I Know Art and This Isn’t Him

I have never visited Central Park in New York. But if I ever had, I don’t think I would look up the sky and think, “They should put some sheets up there.” Yet that’s exactly what performance “artists” Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done.

Their “exhibit “Gates” opened this week and a million bored people have visited the park to walk underneath huge saffron banners. They have spread 7,500 gates across 23 miles of pathways.

I’m sorry, but if that’s art, I’m getting into this racket.

I’m sure if I rummage through our linen closet, I could find some colorful things to hang up along the street. In fact, I know of a couple cool beach towels that I could sacrifice for my art.

But if I made the news for that, it would probably be for my trip to the nut house. Christo and Jean Claude have been doing this kind of thing for so long, people just accept their craziness.

I just don’t get it. So they hung some sheets in the park. These are the same people who scattered 1,760 giant yellow umbrellas along the side of a California highway.

Art?

I know some people will call me uncultured and brutish for this reaction, but I can’t help it. I don’t just accept that fact that if someone calls it art, you must agree and hail the genius of someone daring enough to hang their laundry in a public park.

But try and bring up dogs playing poker to that same person and they’ll laugh you out of the room. Don’t even bring up the velvet Elvis. Those “artists” just don’t know quality work.

Apparently, the two “artists” have worked on this project for 25 years. I couldn’t believe that at first, but then I figured they would need a lot of time to accumulate all those sheets.

Twenty-five years equals a little more than 9,100 days. They had to change their sheets almost every single day to make sure they had enough.

And what if the store ran out of orange saffron sheets? That’s not something you see every day in Target.

Performance “artists” shop at Target, right?

They would have to look for a bargain to pay for all the laundry detergent. And where did they keep these sheets anyway? That must be some monster linen closet they have.

That closet won’t be empty for long. The whole shooting match comes down on Feb. 27. Apparently, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is savvy enough to know that you can hoodwink European tourists into looking at sheets in the park for only so long.

By that time, the artists will have disappeared to the nearest laundromat to clean all the sheets. That is unless the fine people of New York don’t take them home as souvenirs. A couple of “gates” were damaged in the first few days of the exhibit.

I just hope they leave at least one set for Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The night of Feb. 27 might be pretty cold and, regardless of how I feel about “Gates,” I don’t want them to suffer for their “art.”

Author: brian

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