Street:
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Walking through The Ramble I noticed The Gates were nowhere to be seen. Was that the only such place in the park? They were also hard to spot from around the Reservoir. I think the relatively ineffectual set of gates on the 5th Avenue side could have made more noise around the Reservoir.
I overheard someone say “I think I’ve seen every single one. I walked through every single gate.” And I thought, wow, that’s over the top. I turned and saw that she was one of the Christo employees who answered questions and handed out free samples of saffron, like this one I have:
I am glad I saw The Gates, but glad as well to never see it again. I and many others want the park back the way it used to be, but I think I will always see The Gates laughing in the wind from across the Great Lawn.
