OK, you've opened the larger moral issue again. What you call "an act of
violation" is a part of what I called cost. The amorality of "It is a
legitimate act if it liberates something else" is simply stunning--there
always has to be some sort of cost accounting. Let's imagine that W. Eugene
Smith had fed mercury to children so as to produce his heartbreaking images
of Minamoto Disease. They would still be great photographs, and they might
"liberate something else" even if we knew he had poisoned his subjects (tho
I don't like to think what that would have been--presumably something like
the liberating effect of snuff films. We get verey close to an argument
about Sadean morality here). Now let's imagine that the images are so old
that we no longer experience their original context so viscerally--benefits
sometimes outlive their costs. For example: we owe the great Gothic
cathedrals to all sorts of things other than simple piety. Many, like
Chartres, were built as pilgrimage sites, and as such became the major
economic engines for their regions. All were built at the cost of
overwhelming toil by large numbers of people who already lived pretty
miserable lives. The corporate funds that paid for their miserable
existences while they were hauling stone and also for the more skilled,
better-paid work, was a product of trade, and it's not coincidental that
the explosion of trade was to a large extent a consequence ofthe
near-extermination of the populations of the pays d'oc in the Albigensian
Crusade--before that the pays d'oc had reaped the middleman's profit on
Mediterranean trade. And let's say that the establishment that put all this
together wasn't exactly friendly to the Jews. So these buildings that I
love, in which I have had some of the most "liberating" experiences of my
life, and repeatedly so, came at a very great cost indeed. But that
mortgage has been long ago paid off with forgetfulness. Would I want the
churches pulled down? No way. Would I oppose another expenditure in blood
of that kind, regardless of the beauty of the product? Would I stage the
Third Reich for the sake of Triumph of the Will or the Chinese Civil War
for Man's Fate?

Closer to home, there's a wonderful late-17th century Spanish mission
church in the sky village at Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. The beams were
carried on the backs of enslaved Indians for 50 miles from the nearest
mountains. To pay for the bells the priest sold two young men and two young
women into slavery. But it's a beautiful church.

Or Rover Thomas was mentioned recently. The absolute wonder of the
explosion of astonishing aboriginal art in Australia is at the cost of the
near destruction of their cultures. I'd nonetheless give my eyeteeth for
the privilege of living with a Rover Thomas on my wall.

Over the top examples, but the principle's the same--one always calculates
the cost, and one says enough at different points depending on how much is
liberated, and also where one is positioned vis-a-vis the cost. Given
historical or social awareness there can be no such thing as an
unambivalent experience of art.

So let's try this one: suppose one were to explain to the Christos that
plant and animal life entirely dependent on access to full sunlight and the
river for the few scant months in the Rockies when everything isn't encased
in snow will inevitably be harmed. We don't know how severely they will be
harmed, but there is a risk that it could be very severe indeed, perhaps
permanently so, at a time when all ecosystems, especially those in
unforgiving environments, need all the help they can get. Do you think the
Christos would say "Of course you're right, let's call it off?" Or would it
be "You're right, but think how liberating!" And how liberated would you
feel, as a hiker of remote landscapes?

I doubt veryy much, by the way, that the impact in memory of The Gates will
be anything like as permanent for those who use the park daily as it will
undoubtedly be for those who have experienced it primarily as visitors
during the installation.

Remember, please, as you read the above, that I really liked it (tho "the
Gates give rebirth and a public acknowledgment" is a pretty drastic
overstatement of what I in fact said). It's a question of the admission cost.

There's an article in this month's National Geographic about Olmstead.
Interestingly, NG chose not even to mention The Gates.

Mark



At 03:09 PM 3/1/2005, you wrote:
>Every work of art is an act of violation.
>It is a legitimate act if it liberates something else.
>(This is not to be confused with George Bush whose liberation rhetoric is
>oppression in disguise).
>It is a mistake to confuse the priests with the message. They just be
>ordinary people with "transmission rights". As ordinary they can be
>frequently vain and variously opportunistic - confusing the gold on the
>garment with what in the spirit is being transformed.
>The Christos often can suffer from what priests suffer. I worked with them
>closely on a book related to The Umbrellas. I have known them as entirely
>generous to many. I believe the fundamental spirit of the work is public and
>generous. Mark's celebration of Central Park in summer as a community
>celebration is no doubt true. But, I suspect, different in kind from The
>Gates. Mark is quite right, I think, in pointing out how The Gates give
>rebirth and a public acknowledgment to the original genius of the Park's
>plan by Olmstead and Vaux. Now that the Gates are down, they will have a
>shadow, haunting effect (a spell) on the public imagination of the Park and
>its memory of where the Gates were and what they do to refresh the presence
>of the Park as time moves on.
>The complaint about costs reminds me of someone who has just taken an
>ecstatic ride in a Rolls Royce and then starts complaining about the costs
>that go into making the machine. It's an enigma in which most artists
>participate. You wrote a beautiful poem but your kid is emotionally starved.
>(Oh well, hard ass Faulkner said Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn was worth "20
>dead grandmothers"!)
>There's no doubt that Mark, Hal et al had a good, mesmerizing time in the
>Park. As I suggested, Jeanne Claude and Christo build a pretty incredible
>stage.
>And, along the way, the Christo egos do get in the way, and sometimes - in
>the inevitable collusion with Planning Departments, Politicians, Collectors
>and Private Business - counterproductive decisions are made. Ecologies have
>gotten hammered, and Umbrellas have gone up in wind zones that killed. at
>least, one person in Tejon Pass in Southern California.
>
>What bothers me most is the claustrophobic control they maintain over the
>critique of the work itself. Ironically we live in an age where one can
>exercise such control. The Christo's have paid to have Abrams to do works on
>all their projects. But whether or not a Gallery or Abrams is doing the
>book, the Christos control every word that is written about the project(s),
>as well as the reproduction rights on any of his art. (Dune Arbus is the
>same way, by the way, on both photo rights and the critical discussion that
>occurs in the Random House book on her mother's work).
>Needless to say his kind of control suffocates the independent critical
>voice - and it mimics political regimes, Stalinist, Rovist, etc. that do
>everything possible to control their "message." Sadly, authoritarian
>control becomes the message.
>
>Stephen V
>Who managed to get through his image uploader for a few new pix
>For "Crossing the Millennium." Your visits and comments are welcome,
>Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hell, I'd prefer that the cost of art installations also come out of
> > military budgets.
> >
> > It's not a bad thing to recognize that our pleasures, including aesthetic
> > pleasures, have a moral dimension and a social cost, no matter how intense
> > the pleasure. The objects of our pleasure neither appear nor disappear by
> > magic. I think we all place limits on what we consider allowable costs.
> > Much as I enjoyed it, fior me The Gates came close to being too much.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > At 01:30 PM 3/1/2005, you wrote:
> >> { Maybe for their next project they could drape all the people in the
> >> world
> >> { who lack adequate clothing.
> >> {
> >> { Mark
> >>
> >> I'd prefer that that money come from military budgets.
> >>
> >> Hal, who saw no tennis balls on poles, or anywhere else