Seeing "The Gates" finally materialize, as it were, makes you chuckle. You feel that you've beheld these apparitions somewhere before, somewhere in this very city. And then it hits you. The vinyl arches and their slightly swaying nylon curtains are the very color of inconvenience, of traffic cones, and of plastic construction fences that surround holes in the middle of the road. These are barriers that obstruct the ordinary flow of movement through a city. Likewise, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have derailed the ordinary rhythms of the city's business-makers and pleasure-seekers—from the politicians, and lawyers, and conservationists who attempted to stop them, to the visitors who expect something very different when they enter the park. Professional sourpusses who worry that "The Gates" are "not art" can relax. If you can forget the crowds, the bright patches of reddish-orange don't merely relieve the dour browns and grays of winter. They turn the world upside down—which is what art is supposed to do.