I have never visited Central Park in New York. But if I ever had, I don\u2019t think I would look up the sky and think, \u201cThey should put some sheets up there.\u201d Yet that\u2019s exactly what performance \u201cartists\u201d Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done.<\/p>\n
Their \u201cexhibit \u201cGates\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sorry, but if that\u2019s art, I\u2019m getting into this racket.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I just don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Art?<\/p>\n
I know some people will call me uncultured and brutish for this reaction, but I can\u2019t help it. I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
But try and bring up dogs playing poker to that same person and they\u2019ll laugh you out of the room. Don\u2019t even bring up the velvet Elvis. Those \u201cartists\u201d just don\u2019t know quality work.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the two \u201cartists\u201d have worked on this project for 25 years. I couldn\u2019t believe that at first, but then I figured they would need a lot of time to accumulate all those sheets.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And what if the store ran out of orange saffron sheets? That\u2019s not something you see every day in Target.<\/p>\n
Performance \u201cartists\u201d shop at Target, right?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
That closet won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t take them home as souvenirs. A couple of \u201cgates\u201d were damaged in the first few days of the exhibit.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cGates,\u201d I don\u2019t want them to suffer for their \u201cart.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have never visited Central Park in New York. But if I ever had, I don\u2019t think I would look up the sky and think, \u201cThey should put some sheets up there.\u201d Yet that\u2019s exactly what performance \u201cartists\u201d Christo and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-things-i-hate","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-4-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}