Santiago Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum is one of the strangest buildings I have ever seen or heard of.
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The Gates – Central Park, New York  2005

The Inexplicable Magic of The Gates 

I’m an art-lover and avid museum-goer with what I guess is eclectic taste.   For example I don’t like abstract art.  (See In the Abstract)

And yet though I prefer representational art,  I also like art that’s a bit phantasmic like Franz Marc’s blue horses,  and Marc Chagall’s flying bovines.  (See Chagall’s Cows)

And there are two contemporary artists with radically different styles whom I admire and whose artwork I own.   (See Danielle Mailer, Artist Extraordinaire,  and Our Philip Pearlstein Nude)

I also greatly admire Judy Chicago whose art carries a message that resonates.  (See The Dinner Party)

And I enjoyed the creativity of my parents who were both artists.  (See Still Life and My Father, the Outsider Artist)

But in a class by itself are the site-specific installations by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  As you may know,  Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s world-famous projects include Berlin’s Reichstag,  the building the couple and their crew wrapped in 100,000 square meters of silver fabric in 1995;  and the 1991 Umbrellas Japan – USA project when they erected over 3,000 giant blue and yellow umbrellas simultaneously in Ibaraki,  Japan and on the Tejon Mountain Pass in California.

Wrapped Reichstag – Berlin

Umbrellas – Ibaraki, Japan

Umbrellas – Tejon Mountain Pass,  California

Both born in 1935 – he in Bulgaria and she in Morocco of French parents –  Christo Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon met as young artists in Paris,  married in 1960 and began working together to conceive,  elicit funding,  and install their environmental projects.

Jeanne-Claude died in 2009,  and Christo in 2020,  and the following year both were honored posthumously in Paris when their former crew wrapped L’Arc de Triomphe in 25,000 square meters of silvery fabric and 3,000 meters of red rope.

Wrapped L’Arc de Triomphe – Paris

But thankfully back in 2005 we New Yorkers got to know them when Christo and Jeanne-Claude brought The Gates to Central Park.

The artists and their crew installed 7,500 vinyl “gates” along 23 miles of pathways in the park and hung panels of orange fabric from each.   Then on February 12,  New York’s Mayor Bloomberg,  with Christo and Jeanne-Claude at his side,  officially opened the exhibit and for two weeks thousands of New Yorkers and tourists walked through the park and passed under The Gates.

Of course the project had it’s detractors – some  felt the installation defaced the landscape or obstructed cyclists or prevented visitors from enjoying the park.   But for me and I’m sure for most of us who walked under The Gates in that grim February weather,  the experience seemed inexplicably magical,  as if a ray of sunlight was following us thru the park!

And it was a constant topic of conversation.   “Have you seen The Gates yet?”,  we asked our friends,  and I even remember asking strangers on the bus.   And day and night Central Park was full of happy crowds.

Each time I was in the park everyone I saw seemed to have the same reaction – an irresistible urge to smile,  and inevitably I bumped into someone I knew,  and I even met my mailman there one day.   And once I passed a guy with a very frisky dog  on a leash.   “She’s not always this excitable”,  he said pointing to the dog,  “she feels the energy and knows something special is going on.”

At that time my friend Shel and I played tennis in the evenings at courts north of the city.   Driving home I’d take the 96th Street transverse through Central Park,  and turn south on Fifth Avenue.   Then driving down Fifth I could see some of The Gates that extended to that corner of the park,  and as I drove by the sight always made me smile.

Then one night coming home from tennis,  I exited the transverse and heading down Fifth I turned my head to look toward the park,  and my heart sank.

The exhibit had ended and The Gates and their inexplicable magic were gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeanne-Claude and Christo

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Eva Le Gallienne as Peter Pan 1928

”Do you believe in fairies?”

When my mother was young her parents took her to Broadway to see Peter Pan,  the title role played by the actress Eva Le Gallienne who famously flew on wires over the heads of the audience.

The London-born Le G as she was called,  who died in 1991 at age 92,  was not only a celebrated actress of the day,  but a pioneering figure in the American repertory theatre movement which enabled today’s Off-Broadway.   In fact Le G founded the Civic Repertory Theatre where she not only starred as Peter Pan,  but produced and directed the show as well.

An openly gay woman in an era when lesbianism was stigmatized,  Le G had love affairs with Tululah Bankhead and others in the theatre world then known as “shadow actresses”.

But for my mother,  then a spellbound little girl sitting in that New York theatre,  Le G was Peter Pan,  the boy who wouldn’t grow up in James Barrie’s classic story being brought to life up on the stage.

And when Tinker Bell drank the poison,  my mother remembered how Peter beseeched the audience,  “Boys and girls,  if you believe in fairies clap your hands and you will save her!”

And then the theatre seemed to reverberate with the sound of hundreds of hands clapping,  and to save Tinker Bell my mother clapped hers,   and she cried out with the other children,  “I do,  I do,  I do!  I believe in fairies!”

– Dana Susan Lehrman

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I love this Retrospect site, and was especially touched by this prompt. When I saw Betsy’s posting, with the photo of her grandmother’s candlesticks, I wanted to share a photo of my own: the candlesticks I have from my own grandmother. They’re almost identical.

My grandmother was given these Shabbos candlesticks on her wedding day in Poland/Ukraine- around 1905. During a pogrom, the Cossacks were confiscating all their valuables, including the candlesticks. When my aunt, around 8 years old, saw that the Cossacks were beating her grandfather to death in the other room, she ran over and demanded that they stop. The Cossacks were so shocked that they laughed, stopped, and asked my grandmother if they could take her with them as a mascot. My grandmother said the family needed her on the farm, and the Cossacks were so impressed by my aunt’s courage that they said that she and my grandmother should go to the police station the next day, where they could take one item that the Cossacks were stealing back home with them. They stayed up all night, worrying that this was a trap, but with no choice, they went to the station and chose to take back the Shabbos candlesticks. Three years later, they carried it with them on the boat to Ellis Island, and to their new home in Hartford. I watched them “bench lichts” (light the candles) often during during my childhood. Since I inherited these candlesticks, I’ve lit them often- at ceremonies including my son’s bris, his Bar Mitzvah, and on many Shabbos evenings/Shabbats- and recall their stories of courage and hope with gratitude.

Thanks for sharing these stories, Suzy.

Warmly,
Sharon