These projects cannot be bought. People cannot charge tickets for them. They cannot become commercialized. They cannot be “owned.” Possession equals permanence. But freedom is the enemy of possession.

– Christo, the Toronto Star, January 16

Except, mind you, when the possessed is an invitation to one of the Bulgarian wrap artist’s parties. On a subzero night last week, a crowd of Christo-philes waited outside the Hermes boutique on Madison Avenue, hoping in vain to slip into a cocktail party where the legendary artist was to give a talk about “The Gates,” his upcoming installation in Central Park.

Four stories up, at the shop’s top floor, those who had the good fortune to make it onto the guest list accepted Champagne and disposable linen napkins and chatted with one another in French.The publicist who put the event together explained it was for press, friends of the artists, and “friends of Hermes.”

Christo and his collaborator-wife, Jeanne-Claude, were the last to arrive, dressed as if for gardening. They passed the microphone back and forth, discussing everything from the project’s timetable to the companion $325 “The Gates” scarf. When Christo described the structure of the 7,500 gates that will line Central Park’s walkways next month, Jeanne-Claude mimed out the rectangular shapes, stewardessstyle. In closing, she took the microphone from her husband and said in her husky, Parisian accent, “It is a privilege to walk through the gates with our own feet, open hearts, and open eyes. It is a privilege that is equally enjoyed by people on the East Side, West Side, 59th Street.” She paused for dramatic effect before continuing, “And the people of 110th Street – Spanish Harlem and Harlem.”

The crowd broke into tremendous applause, then trotted down a flight of stairs to register for the limited-edition Hermes scarves. Hermes reports it sold out of its stock of 250 limited-edition scarves on that very day.

Born Christo Javacheff in Bulgaria, the artist first made a name for himself as the man who wraps things, and he has continued to wrap things ever since. He and his wife, who were born on the same day in 1935, have collaborated through history. In 1994 the outfit changed its name to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, or “X-o and J-C.”

As testament to their belief in “freedom,” the artists always finance their own projects. They say “The Gates” is costing them $20 million, including a $3 million donation to the Central Park Conservancy. Covering 23 miles of walkway, it is the biggest public art project in New York’s history – if you don’t include, for example, the park.

It will be on display during the period between February 12 and 27, a time when the artists say the leafless trees will make for better viewing and the saffron-colored fabric will contrast nicely with the bleak winter landscape. Along the park’s walkways, pumpkinhued sheets will billow from custommade gates that are 16 feet high and spaced 12 feet apart.

“We are trying to invent a module to activate the most banal space between your feet and the first branches of the trees,” Christo has said.To that end, the project calls for 5,000 pounds of steel, 1 million square feet of golden (and synthetic) fabric, 165,000 bolts, and a staff of 1,110 workers. Come February 27, the gates will be dismantled and the parts will be recycled – though it remains to be seen who might ever have use for 1 million square feet of cloth that’s been hanging out in rain and snow for two weeks and change. (Distressed scarves, anyone?)

The point of all of the fuss? According to the artists, there is none. “All works of art are good for nothing, except to be a work of art,” Christo told one reporter. To another he said: “Nobody needs the gates. It’s totally irrational, irresponsible, useless, with no justification, with no reason to exist except we like it.”

And it will exist for only 16 days. Part of the couple’s vision of “freedom” entails unwrapping their wraps soon after they tie them on. A brochure of theirs says: “Our works are temporary in order to endow the works of art with a feeling of urgency to be seen, and the love and tenderness brought by the fact that they will not last.”

The Hermes crowd notwithstanding, the project has drawn it share of critics, most notably birdwatchers who worry that the strange, billowing fabric might disturb some of their flying friends.The Sierra Club has expressed concern.The artists counter that they worked with an ornithologist at the Audubon Society, who gave the project his blessing. Mike Freeman, who runs Nycbirdreport.com, said in an e-mail message that he’s not crazy about the project, and that it’s not just on account of the birds.

“The victims of the Gates project will all be human. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are disregarding all the people who come to use the park for its intended purpose,” Mr. Freeman wrote. “What these artists are doing is wrong for the same reason it’s wrong to speak loudly in a public library or talk during a movie in a public theater. Certainly there is nothing wrong with speaking loudly or talking, There’s nothing wrong with erecting big orange gates either. It’s a question of expected behavior for a given setting.”

And to say the artists are bird-friendly would be a stretch – just look on X-o and J-C’s Web site, where they dismiss the notion that “The Gates” is best viewed from the air with a testy: “No! None of the work is designed for the birds.”

One of the project’s greatest supporters is Mayor Bloomberg, a longtime friend of the artists. He has said he believes that the production will attract half a million visitors to the city, and that these traveling art-lovers will spend $80 million. In anticipation of the invasion of “Gates”-gawkers, the New York tourism Web site lists restaurants that will be serving special “Gates”-inspired fare, all of which seem to be this or that laden in saffron sauce.

Back in 1979, when X-o and J-C first suggested the project to the city, Mr. Bloomberg was merely a board member of the Conservancy and the City Council dismissed the artists’ visionary plan. It was slightly different then, consisting of twice as many gates and requiring the digging of 30,000 holes in the soil to house the steel poles. Also, the flags would have hung only 5 feet off the ground, tall enough only for children and Rhea Perlman to comfortably bypass. One council member shouted at a press conference: “Here’s an event of 27 miles of shower curtains around the park. Is that necessary, Mr. Christo, to promote yourself?”

The revised plan that Mr. Bloomberg finally championed, approved in January 2003, features banners that leave 7 feet of room to walk under and entails no drilling in the park.

Christo made a name for himself in Paris in the 1960s by wrapping small objects, such as chairs and telephones. Once he had enough clout, he convinced the Germans to let him wrap the Reichstag with 10 miles of blue rope and silver fabric, and in 1985 he wrapped Paris’s Pont Neuf with champagne-colored fabric.Christo objects to being thought of as a wrapper. “It is a stupid mistake to think that we wrap everything,” he has said.”The last time in our lives we had a wish to wrap some thing was 1975.”

A non-wrap project, “The Umbrellas,”involved planting 3,100 umbrellas, each 20 feet tall, across 30 miles of California, near Los Angeles. When one of the umbrellas uprooted and killed a tourist, Christo responded by “weaving his grief” into the work. The same Guelph, Ontario-based company that tested “The Umbrellas” was hired to test “The Gates” in a wind tunnel. The artists have purchased insurance should anything happen in the nonsimulated version.

The duo raised money for “The Gates” by selling their preparatory drawings, scale models, and plans, which are said to fetch from $30,000 to $600,000. Last year alone they raked in a reported $15.1 million.

At present, the Boat House restaurant in Central Park is serving as the project’s central command. The documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, who has been working on a film about “The Gates” since the early 1980s, has set up his trailer next to X-o and J-C’s trailer. “What interests me is there are so many people involved in the process,” Mr. Maysles said, as he cupped his hands over his temporary office’s space heater. “Many of the people who have no understanding of art come up with observations that are more subtle than what the experts say.”

A team of 1,100 workers has been hired to bring “The Gates” to life.They are scattered throughout the park, using small forklifts to lay down 600-pound steel bases, which are then bookended by fluorescent-orange, A-shaped thingamabobs to ward off tripping- or bumping-related injuries.

It was coming on evening last Wednesday, and huge snowflakes had started to fall down on a squad of workers at the southernmost end of the park, across the street from the Essex House hotel. Most of the workers in the group were stalwart men who had come in from Berlin and had previously worked on the Reichstag wrapping in 1995. They all looked like superheroes, even with cigarettes dangling out of their mouths.

“Christo is like an idol in Germany,” Holger Nawrocki, 38, said. He had spent the morning being interviewed by a German television crew.

“It’s a big project,”he said.”When the gates are here, everyone will love it.”

At this point, however, local reaction is not unanimously adoring. A New Yorker on the crew, Curtis Willock, squinted behind his wraparound sunglasses and said: “Little old ladies come up to me to say, ‘Why are you doing this to our park? We like you but we hate the project.’ I just tell them it pays well and they feed us well.They can understand that.”

A sound engineer, Greg Digesu, who was on his knees, struggling to align two steel bases, advised his co-worker: “Tell people there’s no point. That will satisfy them.”