January 07, 2005

• Interesting.
• I do like some of Christo's work. I thought the wrapped Reichstag was beautiful and the umbrellas were also really lovely. I think the real "art" of Christo comes from people seeing the installations and having the image burned in their brains- you can never go back and look at a Christo piece. His work is fleeting and archived in one's memory, like the perfect sunset. You can only own your own image of it. Still, a lot of people don't care for his stuff. I think he gets more of a bad (w)rap than he deserves.
• My mom is planning a trip from California just to see this. We saw the plans and drawings at MOMA last summer when we were in town for a wedding and she decided she needed to be there. I'm a little jealous.
• I have been so excited for this. There are major differences of opinion among NYC residents, but I just love the whimsy and the scale. And this will be such a wonderful mood elevator during one of the dreariest months.
• i've been waiting for it too, since the big new yorker pice i think. I love the idea and had hoped to be there to see it but thought i would be in nyc for the holidays. now, who knows *cross fingers*
• The criticism that 20 million could be better spend on the tsunami victims is a cliche copout to any issue involving a spendature you don't agree with. In the same vein as the blog comparing the cost of the war in iraq equaling 42 hours of tsunami aid. It's apples and oranges. If this couple wants to spend that kind of money doing something that some may consider useless (even the artists themselves) than so be it. It's quickly becoming cliche to compare each and every situation to the tsunami victims/aid/situation/etc. and it tires quickly. /rant, *grabs towel and heads for the locker room
• I agree, genial. In addition, we're talking about private money and a personal project with the ability to bring great joy to the public without hurting anyone or anything. How can that be wrong? We need more joy like this in the world these days.
• the saffron fabric will look quite striking against the grey winter environment Only it's not all that grey this winter. As a matter of fact, it's been pretty balmy. Of course, it could change, but it really hasn't been that cold, and so far there has been no really appreciable snow in the park. I only think it's snowed twice so far, and the second time I wouldn't really count since it turned over to rain. Perhaps if the piece were installed in Buffalo instead ...
• Still, there are many ways that $20 million could bring more joy than this will.
• raise 20 mil and go for it then they did and it's never been easy note: people with excess 20 mil might still not take your financial advice
• Cristo installed giant scrims throughout the Rice University campus when I was an undergrad. I generally appreciate large-scale public art that makes me think, however, what it made me thing was "some jackass has placed a giant scrim across the walkway and now I have to go around." I was unsurprised when some less-civic-minded classmate of mine removed the impediment, and only slightly sympathetic to an artist who was surprised that those trails in the grass were the result of feet walking through the place he put his art. It's hard for me to look at a Cristo installation today without wondering who he's inconveniencing this time.
• Oh, this looks like fun -- a strange cloth instrument played by the wind... Spring flowers opening, golden crocus.
• LarimdaME- Actually, I was thinking about the color of the architecture surrounding the park, the lack of green on the trees, the grey sky (you at least have the grey sky, don't you?). I would think it would look really nice from an elevated view. Would you like some of our winter? Please? You're welcome to it. Rocket- I'm not qualified to plan public art, so I wouldn't want to venture what would bring more joy. I just know that people like what they like. I like this project, others will not. Art's like that. McCroft- I've always wondered about the level of inconvenience with Christo's projects. I can't remember if people were working in the Reichstag when he wrapped it (was it under renovation at the time, maybe?), but if they were, how pissed off were they to have natural light replaced by silvery-grey fabric? I know his work is temporary, but with regard to the pieces for which the interactive components just don't work, it must seem like they are in the way forever. Beeswacky-Yeah! That's it! The rest of you- pictures! It would be so interesting to see what your different impressions of this project are.
• Still, there are many ways that $20 million could bring more joy than this will. Sure, but you could say that about every work of art ever created. Personally, I don't think this is as useless as even the artist is claiming. I think it's art, and I think it'll look beautiful, and that to me carries its own justification. The only wasteful thing to me is that it's temporary.
• I suggest we should bring down the Sixtine Chapel in Rome (useless piece of Papist "art" from the Renaissance) and use the stones to re-build hotels for Australian and Swedish tourists to come and have fun for nothing in poor Asian countries... er, to build housing, schools and hospitals in Phuket, I mean. I really would like to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work... too bad I'm no New-Yorker, and no wealthy, idle Frenchman either.
• The Reichstag was wrapped while it was still under renovation, and before it became the seat of the German Parliament again (via) In terms of bringing more joy... that's hard to quantify. is that joy to more people, or an increase in joy to the same population?
• My biggest problem is that the super-rich patrons who fund this crap art consider their donation to be charitable, and that this is their gift to the betterment of society, at the expense of real causes that could actually help those who need it most.
• Well, the problem isn't what "super-rich patrons" make of their money, but how they earned it. (IMHO, you can't get "super-rich" without at least once exploiting people -- e.g. Indonesian 14 year-olds who sew T-shirts for your sportswear firm as an alternative to prostitution or being sold as quasi-slaves to Qatari cheikhs -- but that's another debate altogether). Any form of art (well, maybe not American Idol) contributes to the betterment of society, by creating something that has no utilitarian value (a feat in itself in our productivity-, performance-obsessed age, isn't it ?), and brings a sense of beauty and/or wonder in people's environment.
• Again, good point, but again I've gotta ask where you draw the line. By the same reasoning, Twain would have better served humanity by setting up, say, orphanages or soup kitchens than writing. Picasso would have done his countrymen a far better service by quitting painting and sculpting and dedicating his life to serving the poor and indigent. I can't really find fault with either one of those statements. But if they'd followed through, we wouldn't have Huckleberry Finn or Guernica, and I do think we as a people are better off with them than without them. Art may not be practical or charitable, but that's not to say that it's not useful, or even necessary. Better they're spending it on art than on buying that second summer home or building yet another golf course.
• That was for rocket, btw.
• Beauty and wonder are subjective and definitely not universal. Christo's work does nothing for me, personally. I find his achievements to be mostly engineering and logistical, rather than artistic.
• Better they're spending it on art than on buying that second summer home or building yet another golf course. For the vast majority of humanity, there would be no difference at all.
• As the text of the main page of the first link clearly states: "The artists do not accept sponsorship or donations." There is no "super-rich patron" involved in this project. The last I heard, Christo was an artist (whether you like his work or not), not a philanthropic organization.
• For the vast majority of humanity, there would be no difference at all. I don't think it follows that there is then necessarily no difference. Back to my previous analogy, Twain could have given up writing, taken a ship to (say) Africa and given his life to fighting disease and starvation there. Of course, this would have been a laudable thing. And it sure would have helped starving Africans a hell of a lot more than writing Tom Sawyer, which I'd be willing to bet that most Africans have not read. I agree that, in this example, Twain makes a much more immediate, and practical contribution. He might even have saved some lives, which means more than book-writing. But he didn't do that. Instead, he gave birth to the American novel. Maybe most people couldn't give two shits about the American novel, but that doesn't make his contribution meaningless. And even if he hadn't given us Huck Finn or affected the future course of literature how he did, even if he labored away in obscurity until he died, I still can't say that he wasted his time, or that others would have wasted their money by helping to support his career. I can't say that because the only logical endpoint of this is that we all stop creating art, all of us, right now, and instead devote our time and money to charity. We stop funding art, stop paying for it, stop allowing it to be a career of choice. Which would leave us in a world without art. Which is a world I don't really want to live in.
• I'm not sure, mct, but I'm pretty sure Twain made some good money from his writings during his lifetime. And he could apply some of that to helping others, and thus the world is better off in more ways than one from the fact that he chose to write. In any case, it didn't cost him $20 million, or the equivalent of the time, to create a temporary work, and then dismantle it, so the comparison doesn't really apply. I'm not anti-art....quite the contrary. In fact I'd be very happy if the $20 mil was spent on funding music & art programs for public schools. But bibliochick is right...it's Christo's money (I was wrong in assuming he was funded by patrons)and he can do with it what he wants. I just don't see much difference between him spending 20mil on yellow flags and ex-Tyco exec Dennis Kozlowski spending $15,000 on an umbrella stand and $6,000 on a shower curtain.
• One is an installation for the public to experience (hence the term "public art"), the others are items purchased for private use. Moving on... I really would be interested in seeing photos or reading descriptions by monkies who encounter this project. Whenever possible, I like to use accounts and images from "real people" when I teach, so the kids have some other experience to draw from besides what they see in the dreaded textbook.
• French waiter who stole 'for love of art' attempts suicide.
• Christo's work does nothing for me, personally. And therefore it shouldn't exist, right? The age-old philistine argument: art's fine, as long as it's art I can understand/enjoy. I'm extremely pissed at the timing; I would have loved to have seen this, but I made my last visit to the City yesterday, and Monday we're moving out of state. Ah well, I look forward to the pictures.
• I'd love to see this too - although I'd have to come from Colorado. I'd always vaguely dismissed the Christo's work as pretentious bollocks, until I saw some documentaries (by the Maysles brothers) that showed how these huge pieces prompted thousands of otherwise-not-into-art passers to pause for a few minutes, and to think about art, and the taken-for-granted nature of their everyday world, and relationship between the two. Or something like that.
• I always got a good feeling off these.
• lh: I never said it shouldn't exist. I said that, in my opinion, it's a waste of money. I'm not lobbying against the project.