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For something of its size, long incubation (the artists have planning the project since 1979) and wonder, the Gates has sprung up rather suddenly, and it will only be here for two weeks. But that is the way of Christo and Jeanne-Claude (full names Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon), the 70-year-old pair who wrapped the Reichstag in 1995, the Pont Neuf in Paris in 1985 and laid pink around the Biscayne Islands off Miami in 1983. It’s also a good idea for New York, a place which likes things snappy.

So until very recently the only sign of the Gates were their dark grey steel bases which appeared quietly throughout the park soon after Christmas. Apart from obscure instructions scrawled on them in chalk (things like “A” and “To Pick Up”) they might have been left there by accident, or put there for burial.

But then the work began, and last week more than 600 temporary employees of the artists started buzzing around in little buggies, heaving up 12 and 16-foot vinyl archways along 23 miles of paths, and the park suddenly realised what was happening.

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By last Thursday, the work was nearly done and most of the gates were standing, with their nylon panels tucked neatly up, waiting for Saturday and the great unfurling. It was a chilly morning, with a few snowflakes blowing around, and the park was quiet, getting used to the bare, bright frames above the walkways, here and there in clusters, sometimes in important-looking lines. Art lovers scurried around with cameras, enjoying their first impressions.

“I think the total of the whole piece is a sculpture – it doesn’t matter where you look at it from, whether you see a bit of it or the whole thing… I think the totality of it is the piece,” said Michael Groves, a visitor from San Francisco, looking across the lake to some arches in the distance. “Now I’m sorry, I’m running to meet some people at Moma so I have to go.”

Elsewhere, dog walkers were allowing their pets to play with the thousands of new posts. Tisa, a dark-haired woman walking her two dogs on her day off, admitted that Spencer, her handsome American Eskimo, had made a point of claiming the Gates as his own. “Yeah, he’s the culprit,” said Tisa, of the wet little patches appearing on the grey bases, “along with all the other male dogs on the West Side.”

By Friday, it was time for glamour. Mayor Bloomberg, who is a fan of the artists and a collector of the sketches that Christo does to finance the projects, held a press conference for Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the Met. Mayor Bloomberg is in his election year and has claimed the Gates will bring in $80 million for the city (they have cost more than $20 million, but Christo and Jeanne-Claude have paid for everything). Mayor Bloomberg brought with him a handful of city commissioners, like Ray Kelly, his police commissioner, who was wearing a bright saffron-coloured tie.

Finally Christo and Jeanne-Claude came out to talk about the Gates, to delight in its size, the openness of its meaning, and its fleeting presence. “It is only a work of art,” said Jeanne-Claude, who does most of their speaking and has dyed red hair. “It has no programme, it is not a symbol, it has no message. It is just a work of art.”

Christo backed her up, emphasising that everyone should have an individual experience of the Gates. “This project is not involving talk,” said Christo.

In fact, the only thing about the Gates which the artists felt was not open to interpretation, it seemed, was colour. All those arches and all those waving flags of fabric, be assured, are saffron. They are not orange. Even though, once seen, they have a funny way of emphasising everything else that is orange in this city: traffic cones, stop-lights, subway seats, plastic netting for building sites, a fizzy drink called “Slice.”

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Saturday was the day the Gates came alive. From 8:30 in the morning, teams of workers pulled at little tags on the arches with long hooks, yanking away until the fabric flapped down and a tube of cardboard packaging fell to the ground. For a few sunny hours the park was a mixture of gates: some free, extravagantly waving, showing the breezes, the rest solemn, waiting their turn. In the middle of it all a man stood talking on his mobile phone: “You gotta see this,” he was saying, “it’s unbelievable.”

Everywhere there were small crowds, watching the gates unfurl, waiting for the yank and drop of the cardboard. Sandra Medearis, a worker who came all the way from Nome, Alaska, to help build the Gates pulled open her second one of the day and dodged the falling tube. “Yeah,” she said, “someone got bonked.”

It was extraordinarily happy and busy for a Saturday morning in February. Many people (as well as an alarmingly well dressed greyhound, complete in saffron coat) wore orange scarves and gloves to show their support of the Gates. It was only high up in the park, near the reservoir, where the paths were too narrow for the arches, that I found anyone who didn’t seem amazed and pleased by them.

Jerry Kamlet, a middle-aged man with grey, wiry hair, had his back to the colour and was looking across the reservoir where some gulls were taking off. “The park is already a work of art,” said Mr Kamlet, comparing the Gates to the despoiling of a Rembrandt or a Michelangelo. Mr Kamlet is a member of the Woodland Authority, a wildlife group that pleaded with the park to refuse Christo and Jeanne-Claude their gates, as the city did in 1980 when they first proposed it.

“I think they look like garbage bags… I don’t think it’s very challenging,” said Mr Kamlet, when asked of his opinion of the work and as another happy group filed past to take pictures. “I mean, it’s old stuff. I mean, he peaked when he did the Reichstag.” New York, it can be a tough town.

Slices of New York