We went to see the Gates on the last day, Sunday, February 27--and we thought they were beautiful! The park was filled with people on that sunny winter day, pleased, in awe, and puzzled, too. What do they mean?
I'm grateful to see that this principle does explain why thousands went to see them, came from other states to see them--"All beauty," Eli Siegel said, "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."
The 7,500 gates with their saffron fabric rippling in the wind are fixed and flowing, separate and joined in a way that is stirring and brings something so new to the curving pathways they frame. Do we want to be free to move and be stirred by the wind--and have a solid, sensible base? Do we want to stand out, glow, contrast with what is around us and blend with it, too; bring new life to what is around us, as the gates did to the stark winter landscapes of our beloved Central Park?
Read, too, what Dorothy Koppelman, founding director of the Terrain Gallery (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year!) writes about the Gates at http://ck-dk-art.blogspot.com.
These pictures are from the Central Park website--the second is of Christo & Jeanne-Claude, the artists.
