Christo keeps wrapping

The wrapping artist won't stop

Article

No. 8 • December 2017

Christo is the guest of honour at BRAFA 2018, opens a new exhibition in Brussels, and is working on a desert project in Abu Dhabi. The ‘wrap artist’ shows no signs of slowing down.

text: Sarah Knigge

He spent over 20 years working on it and poured more than $15 million into it. And yet Christo chose not to complete what would have been his most prestigious American project. In protest against the new Trump administration, he abandoned Over the River—a shimmering 70-kilometre-long ribbon of silver planned for the Arkansas River in Colorado—after the land officially came under Trump’s control: “I can’t do a project that benefits this landlord,” Christo said. Alongside Richard Prince—who ‘disowned’ his own work in Ivanka Trump’s collection after the 2016 election and even called it fake—Christo became one of the most high-profile artists to take such an open stand against Trump. Though he described his work as “totally irrational” — l’art pour l’art — his art has always carried political weight. One of his first major works, The Iron Curtain (1962), was a barricade of stacked oil barrels in a Paris street—a direct response to the Berlin Wall erected just a year earlier.

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935) grew up in communist Bulgaria. In 1958, he fled to Paris, where he and his wife Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009) could finally work in freedom. Soon after, the artist duo moved to the United States. After years of statelessness, Christo officially became an American citizen in 1973.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude became world-famous for wrapping architecture in fabric. Crowds of onlookers gathered in awe as they transformed landmarks like the Pont Neuf in Paris (1985) and the Reichstag in Berlin (1995) into monumental textile sculptures.

Christo: “By wrapping something, I make it mine.”

Beyond their iconic wrapped buildings, Christo also created other large-scale public works. Just last year, he built a floating bridge—The Floating Piers—on Italy’s Lake Iseo. In just 16 days, it drew 1.2 million visitors.

11/29/1963, Rome, Italy- Demostrating his wrap-it art, Christo applies a polythene sheet to an ancient sculpture in Rome. With the plastic sheet and some string, Christo explains, "The sculpture takes on the loving form of mystery." | Image by � Bettmann/CORBIS

Fig 1. 11/29/1963, Rome, Italy- Demostrating his wrap-it art, Christo applies a polythene sheet to an ancient sculpture in Rome. With the plastic sheet and some string, Christo explains, "The sculpture takes on the loving form of mystery." | Image by � Bettmann/CORBIS

UTOPIAN PLACES

What makes Christo’s interventions so compelling is the way he invites you to see your surroundings anew. For a fleeting moment, he transforms the familiar image of the city into a utopian place—where anything seems possible.

That’s exactly what he achieved with The Gates, his 2005 project in Central Park, New York. The Gates consisted of 7,503 gates, each connected by a ribbon of saffron-colored fabric that rippled like a golden river above the park’s winding footpaths. The strict, rectangular form of the gates stood in stark contrast to the soft, flowing fabric—just as Manhattan’s towering concrete buildings contrast with the seemingly untouched landscape of the park. In this way, The Gates is emblematic of Christo’s work: it draws attention to the tension between the natural and the constructed, the organic and the artificial.

Although Christo himself ultimately chose to halt one of his projects in protest against Trump, it was more often city councils and government authorities who blocked the utopian visions of the artist duo. No less than 70 percent of their ideas were never realized: a wrapped Eiffel Tower, a fabric-covered skyscraper on Times Square, upholstered walking paths in Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem. Fortunately, these extravagant dreams still live on in the many drawings, photo collages, and models that have been carefully preserved.

Fig 2. Christo, The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City (1980)

TOTAL FREEDOM

A selection of this material is currently on view in the exhibition Christo & Jeanne-Claude: Urban Projects at the ING Art Center in Brussels, which explores how Christo visualized his urban interventions. Christo and Jeanne-Claude sold as much of their preparatory works on paper as possible to finance their multimillion-dollar projects independently—without the involvement of sponsors or backers. Only in this way could they work in complete artistic freedom.

In memory of Jeanne-Claude, who passed away in 2009, Christo is now working on Mastaba in the Abu Dhabi desert. It will be his largest sculpture ever: 410,000 stacked oil barrels forming a vast mosaic inspired by Islamic architecture. Mastaba will be Christo’s first and only permanent large-scale installation.

Christo is the guest of honor at the Brussels art fair BRAFA (January 27 – February 4), where his work Three Store Fronts (1966) will be shown—a piece previously exhibited at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
Christo & Jeanne-Claude: Urban Projects runs through February 25 at the ING Art Center in Brussels.