Opening ‘The Gates’ to criticism

Well, not everyone loves it.

“The Gates,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s temporary, mammoth installation in New York’s Central Park -- 7,532 plastic gates hung with orange fabric panels -- opened Feb. 12 to some rhapsodic reviews.

New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman called it “a work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century.” In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Catherine Fox wrote, “Aesthetically, emotionally and communally, this is the epitome of what public art can be.” But what Kimmelman described as “a long, billowy saffron ribbon” others have referred to less favorably.

In on-the-spot interviews with park visitors and in New Yorkers’ letters to the editor responding to the installation, some observers have been reminded of a construction site, miles of plastic traffic cones or wipes flapping at a carwash.

Not all critics have been enchanted either.

Blake Gopnik, art critic for the Washington Post, dismissed “The Gates” as “charming bits of civic ornament,” “unusually slight” and “even a touch dull.” He found it “amazing how small the artistic return can be on a piece that fills 850 acres in the middle of one of the world’s great cities and looks set to cost $21 million before it’s done.” (The reported $21-million cost of the project was paid in full by the artists.)

Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski felt that when viewed from ground level, “the installation falls flat. There isn’t any golden stream, or even the intimation of one. There is only a forest of clunky frames clad in orange plastic, each holding up a piece of pleated drapery.

“It might be a once-in-a-lifetime public spectacle and a gold-plated tourist attraction,” he wrote. “But, in the final analysis, all those orange posts and draperies reminded me more of the Home Depot than of art.”

The installation received a double-barreled blast in the New York Post in separate pieces by writers John Podhoretz and Andrea Peyser.

Podhoretz fumed over “the $20 million what-the-hell-is-this-thingamabob that’s spread out across Central Park like an endless row of construction cones shutting down two lanes on Interstate 95.”

Peyser was even more incensed: “That manically promoted, ludicrously expensive sculpture project now infesting Central Park is the artistic equivalent of a yard that’s been strewn with stained toilet paper by juvenile delinquents on Halloween.”

Ouch.

Reflecting the opposing view, Robert L. Turner, editorial writer for the Boston Globe, struck a whimsical note: “Climbing, diving, crossing, circling, ‘The Gates’ is a hit, calling New York to a new celebration of itself. Through Christo’s ‘Gates,’ New York, with wonder in its eye and a goofy smile on its face, has rediscovered its center. We should all be so lucky.”

As of Wednesday, according to New York City Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, a record 1-million-plus visitors had come to Central Park since the panels in the 23-mile stream were unfurled.

According to the Central Park Conservancy, the park would receive approximately 65,000 visitors on a typical weekend day in February.

The free display of “The Gates” will continue in the park from 59th Street to 110th Street through next Sunday.