The Gates
I got a look at The Gates today, not as a trip in itself, but I had to go from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side and figured I'd walk. I was mostly motivated by the prospect of years from now someone saying: "The Gates was in Central Park and you never went to see it!?"
My overall statement on The Gates is that I can't judge it because the whole ordeal has become overbearingly self-aware. I understand the point of bringing color to a place that is brown and bringing novelty to a place that has been demure for 150 years. However, hardly being able to enter at 79th Street due to throngs of people and from then on having every post adorned with a tourist wearing orange and posing for a photo does not, for me at least, signal magic and wonderment.
I suppose The Gates never stood a chance with me. A few weeks of process stories about the logistics of the operation deadened any impact it could have on the imagination. Perhaps if it had been set up overnight without any notice and I just encountered it at dawn before anyone else, it would be worthwhile. Meanwhile, in the real world, the attendants wearing smocks emblazoned in orange with "The Gates" and the dates of the installation are just too much.
posted by Shaun at 6:03:00 PM
5 Comments:
Dude, you so don't get art.
but it's about damn time you updated. jeez.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I don't usually say "dude" seriously -- or, for that matter, "you so don't get art." Either way, though, I actually liked the tissue on stilts.
Jill, you say "dude" all the time. Don't lie on my blog.
What I hate about The Gates, unsurprisingly, revolves around the fact that I cannot see it. Its temperance creates a class of Haves, who can see it, and Have-Nots, who cannot get to New York.
That, and Central Park is the greatest Park ever by itself.
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