The Gates, New York MOMA, and Chelsea Art Galleries

Much has been said about Cristo’s Gates project since it inaugurated this Saturday. No matter what people think, it has already been stipulated into the art history as a success due to all that publicity and the buzz it generated, and thus the huge crowd, numerous conversations about public art, and enormous economic benefits gained by the city. It seems for a project of this scale and right in the middle of Manhattan, most of the success lies in the Cristo’s ability to pull this off. How good it is does not quite matter, and the more controversial it is, the more impact it has. I personally think choosing Central Park Manhattan was a brilliant idea due to its maximum exposure. There are other larger environmental art projects in history, such as the Walter DeMaria’s Lightning Fields in New Mexico or Michael Heizer’s monuments in Nevada. But how many people would travel to those remote places and actually see them?

Thanks to our friend Jonathan’s parents, we stayed right along 59th street and had the first chance to witness the unfurling of the saffron ribbons in the early morning. Through Saturday and Sunday, we walked back to Central Park for a couple of times and observed the Gates under different light conditions and on alternative paths. The varied topography of Central Park and the ever-changing winter light give infinite possibilities to see the project. Sometimes it wiggles and marches along on the opposite side of a wide meadow; sometimes it jumps out from behind the hill like orange flames; and at other times it sits quietly along a pond. The orange color invigorates an otherwise dreary winter landscape, but it can be a bit too intrusive or garish, depending on what your aesthetics is. The very point of environment art is to impose an altered reality that challenges the conventional perspectives on existing landscape. The Cristo couple certainly hope that everyone would think this is beautiful, but they could care less if half of the people think the other way.

NY MOMA opened in the end of last year in a cacophonic praise for its Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. I am a skeptic on flashy museum architecture since the spotlight on the building can dangerously override its exhibitions, although it can be argued that good buildings can draw more people to the museums. Without Frank Gehry, who would even think about going to Bilbao? Anyway, when I fought through the crowd and finally got into the new MOMA building last Friday, I felt the media ravings were justified. Tanguchi’s new MOMA building is understated but beautiful. It tucks itself comfortably in the urban landscape and offers the museum goers both chances to look back into art history as well as look out to the city. Centered around the atrium, it has a very easy-to-follow layout and a focus point. The atrium, with Barnett Newman’s obelisk in the center and Monet’s lily pond spanning across an entire wall, is always gorgeous to look at from any of the floors. My only complaints are the narrow escalators and small waiting room for the coat check.

As the art critic Michael Kimmerman (from New York Times) pointed out, the NY MOMA exhibitions on the 3rd and 4th floors are well organized and confident, while the contemporary art on the 2nd floor seems a bit chaotic and less assured. It is probably not quite MOMA’s fault. New art has much less time to test out, and MOMA can only select one piece each from all the prominent names, while it ends up canceling out each other without telling any coherent story. On the contrary, art before 70s had a clear evolutionary progression. From Cubism to Pop to minimalism, MOMA picked up the most important works with highlights of a few real masters. It simply could not go wrong.

On the 5th floor the new MOMA hosted temporary exhibitions and this time it turned out to be a private UBS collection. With a roster including Gerhart Richter, Andy Walhol, Chuck Glose, and Andreas Gursky, the UBS collection share a lot in common with Gap’s collection, and one wonders whether they actually hired the same art consultant. After all, corporations buy art as investments and as status symbols. They target the most well-known names who have already established their market values. They also can’t really focus on one genre or one art movement, although there is often a time line to be followed.

On Sunday we strolled to Chelsea and checked a few galleries along 22nd street and 24th street. Compared to San Francisco, Chelsea’s galleries are full of more established names. Within two blocks, I spotted Sara Lucas, Joseph Bueys, Leonardo Drew, Calder, Mark Quinn and Robert Doisneau, a list of art-world who-and-who’s that include both old maters and the new darlings. For lesser known artists, they probably have better chance in Brooklyn.