The Gates of Waste

The Gates of Waste

Feb.18th, 2005

Dear Friends and Fellow Artists,

How ironic it is that the pseudo-artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude choose the traditional saffron fabric worn by Buddhist Monks to make their decadent Statement "THE GATES" in New York Cities' Central Park this Week. It is a gross misuse of a public park. Twenty million dollars of waste in the name of what? It certainly is not art! The humble monks of Tibet and Thailand wear the saffron and set themselves apart from the material world. The most famous of those who wear the saffron is the Dali Lama. He is a Tibetan Buddhist. The Buddha taught all different classes of men and women, Brahmins and outcasts, wealthy and beggars, ascetics and robbers, kings and peasants, without making any distinction between them. In order to teach the Dhamma (teachings), he had to face a big challenge to overcome the existing harmful dogmas of their society. The society was rigidly controlled according to caste, color, religion, sex, belief and hierarchical customs. After Buddha was enlightened, he expressed the invalidity of the caste systems and other discriminatory practices against any type of human beings. Politicians, wealthy people, high rankers and others carried out these harmful practices. He treated every human being equally by using specific features, which varied in accordance with the impermanence of all living beings. Buddha's comment was, "No one becomes an outcast by birth, no one becomes a Brahmin (the higher ranking and spiritual advisers at that time) by birth, one becomes an outcast or Brahmin only by deed." If someone can maintain five precepts: abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and taking intoxicant alcohol and dangerous drugs, he is the higher-ranking person. Whosoever is not maintaining those five precepts then that person is the outcast (Vasala) and not those who are born in specific families and labeled as outcasts.

I am appalled and disgusted by the use of Central Park to display such a ridiculous demonstration in the lack of aesthetics and mindless materialism. Is it any wonder the general public's perception of fine arts is so distorted? Congress is under constant pressure to cut funding to the arts because of such foolish displays as this. Is it any wonder? Follow the link for a organization devoted to art of lasting social value. Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past Masters can we create the Masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

The Art Renewal Center

http://www.artrenewal.org/

Yours in Art,

Beth Maxwell Boyle

The Rams Horn Studio

ART & CELEBRITY (2002)

JOHN A.WALKER

INTRODUCTION

Fine artists are imbricated in celebrity culture, which is now so pervasive, because they contribute images and statues to it and some of them participate in its social rituals and enjoy the status of celebrities.The kind of art the latter produce is often influenced by their desire for fame and fortune and by the art market’s demand for ‘art stars’.At the same time, some artists seek alternatives to the depiction of establishment figures and celebrities, while others criticise, deconstruct or play with celebrity. In addition, a number of celebrities from the world of entertainment have been influenced by the fine arts and some of them collect art and practice it in their spare time. In the past, people were famous because of their high social rank and for great deeds and accomplishments, and these continue to exist but today they share the same media space with the stars of entertainment and sport, and with minor celebrities of all kinds.All are grist to the publicity industry and the magnifying/disseminating power of the mass media.All are sustained by the enthusiasm and spending power of audiences and fans.

ARTISTS DEPICT CELEBRITIES

Throughout the centuries, artists have been commissioned to generate images, sculptures and monuments of powerful rulers, and notable men and women.The waxworks established in the eighteenth century and the national portrait galleries dating from the nineteenth century and present day halls of fame in America cater for the desire of the masses to see what such people looked like. In recent times, fine artists, cartoonists and photographers have been called upon to flatter or satirise celebrities such as politicians, film, television, pop music, sports stars, members of the British Royal

Family, and even notorious criminals such as Myra Hindley.Toulouse-Lautrec was one of the first fine artists to depict the popular entertainers of Paris during the 1890s. Maggi Hambling followed his precedent in the 1980s with her depictions of the British comedian Max Wall. During the 1930s, the American film stars Shirley Temple and Mae West fascinated the surrealist Salvador Dali.The pop artists of the 1950s and 1960s were particularly attracted to pop and rock music performers and Jeff Koons was later to make a notorious statue of Michael Jackson holding his pet chimp.Movie stars also appealed to the pop artists as Andy Warhol’s paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor testify. Before and after her death, Princess Diana was a subject that many artists tackled including Andr? Durand who depicted her as the Roman goddess Fortuna.Young American artists such as Karen Kilimnik and Elizabeth Peyton resemble fans of celebrities in the way they produce positive images of celebs such as Hugh Grant, Leonardo DiCaprio and Twiggy in a deliberately gauche style. The realms of art, celebrity culture and religion overlap. Celebrities are frequently worshipped like saints and relics of their existence are collected and turned into shrines - think of the thousands of Elvis devotees who visit Graceland every year. Joanne Stephens, Katy Temin and Jessica Voorsanger have produced shrine-like works to Presley, Kylie Minogue and David Cassidy.Michael J. Browne has

painted a fanatically detail image of the French footballer and Manchester United player Eric Cantona that resembled an altarpiece and was based on a Renaissance image of the resurrected Christ.Tracey Emin, an artist who has appeared on television quiz shows, displays relics of her daily existence, such as her bed, and sells them for high prices. Her confessional-type art appeals to her fans in much the same way that the ‘confess all my sufferings’ behaviour of Princess Di did to her admirers. When a famous artist dies, their studios are sometimes preserved (C?zanne, Bacon, Brancusi, Dali and Pollock, for instance) and they then become places of pilgrimage for art lovers. Some fans enjoy impersonating their heroes and certain artists do too. Cindy Sherman, for instance has impersonated fictional film stars and Monroe, and the Japanese male artist Yasumasa Morimura has mimicked a host of female movie stars – all recorded in photographs.The British artist Alison Jackson is a meta-photographer who uses look-alikes of celebrities, such as Prince William,Victoria (Posh Spice) and David Beckham, to stage scenes purporting to be truthful. Jackson enters into celebrity culture, takes on the mass media and beats them at their own game. Caricature is one art form in which the appearance and behaviour of the famous (including art stars such as Damien Hirst) are mocked, and the excesses of celebrityhood attacked. The grotesque SpittingImage puppets were effective on television during the 1980s. A more recent example is the computer animation ITV series 2DTV. However, many caricatures are affectionate rather than coruscating and the amusement they provide is usually cathartic and therapeutic.

ALTERATIVE HEROES

During the nineteenth century, the philosopher Thomas Carlyle propounded a Great Man theory of history, which led to the founding of the National Portrait Gallery in London. Stone and bronze monuments to heroes proliferated in the streets of major cities but later there was a loss of faith in heroes (apart from Nelson Mandela). Hence, the arguments about what new figures should be added to a vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square. Mark Wallinger’s thoughtful response was a sculpture of a human-scale Christ that eschewed idealisation and glorification. A left-wing reaction to the glorification of establishment figures was an alternative pantheon: Marx, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara, etc.The Bolsheviks under Lenin destroyed old statues and substituted new ones.Then came the personality cults of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, visually embodied in huge monuments and socialist realist canvases. (In the West, similar monuments in a similar style were erected to British generals and to American Presidents on a mountain face in the Black Hills; the Sioux Indians are responding with their own mountain monument to Chief Crazy Horse.) May Stevens,

Margaret Harrison and R.B. Kitaj are three living artists who have made works about Rosa Luxemburg, while Warhol created a whole series of paintings featuring Chairman Mao.Alberto Korda’s famous photo of Guevara led to dozens of variants and posters, and Gavin Turk impersonated him in a recent sculpture. Scott King’s satiric poster ‘Cher Guevara’ – combining Che and the singer/actress Cher - followed. When the USSR and Eastern Europe rejected communism many statues of Stalin were destroyed and in Prague, an inflatable of Michael Jackson took their place.

Feminist artists of the 1970s naturally sought an alternative pantheon to that devoted to great men: Judy Chicago’s huge and impressive installation called The Dinner Party, for instance, represented important women from the past. Barbara Kruger, another American artist, proclaimed via a billboard image and caption,‘We don’t need another hero’. Another alternative was the depiction of anonymous, unsung people - usually workers and those skilled

in particular trades.This tendency dates from the nineteenth century and the emergence of socialism, realism and democracy when artists such as Gustave Courbet, J-F Millet and Vincent van Gogh depicted labourers and peasants, and urban heroes such as fire fighters.The latter were hailed as heroes again in September 2001 when New York fire crews lost their lives in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers.This kind of representation lends itself to the depiction of individuals or groups as tokens of types: Soviet socialist realism’s glorification of tractor drivers; Stanley Spencer’s paintings of Scottish shipyard workers; James Agee and Walker Evan’s book Let us Now Praise Famous Men, with its documentation of the lives of poor white sharecroppers; Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother photograph; a volume containing Sebasti?o Salgado’s impressive black and white photos of manual labour around the globe was published in 1993.The Victorian artist G.F.Watts created ceramic plaque memorials to ordinary people who gave their lives to save others.The plaques, which are displayed in Postman’s Park, London inspired artist Susan Hiller to devise a mixed-media installation entitled Monument (1980-81). Thousands of ordinary people can become famous for 15 minutes because of journalism and the mass media but now individuals can represent and present themselves via photography and the Internet. With a website and web cams, ordinary people and performance artists can live their lives in real time while being watched by total strangers.

ARTISTS AS CELEBRITIES

Leading artists have been glorified by biographers and critics, and promoted by dealers and collectors and adored by the public. In the cases of van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, for instance, popular cults developed after they died. Certain artists have courted publicity by such means as dramatic selfportraits, shock tactics, bohemian lifestyles, wearing ‘costumes’, courting the media and participating in publicity events such as the Turner Prize.The result has been the emergence of a galaxy of ‘art stars’ who were/are famous beyond the art world: Dali, Picasso, Bacon, Beuys,Warhol, Pollock, Koons, Hockney, Schnabel, Basquiat, Hirst and Emin. Often, the person of the artist becomes more important than their works, or the works are considered merely the expressions of the artist’s personality and lived experiences. One sign of an artist’s celebrity is the appearance of biopics, which focus on the subject’s life rather than their art: artists about whom biopics have been made include Bacon, Michelangelo,Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, Kahlo and Pollock. Business sponsorship and commercial endorsement opportunities are further signs of celebrityhood. Since his death in 1987,Warhol has been represented in a number of feature films.The master of business art was willing to endorse many products and services. He deserves particular attention because of his personal experience and understanding of celebrity and for his abilities to achieve fame, to develop a protective mask or persona in order to survive in the spotlight. During the 1960s, his factory studio was a crucial social meeting place and a source of countless depictions of celebrities such as Elvis, Marilyn and Jackie Kennedy. Warhol was a filmmaker as well as a painter.Visitors to his studio were subjected to screen tests and, in a parody of Hollywood, he transformed unknowns into ‘Superstars’. He also exemplifies the celebrity as a victim of stalking and attack (in 1968 he was shot by an extreme feminist).

Artists such as Richard Hamilton and Gavin Turk have made their desire for fame visible by depicting themselves on the covers of Time and Hello! magazines.Turk also celebrated himself via a blue Londonwall plaque even though he was just an art student at the time. In one of his sculptures, he impersonated the punk rocker Sid Vicious who in turn was mimicking Elvis. In 1998, in London, the American-born artist Jessica Voorsanger created a pavement of concrete slabs inscribed with the names and palm prints of well-known and aspiring artists. She called it ‘Art Stars’.

CELEBRITIES AS COLLECTORS AND ARTISTS

Hollywood movie stars, directors and producers have vied with one another for high status by collecting expensive art works and designed goods in order to display them in their so-called ‘celebrity homes’.. Edward G. Robinson and Vincent Price, for example, were discriminating art lovers who formed important collections. Currently, such stars as Elton John, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Sir Paul McCartney and David Bowie are keen collectors. Furthermore, a number of celebrities from the field of entertainment have practiced art and their entertainment work has been influenced by their knowledge of art and their contacts with artists. Examples include: Bowie,Tony Curtis, Hopper, McCartney, Stallone and Ronnie Wood. Hopper is not only a famous movie actor and director but also an artist and photographer of note; one of the movies he directed featured work by artist Jenny Holzer. Madonna has taken a keen interest in the arts since childhood. She owns paintings by Kahlo and is a connoisseur of contemporary photography; her adoption of various stage personae was influenced by the photo-art of Cindy Sherman. During the 1970s and 1980s in New York, she was close to the artists Keith Haring, Basquiat and Warhol.While in London during the 1960s, McCartney moved in avant-garde art circles and mixed with leading British pop artists and art dealers. He later married a photographer and collected modern art.After meeting Willem de Kooning, he was encouraged to start painting. Bowie holds one-man shows of his paintings and prints, collects art, encourages young artists, displays art on his own website and is an editor of Modern Painters, a magazine that has published interviews he has conducted with art stars Emin, Koons and Schnabel.

CONCLUSION

A number of questions remain: can art survive in an era of entertainment and celebrity? Can art preserve a distinct identity or will it be condemned to a minor role in celebrity culture? Is high quality in art incompatible with celebrity? Can art perform a critical function in respect of celebrity? A harsh condemnation and rejection of the obsession with celebrity is inappropriate because the icons of popular culture fascinate virtually everyone, even academics and critics albeit at one remove. (And there are left-wing icons too.) Furthermore, celebrity is now so powerful it is like a force of nature. Even to halt it, as Suzanne Moore has remarked,‘one would have to destroy the entire media industry’ and this would surely mean destroying capitalism itself – but the supposed alternative ‘communist’ societies of the twentieth century had their own personality cults. What we all need to ponder is our desire for glamorous role models and to consider whether we can live without them. First, we must admit our addiction and second, seek to understand the seductive appeal of the celebrity phenomenon; then perhaps its spell will be moderated.The most useful art in this respect is that by artists such as Turk and Jackson, which examines celebrity culture from within.

(This is a summary of my book Art and Celebrity published by Pluto Press in 2003.)

Copywrite John Walker 2002

Material on this paper is copyright but can be printed out for private study but not for commercial purposes.

Christo's latest pointless installation has divided New Yorkers,

writes Caroline Overington.

The artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, stepped out of their limousine and into New York's Central Park.

All around them, workers were hard at it, erecting 7500 giant metal gates.

Christo - a grey-haired, 69-year-old Bulgarian, who is, at this moment, about as tired and elated as he has ever been - looked around, deeply satisfied.

"Know why we're doing this?" he said, to a bunch of schoolchildren who were visiting the park. "For no reason! It's art, and art is for nothing!"

Well, not quite for nothing.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude - both use only first names - have long been associated with grand works of art.

They met in Paris after Christo - who had made a name for himself wrapping small items such as telephones - was invited to Jeanne-Claude's family chateau to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother.

They have since wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in silver cloth and hung a curtain of orange fabric between two Rocky Mountain slopes.

They surrounded 11 islands off the coast of Florida with pink fabric and, in 1969, they came to Sydney and wrapped Little Bay in 90,000 square metres of mesh.

As such, they are often called "the wrapping artists" which greatly annoys them. "It's a stupid mistake to think that we wrap everything," Christo says.

Indeed, they have not wrapped anything for at least 15 years, and they won't be wrapping Central Park. Instead, workers yesterday began erecting The Gates, which are literally that: 7500 gates, from which will hang 7500 curtains of specially woven, saffron-coloured cloth.

People will be able to walk through the gates, touch the material, and marvel at the shadows. From the buildings around the park, the artists hope that people will see a "shimmering river" of saffron fabric, winding its way over snow- covered paths, and through the bare trees.

The project, which has cost $US17 million ($22.2 million) - plus $US3 million to hire Central Park - has been 26 years in the making. That's how long it took to get permission to use the park.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude made more than 100 presentations to New York City officials, some of whom were wary of letting anybody lay a finger on a place so dear to the heart of New Yorkers.

Many could not see the point of the installation. As one asked at a public meeting: "Twenty-seven miles of shower curtains around the park? Is that necessary, Mr Christo, to promote yourself?"

Others wanted to know why the artists couldn't use a less precious location, such as Prospect Park in Brooklyn. In reply, Jeanne-Claude asked: "I want to ask the gentleman a silly question. Did you marry the lady you wanted or did you marry an alternative woman?"

Environmentalists had concerns, too. What would the birds make of the billowing fabric? Were the artists serious about drilling 15,000 holes in the park, for the poles that hold the fabric up?

They were, but they were told it was impossible. So they designed new gates that are moored on heavy steel bases. No digging has been necessary.

The artists admit the installation serves no purpose.

Christo has said: "Nobody needs The Gates. It's totally irrational, irresponsible, useless, with no justification."

None of which means it won't be beautiful, inspiring, fascinating and extraordinary. Or that some people won't hate it.

Some critics have labelled Christo a modern-day Barnum, a creator of circus-style extravaganzas. Others have said the quiet dignity of Central Park will be destroyed by The Gates, even though the installation is temporary. They have compared it to the irritation people cause by talking loudly in the library.

But the mayor of New York, billionaire art collector Michael Bloomberg, is a friend of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Last year he gave his blessing to the project, provided the artists paid for it themselves and paid to use the park.

Christo and Jean-Claude say they will make no money from the project itself, since The Gates will be free to see. "It's like bringing up a child," said Christo. In other words, the pleasure is just in doing it, regardless of the cost.

They raised the money for the project - and their income - by selling Christo's drawings of The Gates for $US30,000 to $US600,000. The pair do not sell T-shirts, postcards or posters and accept no sponsorship.

There is no official starting time, no best place to view The Gates, no suggested place to start or finish. The idea is just to go, walk around and experience it.

The artists object to the idea that their works are best seen from the air, saying: "No! None of the work is designed for the birds. All have a scale to be enjoyed by human beings who are on the ground."

All of the gates are expected to be in place by Friday. Each will have a plastic cocoon suspended from the top, in which lies the curtain of saffron fabric. Those will be opened on Saturday. The curtains will hang for 16 days, after which the whole thing will be taken down and the materials recycled.

The artists say the temporary nature of the project is part of the appeal: "Like childhood, it is precious because we know it does not last."

About The Gates: The Gates will cost $US20 million, including a $US3 million fee for use of Central Park. It opens to the public on Saturday and will be taken down on February 28.

The artists object to claims that they ruin natural environments, saying the materials used for their installations are always removed and recycled.

Another blogger Has written these words"

Tuesday, 15 February 2005

SOME CALL IT ART...

...I call it crap.

As you may well have heard, Central Park has been transformed into a wonderland of orange saffron drapery, and it's being played up as the biggest art exhibit in NYC since the shit-on-the-virgin-mary debacle. It took the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude 26 YEARS to conceptualize and finalize their project simply known as "The Gates." In case you are unaware, 23 miles of Central Park's paths have been lined with 16-foot-tall metal arcs from which orange fabric hangs and will stay there for 16 days. And that's it. That's the big deal that people from all over the world are flocking here to see. (Go here if you have no ida what I'm talking about... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/12/entertainment/e065824S72.DTL&type=printable )

The couple is personally financing this monstrosity and it's costing, get ready for this, 21 MILLION DOLLARS! And when this is all said and done, they arenot recycling the project. All the metal, all the fabric, the whole thing is being trashed. Jeanne-Claude had said this is like their baby, and you would spend anything on your baby. Let me tell you, if it cost $21 mil to have a child for just over two weeks no one would have children and humanity would come to a halt. People keep asking them why they don't give money to charity instead of wasting it in this manner. Good question. These people are not rich and have to now find a way to actually come up with all the cash (Christo's conceptual drawings are raising some money, purchased by other nutcases who I am guessing don't give to charitable causes).

http://themadhatter.blog-city.com/

(I haven't actually seen this crap in person, but if I do I'll be sure to update this...)

Young Critics See 'The Gates' and Offer Their Reviews: Mixed

By JULIE SALAMON

Published: February 17, 2005

Yesterday morning, unusually balmy for February, the gentle slopes north of the Delacorte Theater in Central Park resembled a giant schoolyard. Swarms of students were led to "The Gates" by their teachers, to observe, to draw, to meditate - and in many cases to pontificate - on the meaning of art and nature.

For Kate Rosenberg, 9, a third-grade student at Rodeph Sholom, a private school on the Upper West Side, the saffron-colored gates dreamed up by the artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, have altered her vision of Central Park. "Before I didn't really look at the park," she said. "I didn't see how beautiful it is.

"These gates, and there are billions of them, make me feel I will not look at the park the same way again."

There are actually 7,532 gates spread along 23 miles of the park's pathways - not quite billions, but more than enough to loom large in a child's imagination. And in the opinion of some children, far too many. Perhaps especially in New York, it is never too soon to become a critic. Many youngsters wondered if this was art at all, and if it was, did it have to cost $21 million?

"They just wasted their money on nothing," declared Ikim Powell, 10, who attends P.S. 368 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. "They should at least have paintings behind them."

His classmate, Tyre Brooks, felt "The Gates" was an unnecessary artificial imposition on the park's natural beauty. "Now it looks like a stage, like on wrestling," he said. "I just want to ride my bike and play. I'd like to come back to the park when the flags aren't here. They look cheap."

But another student from P.S. 368, Tyquam Nimmons, on his first visit to Central Park, disagreed. "It is artistic," he said. "There are a lot of them all around, and they're the same color and they give me a good feeling." He was about to elaborate but instead ran off to catch a football being tossed around by a group from his school.

Martha Epstein, a Rodeph Sholom third-grader, sitting with her classmates on a hill made of boulders, had just finished a sketch of one of the gates. "This is about my millionth time seeing 'The Gates,' " she sighed. She said she was not much impressed on her first visit last weekend with her family, right after the 116,389 miles of saffron fabric were unfurled. "It was really crowded and I didn't like the orange," she said. "I wished it was green, a park color."

Subsequent visits have somewhat altered her view. "I don't like the look of them but I like the way everybody is at the park and happy," she said.

Lucinda Gresswell brought her two children to New York from London for their midterm break, in part because the Christo gates would be up. In the 1970's, Ms. Gresswell's father had bought a Christo drawing of either a pyramid or a sphinx, she could not remember which. So two weeks ago she booked a flight.

Her 11-year-old son, Samuel Glanville, had no doubt that the gates were art. "Art is Fauvism, Pointillism, abstract," he said, looking at rows of pleated nylon fabric floating slightly at the whiff of a breeze. "This is Christo - is that his name, I forget? - this is his art, his own interpretation."

Samuel liked knowing that "The Gates" would be on view for only two weeks. "Like all art, if it's always there it doesn't feel so special," he said, with the savvy of a shrewd museum director. "It's like a special Matisse show at a museum. You feel lucky if you get to see it."

For his 9-year-old sister, Bella, on her first visit to New York, confronting "The Gates" was another in a series of crucial discoveries: the brilliant lights of Times Square, and Century 21, the bargain store near ground zero, where Bella acquired the very cool shirt she was wearing.

She was not as certain as her brother of the artistic merit of the gates. "Well, yeah," she said, when asked if they were art. Then, she amended. "Not so much," she said. "They're kind of like flags. I prefer messy art, like blobs."

But she was happy that Christo's project helped lure her family to Central Park, where she and Samuel worked up a healthy glow climbing on the rocks. "It wouldn't be too ordinary even without the flags," she said. "Most parks have grass and trees, not rocks. In England, unless it's a heath, you wouldn't have big rocks and stones."

Sean Springer, a student from the Rhode Island School of Design on leave to work as a volunteer for "The Gates," said he had learned from the school groups wandering through. "There was an English class writing about their feelings, and I was wondering about the connections between literature and this work," he said. "My opinion is the art makes a poetic statement, and they said art is a form of poetry."

Mr. Springer helped install "The Gates," will help take it down, and stands at the ready to untangle fabric with a pole capped by a tennis ball. He also answers questions and hands out swatches of the nylon saffron fabric to passers-by. "That's one thing that's the same for kids and adults," he said. "If they know about the swatches, they want them."

Pseudo-artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude

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