doin it in the park....

[craig johnston]

the gates (http://christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html)

http://users.telenet.be/juliens/xtojc/the%20gates%20christo%20jeanne-claude.jpg

[melissa]

I wish I could go to NYC to see that.

[craig johnston]

yeah. i was in berlin when the reichstag was wrapped
and it was awesome! i was totally sceptical cos it sounded
so lame, but it looked fantastic, and created a really
brilliant atmosphere. loads of people took picnics along
and stuff. if you are near NY then you gotta go cos if
it's anything like the berlin event it'll be well worth it.
mr enthusiasm!
:)

[melissa]

Believe me, CraigJ, if I was anywhere near NYC I'd be there.

[rmr]

i've been watching them assemble it for the past couple of weeks -- it's very cool -- can't wait to see the completed project.

for those of you that cannot make it there will be a great documentary released later this year/next year -- which i'm really excited about because it's the same guy(s) that produced my ALL TIME FAVORITE documentary...............

click (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/movies/08mays.html)

[craig johnston]

can you tell us what that is cos i don't want to
enrol as a nytimes member thingy.
it's better than american splendor?
;)

[trisherina]

Use this (http://www.bugmenot.com) to sign up for everything.

[rmr]

sorry -- here you go --


Richard Perry/The New York Times
Albert Maysles, in his 50th year as a filmmaker, in Central Park.

Richard Perry/The New York Times
Some of Christo's gates, the subject of Albert Maysles's documentary.
A Filmmaker's 50 Years of Reassuring Intimacy
By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Published: February 8, 2005


he scene left a lot to the imagination. On a sun-drenched day last week in Central Park, the only evidence of "The Gates," New York City's biggest public art project ever, was several thousand dark steel bases poking through a layer of snow.

But for the 78-year-old filmmaker Albert Maysles, whose mission it has been to record a quarter-century of work on the project by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the site had potential. The saffron-colored panels that will billow across 23 miles of park footpaths will not be unfurled until Saturday, but 11 days in advance, Mr. Maysles knew that people would already be talking about it.


"I'd like to find a group already involved in a discussion about the work," he said, alighting from a golf cart at the Great Lawn.

A barely perceptible frown clouded the white-haired filmmaker's face, framed by black spectacles. Except for a few pedestrians wandering by, nothing much was happening.

Finally, camera in hand, he approached a tattooed woman who was sitting on a bench in a spaghetti-strapped camisole and trousers, her two white dogs the only apparent source of warmth.

"Let me feel you," he said after a few minutes of casual conversation, placing his hand on her bare shoulder. "My God, it's warm." He turned to Antonio Ferrera, his co-filmmaker, and motioned him over. "Feel her shoulder," he said. "Do you believe it?" Mr. Ferrera reached out and touched her.

It was the Maysles technique - intimate to the point of being unnerving yet somehow, reassuringly safe. Touched by strange men in the middle of Central Park, the woman did not flinch.

And so began the first of Mr. Maysles's explorations that afternoon as he and Mr. Ferrera sidled up to bench-sitters, waved at passers-by, basked in recognition and filmed - or not, depending on their subjects' willingness - reactions to The Gates, a project that just about everyone seemed to have an opinion about, once Mr. Maysles had coaxed them into revealing it.

A chat with a transplanted Russian couple veered from Mr. Maysles's visit to Russia in 1955, when as a psychology teacher from Boston University he cajoled his way into psychiatric hospitals and recorded what was to become his first film, to the eccentricities of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz, the subject of another of his documentaries, to the Russian man's own work as an artist in Central Park upon his arrival in this country in 1979.

"Christo and I are alike," said the man, Eric Freyman. "We both relied on the park to survive."

A woman who described herself as "a product of Germany after World War II" and refused to be filmed, was less enthusiastic about the project. "Nature does not need adornment," she said, her brow crinkling.

Mr. Maysles sat down, turned off his camera and began to talk. Soon, the conversation moved to Prague, where, the woman said, her Jewish mother had been forced to work in a church during the war.

"My family name is well known there, but spelled differently," he said: "Maisels." "Ah, yes, you are Albert Maysles," she replied, her face brightening. "Gimme Shelter." "Salesman." "Grey Gardens." She knew his documentaries well.

They talked a bit longer - about her former career as a language teacher, about his continuing one.

"Well, I still can't say that I approve of this," she said, finally, gesturing to the base that she was using as a footrest. "But you've convinced me to keep an open mind."

Mr. Maysles picked up his camera and walked on.

"You know, one experience leads to another," he said, inching closer to his listener until their noses were almost touching. "In the end, 'The Gates' become connectors between lives."

Mr. Maysles is well practiced in finding the connections between the environmental art visualized by Christo and Jeanne-Claude and the people who experience it.

"The Gates," his sixth project with the couple, is to be shown on HBO in the fall. Tomorrow, the Museum of Modern Art will begin screenings of "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Projects Recorded, 1969-1998," which includes Mr. Maysles's films of the previous five collaborations.

Mr. Maysles met Christo and Jeanne-Claude through a friend in Paris in 1960, and they became like family, Jeanne-Claude said, when the Christos moved to New York in 1964. With his brother and co-filmmaker, David, Mr. Maysles followed the couple as they strung a rippled sheet of orange fabric between mountains in "Christo's Valley Curtain" (1974), stretched an 18-foot wall of white across Northern California in "Running Fence" (1978), skirted Biscayne Bay islands in flamingo pink in "Islands" (1986) and wrapped the Pont Neuf in gold in "Christo in Paris" (1990). He completed "Umbrellas" (1995), about the simultaneous opening of 3,100 umbrellas in California and Japan, without David, who died in 1987.

[craig johnston]

rmr - let me feel you..!

which doc was yr fave?
;)

[Frieda]

the book (http://www.taschen.de/pages/en/catalogue/books/artists_editions/new/facts/03832.htm)

[Clytie]

http://www.bsu.edu/World2000/research/jarred/lima/l_park_love_monument.jpg

[craig johnston]

° (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4260067.stm)

[Smartypants]

The Gates from space. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0216_050216_gates.html)

[Clytie]

another space gate (http://www.rickross.com/groups/heavensgate.html)

[craig johnston]

^^^^^
far out!

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ewm/ic11/44.jpg

[zero]

.

http://www.smilinggoat.com/crackers/The_Crackers.jpg

.


° (http://www.smilinggoat.com/Crackers1.html)

.

[melissa]

^^^That made me giggle in my cube at work. :D

[Smartypants]

I love "The Crackers." Great t-shirts, too! :D

[craig johnston]

whezza pix rmr?
:)