The Gates: Passing Through

Monday’s dismantling commences the recycling of “The Gates” project. For those who witnessed the installation, The Gates’ brief, dazzling existence now blazes as a phantom image in our memory - the way we were those 16 days in February 2005.

During the work’s tenure, I found myself attuned to every appearance of what became Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron: MTA workers on the lines, buddhist meditation centers, street signs, the very ties worn by waiters at Gramercy Tavern, all leapt out as reminders.

But the closest and most ubiquitous parallel exists in the orange used to mark construction sites, a happy circumstance for a city so actively intent on remaking itself. For evermore, the orange netting of buildings under construction all over this town will ripple the promise of incorporating delight into our structures and endeavors.

I joined many in the City who scrambled up hills and sought communion with friends in skyscrapers neighboring the park in a quest to view The Gates with any approximation of panoramic totality. To take in the full scope of the work, though, one would have to be perched impractically high above Central Park.

The pragmatic mysticism of this drawing for the heavens is its beautiful reality: in order to actually pass through the gates, you must have your feet firmly planted on the ground - the grace of being earthbound and maybe the whole point in delighting in it all.

Posted by mark at March 3, 2005 06:21 AM