Current mood:	envious
Current music:	bright eyes

rethinking the gates
Let's be perfectly clear before I begin: I still think The Gates is a colosal waste of money, borderline eyesore and otherwise unworthy of a term that also includes Michaelangelo, Rodin, Dali, Pollock etc. I have been thinking about it more, as I read more about it, and I must say from a business standpoint it's brilliant. Christo has solved the problem of how do you sell performance art. By defintion, performance art is transient and usually in a public space, so he sells his notes and sketches about how it will look. Brilliant. Everything is paid before the work is commited. No excess inventory. No paintings that didn't sell. He knows exactly how much he is getting paid before he even starts to put in the serious legwork. And obviously, the scope of the project sets the value of the sketches. It flips the traditional art sale on its head. You are buying the genesis of an idea. As opposed to the finished project.