'The Gates' art project takes shape in Central Park

NEW YORK -- It is a vision artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have shared since 1979: thousands of yellow-gold fabric panels suspended above miles of footpaths in Central Park, hung from specially designed "gates" to create meandering passageways with billowing, almost floating ceilings.\nNow, more than two decades after they first began planning the controversial project, the husband-and-wife collaborators are finally watching "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005" take shape. The completed artwork, which will be on display for 16 days starting Feb. 12, will allow visitors to walk through 7,500 16-foot-tall, fabric-draped gates lining 23 miles of the park's pathways.\nHeld in place by 15,000 steel bases, the gates will be installed at 12-foot intervals, allowing alterations for low branches. The project will feature 5,290 tons of steel, 60 miles of vinyl tubing and more than 1 million square feet of fabric -- all to be recycled when the piece is dismantled.\nThe artists' Web site says that people who walk through the gates will experience "a golden ceiling creating warm shadows."\n"When seen from the buildings surrounding Central Park, The Gates will seem like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees and will highlight the shape of the footpaths," the Web site says.\nChristo and Jeanne-Claude, he with windblown gray hair and dark-rimmed glasses, she with flame-red hair, were in Central Park one recent January afternoon for a TV interview. Later, Jeanne-Claude talked to The Associated Press from the couple's home and studio in Manhattan's Soho.\nThe installation, she said, was "only a work of art, of joy and beauty" without any message or agenda. "If the public enjoys and loves it, that's only a bonus," she said.\nShe and her husband selected the fabric's distinctive "saffron-colored" hue partly because it will appear golden yellow when illuminated by the sun and deep red when in the shade. They also saw it as a complement to the gray of the bare, winter trees.\n"The Gates" is the first New York City piece for the artists, whose large-scale works of art in public spaces around the world have been both exalted and maligned.\nTheir temporary, outdoor pieces on a monumental scale have no equivalent, according to Anne Strauss, who curated an exhibit about Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.\n"They really occupy a unique position in contemporary art," Strauss said.\nBoth 69, the artists share a birthday: June 13, 1935. He was born Christo Javacheff in Gabrovo, Bulgaria; Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon was born to French parents in Casablanca, Morocco. The couple met in Paris in 1958 and have a 44-year-old son.\nChristo studied for three years at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria, and spent a semester at the Vienna Fine Arts Academy. Early on, he supported himself as a portraitist, but the concept of "packaging" figured prominently in his work, beginning in the late 1950s. Jeanne-Claude has been Christo's manager, organizer, coordinator and art dealer as well as partner on various art projects.\nChristo and Jeanne-Claude consider "Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor, 1961" -- a grouping of oil barrels covered with tarpaulins -- their first collaboration. They are known for "wrapping" large structures -- like the German Reichstag, in 1995 -- but reject the label "wrapping artists."\nThe first building they "wrapped" was an art museum in Bern, Switzerland, in 1968. In 1976, they created a 24.5-mile fabric fence in California, and in 1985, they wrapped a bridge in Paris.\nThey have been envisioning art for New York since 1964, when they set up a permanent home in Soho. Their first idea was to wrap two downtown buildings. "We went to see the owners, and they thought we were lunatics," Jeanne-Claude said. They also pursued projects for a building in Times Square, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, but couldn't get approval for any of them.\nThe idea for "The Gates" was conceived in 1979, and the artists presented their proposal to city officials and community boards in 1980. They were met with a lot of skepticism. According to the 2002 authorized biography "Christo and Jeanne-Claude," by Burt Chernow, one detractor called the project "an example of cultural imperialism" and another called it "a mustache on the Mona Lisa."\nThe Parks Department formally rejected the proposal in 1981, and the artists continued with work elsewhere. They surrounded a cluster of islands in Miami in pink fabric in 1983 and opened 3,100 blue and yellow umbrellas in Japan and California in 1991. Still, Jeanne-Claude said, "The Gates" "remained in our heart."\nThe project's chances dramatically improved when Michael Bloomberg, who once sat on the board of the Central Park Conservancy and supported the project, was elected mayor in 2001. The artists also revised aspects of their original proposal, reducing the number of gates by half and reconfiguring the gates to eliminate the need to make holes in the ground.\nThe Central Park Conservancy, a private organization that manages the park, approved the work in December 2002, and city officials gave it the green light a month later.\n"This will be a great project for this city," Bloomberg said earlier this month. "It is paid for with all private money. It will bring an enormous number of tourists to this city and help people who work and live in this city, help our tax base, help even the whole region."\nThe city's Economic Development Corporation has estimated that the piece will generate more than $20 million in economic output and $2 million in tax revenue, according to Megan Sheekey, a city spokeswoman for the project.\nThe artists, who do not accept grants or donations, are bearing the entire cost themselves. Though the final budget won't be known until the artwork is completed, Jeanne-Claude and Christo hope the total will be under $21 million. They're also donating $3 million to the city's Parks Department and the Central Park Conservancy, which might placate those who don't support the project, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.\nThe artists are financing the work with income from sales of collages and drawings of "The Gates" and other projects created by Christo. Depictions of "The Gates" now cost from $30,000 for small works and up to $600,000 for large pieces. Christo only creates preparatory works before a project is completed.\nJeanne-Claude said that they were confident "The Gates" would go off without a hitch. Their only worry: the weather. Their 43-page contract with the New York City Parks Department stipulates that the artists must clear snow from the footpaths beneath the gates.\nThough snow could be a hassle, the project's February time frame will benefit the city's tourism industry, according to Cristyne Nicholas, president and CEO of the tourism marketing organization NYC & Company, which has been promoting "The Gates" internationally. The city usually struggles for international tourists in February, "so we couldn't have asked for a more ideal event in a time when we need it most," Nicholas said.\nJeanne-Claude said that after years of traveling for projects around the world, she and Christo are pleased to be working in New York City.\n"New York is our town, and we are very, very happy to do a project in our town," she said. "And it's the first time we can do a project without any jet lag"