Umbrella Art: They Heard It Through the Grapevine
My wife and I drove up to Bakersfield and back the other day and on the home trip we stopped at Grapevine for gas and Cokes.
The gas attendant was telling us what a big crowd they expected when the artist Christo unveils his 1,760 yellow umbrellas in the hills beside Interstate 5 as it rises through the Tejon Pass. (Today’s scheduled opening was postponed by an act of God.)
As we drove up the Grapevine we could see concrete pads deposited along the way as bases for the octagonal umbrellas which were to be 19 feet, 8 inches high and 28 feet, 6 inches in diameter. The pads appeared to be about 8 feet in diameter. They were in place alongside the highway for 18 miles.
Though I don’t like a lot of modern art, I don’t insist that it has no meaning. It may be that its meaning is what I don’t like about it. If it’s exciting, that’s meaning enough.
I have never understood what Christo was up to. In 1976, for example, he ran a white nylon fence through 24 miles of Sonoma and Marin counties; in 1983 he surrounded 11 islands off Miami with pink polypropylene; and in 1985 he wrapped Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, with 440,000 square feet of plastic.
The only one of Christo’s works I have seen was Pont-Neuf. It looked wretched, like a little girl forced to wear an ugly coat to school. If Christo’s point was that historic landmarks ought not to be covered, he need not make it again.
Simultaneous with the Grapevine stunt Christo is unveiling 1,340 blue umbrellas along a 12-mile stretch of road in Ibaraki, Japan. Evidently there is some hands-across-the-sea point here, but I don’t get it.
One thing is sure, in three weeks Christo is going to have 3,100 used umbrellas on his hands, not to mention the pads that will be left behind unless he picks them up. The work is said to cost $26 million, which Christo will pay himself. He is said to make no money on his projects. That leaves a number of questions, which I suppose I ought not ask.
Evidently Christo is trying to make a statement. It doesn’t matter much as long as he’s trying to make it in the pastures of Sonoma County or along the hills of the Ridge Route. But it can get spooky when artists start making statements in Los Angeles.
Now Los Angeles isn’t ancient Athens and we don’t expect every public building to look like the Parthenon. But architecture that reflects the taste of public commissions can sometimes be as weird as Christo.
What has happened to the West Coast Gateway? This project was supposed to be the West Coast’s Statue of Liberty. It was supposed to tower over the downtown freeway interchange. After studying numerous entries, including one that featured a four-block dollar bill and one shaped like a fielder’s glove, a blue-ribbon committee selected “Clouds of Steel,” which looked like a mouse trap and was to cost $33 million. Evidently the project died at birth.
A similar silence seems to have fallen over plans for a new International Airport control tower. The Cultural Affairs Commission wanted to make a statement; the Airport Commission simply wanted an efficient tower. Evidently that’s where it stands today.
Now Philistines and other stick-in-the-muds are shocked by Frank Gehry’s plan for the proposed Walt Disney Concert Hall. It has been described in The Times in a single article as “an architectural masterpiece,” “a true work of art,” “nothing short of superb,” and “a truly Angeleno masterpiece.”
I am not questioning any of those superlatives when I say that it looks like a bunch of shoe boxes that fell off the back end of a truck. However, that may be a concept we should try. My son, for example, feels that the design appears chaotic, but he thinks it just might gain Los Angeles international attention.
No doubt it will, and the world will probably be delighted. So it looks like a bunch of shoe boxes that fell off the back of a truck. Chance can make interesting constructions.
And as Jack C. Chesner suggested in a letter to the editor, it might be nice on the inside. One good thing about it, the Disneys are paying for it. And maybe we could buy up some of Christo’s umbrellas to plant around the patio.
When Dorothy Buffum Chandler was campaigning to build the Music Center, I hoped I would live to see it completed. I made it with 25 years to spare.
Now, if isn’t too much to ask, I hope I live to see the Disney Concert Hall.
