Its' Christo-Time

Imagine a downhill skiing Buddhist monk in high-tech ski goggles reflecting saffron on a course then leveled for the gates are Christo's.

 

In the artists' works on paper with the hue flowing the Central Park landscape looks positively volcanic.

 

Are the throngs to come the Christians?  Will they where swathes of saffron on their tunics?  Will Buddhist monks in ski goggles come to reflect upon their times?

 

According to the artist the temporary works are to activate the space between the foot of the ambler on the Central Park pathways and the lowest branch of the trees. This is the man and his wife Christo and Jean-Claude who wrapped the Reichstag (which was only the Reichstag after it was the Bundestag and once it was reactivated and adapted and updated once the city of Berlin was unified it became officially the Bundestag again) materialized in tandem like a duo of impressionist or neo-impressionist paintings.  He looks like a snowdrift from a Sisley or Monet canvas as in the effets de neige and she red- pink vermilion haired as if from Renoir or a Kees Van Dongen.  

 

Rolling off the tongue as one of the great power couples in the recent history of art as they  have now become: Oldenburg and Van Bruggen, Liz and Val, Gilbert and George, Pierre et Gilles, Salvador and Gala Dali, Joseph and Anni Albers, Charlie Finch and Walter Robinson, Rodin and Claudel, Pollock and Krasner, Motherwell and Frankenthaler, Mark Kostabi and himself, Inka Essenhigh and Steve Mumford , Matthew Barney and Bjork  -- Christo and Jean Claude.

 

The only art is the drawings the gates are not for sale one million pieces of fabric will be given away.... ("Congratulations you are the one millionth fabric recipient").

 

But really now folks what we needed at this time was a mayor who saw through to bring great public works to our city and increase tourist traffic after the horrors which befell on the tragic date which needs no repeating.  So it can be said with no sarcasm that is specific terrific that he has transferred his own love of art (one only needs to visit a series of international museums to see how many exhibits and their audio track accompaniments are sponsored by Bloomberg media) to the public arena the mayor and the percent for public art are also responsible for the works by Julian Opie in and around city hall, city hall park, and the Boss William Tweed courthouse).  And it should be remembered here as observed by very writer at the 2003 Venice biennale that the British pavilion exhibiting the work of Chris Ofili the very artist whose elephant dung Madonna drove our then mayor and recent Donald Trump wedding guest Rudolph Guliani to so actively protest to the point of trying to shut down the Brooklyn Museum was financed by a sponsorship than none other than once again Bloomberg media

 

In the works on paper the hue flowing upon the  Central Park landscape looks positively volcanic.  Christo and Jean Claude create line drawings upon earthly surfaces (they have in Kansas City, Missouri and in Sonoma, California and Japan in simultaneous bi-coastal trans-pacific umbrellas placements and do so now again with the gates).

 

Right now as of this writing al set out are only pylons all the "blossoming" i.e. the unfurling will happen in one day by teams of Christo employees who will handle to erection and dynamic cloth handling to the tune of a hundred gates per squad.  The work opens up on February twelfth "weather permitting" and is up until the twenty- seventh of the same short month.

 

Remember the bill for the gates twenty million is not Bill Gates that's thirty billion.

 

The bill for a Christo Gates scarf at Hermes is $320 the color of the couture house is orange the color of Christo's gates are saffron. Other things which are orange; Orangina, Tropicana, Gatorade- other things which are saffron religious garments Imagine a downhill skiing Buddhist monk in high-tech ski goggles reflecting saffron on a course then leveled for the gates are Christo's. Remember the song "Mellow Yellow" ... I'm just mad about saffron because saffron's mad about me...." Or perhaps a newer version "I just came to see saffron/ saffron in the wind below the trees. And why isn't Donovan playing?  Because there is no opening no charge no concerts just a cocktail reception at Hermes attended by that sculptor with the upraised hair the ubiquitous many handkerchief in his lapel wearing ubiquitous event attendee the art-worlds' own Don King. Just show up and enjoy the art Jean-Claude says

 

In the artists' works on paper  with the hue flowing the Central Park landscape looks positively volcanic.

 

Remember the bill for the gates twenty million which not Bill Gates that's thirty billion. There is an anti bill gates movement but there is no anti Chriso's gate movement. 

 

Bill Gates pictured below in an image pulled from the net

 

 

As you could see the Microsoft logo could have easily been placed upon the Gates.

 

 

Remember the bill for the gates is twenty million, which is not Bill Gates that's thirty billion

 

But Bill just gave seven hundred and fifty Million dollars to Humanitarian efforts in Africa and spoke about it at the world economic forum in Davos , Switzerland .  So lets give a break after all this piece has pretension towards being a poem --

 

Break

 

 

While much of the publicity for the instillation has been of the hyper-positive variety which usually surrounds super- spectacles In New York magazine in his article "the passion of the Christo's' scribe Adam Sternberg went on writing and quoting about the antics of the couple's past...

 

 

The city's art scene regarded the couple with mixed emotions. Jeanne-Claude became infamous for planning elaborate dinner parties and brazenly inviting every art-world figure of prominence, from Leo Castelli and Jasper Johns to Frank Stella and Marcel Duchamp. Ivan Karp, an art manager for Leo Castelli at the time, called the dinners "an ongoing scandal" and said of Jeanne-Claude, "I didn't want to be in the same room with her." As art critic David Bourdon recalled, "People were contemptuous of them. They were perceived as being very pushy. And then they served these god-awful meals. A lot of the unpopularity they met with in the early days was directed against Christo's art; the rest was directed against Jeanne-Claude and her flank steak." 

 

(But the flank steak as it was being cooked had to have been licked by a flame and one of the flickers of that scorch had to have been saffron)

 

Then in next paragraph he furthered  "Jeanne-Claude seems to relish her reputation as an art-world Yoko Ono. "This is my best quality," she told Burt Chernow, their biographer. "It has protected Christo all these years. I think every artist needs a monster." Later, I asked her to elaborate on the sentiment. She laughed. "In the art world, they like to say, 'Christo is so nice and gentle, and he always says yes to everybody.' Then he sends me to say no.

 

"Maybe thinking of Yoko Ono the gates could permanently merge with "Strawberry Fields." Then some of the strawberry fields would be saffron and there could be little cartoon maps where the orange ends and the red begins.   Speaking of orange all the sales attendants Hermes really wear orange ties.

 

 

So once again is this article's color code -- Christo's Gates Saffron, "Strawberry Fields" red, and Hermes orange.

 

Lee Klein 2005