Their short life-spans creates a preciousness and an urgency, encouraging us to bear witness and drink in the art as much

as we can, while we can, all the while knowing it may well be gone the next time we visit the site... Our memories of this experience are how the artwork changes us -- perhaps the most powerful force of art, that the changes made are not in the site, but in us.

Christo & Jeanne Claude

Kismet {kiz-mit}
meaning fate; destiny.

The real headache is the lobbying Christo must do to obtain permission from authorities. The Surrounded Islands project in Biscayne Bay required the permission of seven different federal and state agencies. The Running Fence for Sonoma and Marin counties necessitated not only permission from authorities but from each landowner whose property the work would pass through.

Not Just a Wrapping Artist

Twenty-four years separated the proposal and the realization of Christos 1995 wrapping of the Reichstag. Plans to erect 15-foot-tall gates of fabric over every pathway in Central Park, and to build a pyramid of 390,500 oil barrels in Abu Dhabi, have been pending for almost 20 years now.

Christo and Jeanne Claude, 1969. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer). Wrapped Building, New York City. Christo and Jeanne Claude.

Beauty in His Work

But the Maysles films (the best record of Christos work and for those of us who havent been lucky enough to travel to his installations, the best way to experience it) are also full of the unexpected beauty of these unlikely encounters. Addressing one of the numerous civic boards he must approach to obtain permission, Christo tells the assembled supporters and detractors that no matter how they feel about it, they are all a part of his project. Figuratively and literally, Christo works in the public sphere, and his proposals become tabula rasas upon which people can project the best or the worst of themselves. That he has so often succeeded in converting people to seeing the beauty in what he proposes speaks to the democratizing principle that guides his work.

Has anyone of our time produced grander poetic And then theres the huh? factor. Christo has gestures than has Christo? The trademark of his work long been a convenient punch line for people -- swathing landmarks like the Pont Neuf and the who see modern art as a joke, as something Reichstag in fabric, or wrapping 1 million square my kid could do. Since public approval is a feet of coastline in Little Bay, Australia; erecting a crucial element in determining the fate of Christos fence of white nylon through 24 miles of Californias proposals, its necessary for him to confront and Sonoma and Marin counties; surrounding 11 islands overcome that kind of thinking. Lets face it, there is in Miamis Biscayne Bay with hot pink material -- is something loopy about the impulse to swathe large majestic delicacy. That Christos art has somehow public edifices in nylon or polypropylene. The five retained lyricism is all the more remarkable when documentaries that the filmmakers Albert and David considering the physical logistics and particularly Maysles -- best know for their documentary films Grey the bureaucratic barriers he has to overcome Gardens and Gimme Shelter -- (and their various before realizing them. collaborators) made about the progress of Christos work are full of the comedy inherent in the collision between Even though the costs of his projects run rou- the avant-garde and everyday life. Imagine, youre taking tinely into the millions, funding them is one some time out from your day, having coffee with friends, of his easier tasks. Among the worlds bestwhen youre approached by a slim, intense man with scruffy selling artists, Christo obtains the money for hair and horn-rimmed glasses who says, Hello, my name is each new project through the sale of the Christo and I want to wrap the Pont Neuf in silky fabric for models, collages and drawings he makes. 14 days.

No. 1
christo december

2010

That principle has grown more expansive with the scale of Christos work. His first wrappings -- cans and bottles and packages -- combine the cheek of Marcel Duchamps readymades (everyday objects offered as art) with a Warholian awareness of art as packaged commodity. But Christo and his French wife and manager Jeanne-Claude, who now cosigns his work, have said, All our work is about freedom, fitting for an artist who escaped from his native Bulgaria in the mid-50s when the uprising in Hungary sent tremors through the Soviet Eastern Bloc. In her monograph on the artist, Marina Vaizey argued that Christos wrapping technique is a direct response to his experience as an art student trained during the period of what he has called High Stalinism. In one of the Maysles films we see a photo of the young Christo as a student in a state art class engaged in sketching an old gentleman. Allowing for the differences in the angles from which the students view their model, every drawing looks the same. Its a startling example of how realism can be used to conceal. After growing up under an aesthetic that dictated that how things look is how they really are, what could be more subversive than revealing by covering up, blotting out details in order to more fully grasp the entirety? Christos response to the Berlin Wall was to barricade a narrow street in Paris (where he was living) with 240 oil barrels in a structure he called Iron Curtain. For years Christos unrealized dream project was the wrapping of the Reichstag, which he finally achieved in 1995. Undoubtedly one of his greatest successes, it would have had even greater symbolic import in the years before reunification, when the dismantling of the Berlin Wall barely existed as a fantasy. Had it occurred then, East and West Germans would have simultaneously been able to see the former home of the German Parliament standing like a ghost among them.

Taken together, the five Maysles documentaries -- Christos Valley Curtain, Running Fence, Islands, Christo in Paris and Umbrellas -- are a portrait of their marriage, which, from all appearances, looks to be a volatile, sometimes squabbling and altogether rock-solid union. She is fiercely protective of him, and he, proud and defensive, is sometimes resentful when she advises him on how to approach someone. Anyone cursed with a temper will immediately recognize Christo as a brother. After all the years of working his way through the bureaucratic impediments to his work, he is still flummoxed that people can be so suspicious or dense. Addressing large groups, he tends to wax philosophical on the nature of his art when he needs to be more plainspoken and direct.

Hes not a schmoozer. When hes advised that he should try to charm Jacques Chirac (then the mayor of Paris and terribly concerned with retaining the publics approval) to obtain his support for the Pont Neuf project, he looks as if hes been asked to put on a bunny suit for Easter. Given glimpses of what Christo and Jeanne-Claude are up against, you can scarcely blame his anger. You could understand the bureaucratic opposition if leaders were merely expressing qualms that the project would wind up costing the city or state money, or if the projects would permanently alter the landscape. But given the readiness with which the Christos refute those reservations (for instance, an environmental study for Surrounded Islands in Biscayne Bay showed it posed no danger to the plant or marine life), its fair to assume that something else is going on.

But in most of Christos work, the explicitly political is submerged by the aesthetic. His borders and fences and walls, Vaizey points out, are about transcending the barriers between life and art although both are still clearly defined. Certainly, the story of Christo and Jeanne-Claudes romance is what you might expect from a maker of such romantic gestures. The daughter of a respected French general, Jeanne-Claude met Christo when her mother, who had seen his drawings displayed at her hairdressers, brought him home for lunch. The two were immediately attracted to each other, but Jeanne-Claude went ahead with her planned marriage to a young officer, exactly the type a girl of her station would be expected to marry. It lasted three weeks before she left him to move in with Christo. (When you toss in the fact that they were born on the same day and the same year, the love affair sounds like kismet.)
The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 2005. David Feige (Photographer). Surrounding Islands, 1983. Christo and Jeanne Claude.

Love Affair

No. 2
christo december

No. 3
christo december

2010

2010

Lobbying for Projects The drama of Christos lobbying for approval is one that prefigured the government battles over art that have erupted periodically over the last 10 years. His work isnt confrontational or shocking. Nonetheless Christo is facing down nothing less than a deep suspicion of art itself, a fear of whats different and a suspicion of Christo himself as a foreigner. (Having lived in the United States since 1964, he is an American citizen.) The remarkable thing about the behavior the Maysles capture on camera is that Christos opponents dont seem to realize how fully they give away their prejudices. By far the sleaziest of their opponents is a Miami councilman named Harvey Ruvin, one of the most opportunistic hustlers it will ever be your amazement to watch in action. Ruvin tries to couch his objections to the Surrounded Islands project in civic pride, saying he cant help feeling theres something chauvinistic about Christos proposed use of the islands in Biscayne Bay. He reveals his real agenda soon enough when he tells one of Christos advisors that some monetary flow back to the resource will ensure his yes vote. When the advisor balks, Ruvin drops the public-servant lingo altogether. Ever hear the phrase paybacks a bitch? he asks. Ruvin finally accepted Christos offer to donate 1,000 signed posters that the city could sell, but what astonishes you as you watch his naked grasping is how fully he revealed himself. Why would any artist put up with that? The answer is that time and time again Christos work has the uncanny ability to sweep ordinary people who have never given a thought about the place of art in their lives into its spell. Its profoundly moving to see people discovering a capacity to respond to beauty that they may never have suspected they had in them.
The Umbrellas, 1991. Christo. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer). Christo and Jeanne Claude, 1969. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer).

Making Art Accessible A diner waitress looks at the skeleton of the Running Fence and marvels that it allows her to see the contours of the land. One of the ranchers whose land it passes through takes some buddies to see the completed fence so they can admire how solidly its constructed and suddenly blurts out that he thinks hell come out and sleep by it that night.

Appreciation for Art The easiest way to describe the Running Fence or the Valley Curtain or Pont Neuf is as a tuning fork for nature. Theres historical significance in Christos choice of gold polypropylene to cover the Pont Neuf -- it was the color of the sandstone of old Paris. But the color also Most eloquent of all is a construction worker catches the spangled reflection of the Seine; it glows in who helped hang the Valley Curtain, a flutter the sun and becomes a burnished red at sunset. And of orange fabric stretching across Colorados Rifle its not just the color that changes. Wrapped in fabric, Gap. He talks about the curtain as an amazing feat of the details of the bridge disappear, but the structure engineering, but as he speaks his eloquence comes becomes intimately apparent. not from the words but from the feeling in them, the determination to describe a sight the likes of which In Christo in Paris, watching a sheet of the golden hes never seen. He talks about the erection of the fabric sliding down one of the pillars of the Pont Neuf, curtain as a democratic process, something you have my initial impulse was to look away, as if I were seeing to want to be part of, an accomplishment that needs a lady roll down her stockings in public. And as this something beyond attitude, something akin to faith. second skin envelops it, the shape of the bridge Asked if he was skeptical that the curtain was possible, billows and changes in the breeze, making it suscephe responds by asking how its possible to be skeptical tible to natural law. Is it natural? No, theres nothing in a world where you have the Golden Gate Bridge or natural about surrounding the islands of Biscayne Bay the Empire State Building. And then he stops, realizing with hot pink fabric. But then art isnt natural. And yet those comparisons cant suffice, and he just says, This the fabric emphasizes the shape of the islands and is a vision. their relationship to one another; seen from above, they form a snaky chain through the bay. And that, I think, is why Christo works in the public sphere. By taking his art, from planning to execution, out of the For the people living in Miami at the time, or for privacy of the studio and the cloistered museum, Christo is those who passed over the Pont Neuf on foot daily, making art accessible to people in a way it may never have Christos wrappings made them take notice of what been for them. Ironically, the most succinct definition of they might otherwise take for granted, allowing what he does comes in Christo in Paris (the film about the them to see the art in their everyday lives. Even Pont Neuf project), when one of Christos detractors says the clanging of the cable against the steel poles that art is a creation of the mind that transforms reality. of the Running Fence served a purpose, sounding a whistling echo that suggests the vastness of the Sonoma and Marin valleys. Nearly all the Maysles films end the same way, in near silence with the camera seemingly as awestruck as the participants and onlookers, drinking in the vision that has materialized before them.

No. 4
christo december

No. 5
christo december

2010

2010

Umbrella Tragedies Given the way Christos work connects art to nature, and given his faith that people will want to take part in it, the disaster that befell the 1991 Umbrellas project was particularly cruel. The project, which opened simultaneously in Japan and California, consisted of thousands of large umbrellas (yellow in California and blue in Japan) dotting the landscape. It was troubled from the start. A typhoon that hit Japan shortly after the project opened necessitated closing the umbrellas temporarily. The typhoon passed, but several days later in California, Lori Keevil-Matthews, a spectator, was crushed to death when a freak windstorm uprooted an umbrella and pinned her against a boulder. Christo immediately ordered the project closed. (The umbrellas had been tested in a wind tunnel to withstand gales of up to 65 miles per hour. In the Maysles film of the project you can actually see the enormous dark storm cloud descending into Tejon Pass.) While the project was being taken down in Japan, a worker named Masaaki Nakamura was electrocuted when the crane he was on touched a power line. These deaths were the darkest examples of how much Christos art is grounded in the real world. After the deaths there was much speculation about whether he would ever again be able to gain permission for his work. So it was a surprise when, four years later, he got the go-ahead to wrap the Reichstag. It seems foolish to some people that projects that involved so much time, energy and money are temporary. But they have to be if they are to have any meaning. Gazing at the wrapped Pont Neuf, one young man in Christo in Paris wishes it could stay that way forever. If it did, though, it might soon be as taken for granted as the bridge was before the wrapping, as some of our greatest artworks are, simply because there is no doubt they will always be there. It takes some courage to admit that works of art are finite. Some of the largest of painter Anselm Keifers canvases may only be around for another generation or so because the natural elements he incorporates into them -- twigs and grass and leaves -- are decaying. We have already had the somewhat comical spectacle of restorers gluing cigarette butts back onto Jackson Pollacks canvases. But the temporary lifespan of Christos projects, and the fact that they are subject to the ravages of nature, is a way of emphasizing that art is not just objects, but a means of affecting emotion and thought. Perhaps the knowledge that Christos art temporary sharpens our perceptions, in the same way theyre sharpened when were storing our sense memory of places were not likely to return to.

Christos Legacy None of the Maysles films show the installations being dismantled; that would be too sad. And though the history of each project is documented in lavish books (the hardcover pressings of the Pont Neuf book contain a swatch of the fabric used to wrap it), movies seem the truest way to preserve the ephemeral nature of Christos art. Photos can capture only bits of the ever-changing installations. Film, the most transitory art form, being nothing more than shadows and light projected on a screen, is able to show the transforming effect of the elements on the works. Since movies dont exist the ways books or paintings do, because they are there and not there at the same time, what we take away from the Maysles films is the experience of, for a short time, being able to see them, the same experience of the spectators of the Running Fence or the Pont Neuf or the wrapped Reichstag. I said that Christos projects were gestures, and they are, with everything fleeting that word implies.

It takes some courage to admit that works of art are finite.

Theres no reason the experience of them need be fleeting. Being able to say you brought some grace to the world seems to me about as good a legacy as any artist could ask for. Christo (born Hristo Yavashev, Bulgarian) and Jeanne-Claude (born JeanneClaude Denat de Guillebon) are a married couple who create environmental installation art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long curtain called Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma counties in California, and most recently The Gates in New York Citys Central Park. Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to make the world a more beautiful place or to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christos wrappings as a revelation through concealment. The couple maintain a partnership in all undertakings and their art is always credited as the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In practice, however, Jeanne-Claude is understood to serve as the public relations agent and logistical planner, while Christo has appeared to make the final creative decisions. Jeanne-Claude has described their public personae as having a good cop / bad cop dynamic.

No. 6
christo december

The Umbrellas, 1991. Christo and Jeanne Claude. The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 2005. Christo and Jeanne Claude. Wrapped Bottle, Christo, 1958 (opposite page).

No. 7
christo december

2010

2010

Christo, the primary artist and designer of the duos projects, was born 13 June 1935 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. His father, Vladimir Javacheff, was a scientist, and his mother, Tsveta Dimitrova, was a secretary at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. Artists from the Academy who visited his family observed Christos artistic talent while he was still of a very young age. The story of Christos parentage is a picaresque curiosity which illuminates the strangeness of life in mid-twentieth century Bulgaria.

Wrapped in fabric, the details of the bridge disappear, but the structure becomes intimately apparent.

No. 8
christo december

2010

Running Fence, 1976. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer) Smithsonian American Art Museum (top). The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris 1975-85. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer) 1985, (second from top). Valley Curtain, Colorado, 1972. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer). (Second from bottom). Wrapped Trees, 1998, Riehen/Schweiz (Bottom).

Dmitris son Vladimir Javacheff showed his grandfathers technological aptitude and became an academically successful, though still poverty-stricken, scientist in Bulgaria in the years before Christos birth. Christo became aware of his secret German origins sometime in the 1970s, and after a brief lawsuit in the thenWest German courts, he was awarded a forty-nine percent share in the inheritance of Friedrich Fischer. While this would make Christo a millionaire several times over even without his art career, he has chosen to live modestly off a portion of the proceeds from his art, reinvesting most of his occupational income and all of his inheritance from the Fischer ball bearing fortune into charitable organizations.[2]

Life of Christo

Christo was descended from a German immigrant to Bulgaria on his fathers side. Christos great-grandfather, the German Friedrich Fischer, had invented the modern process for mass-producing standard ball bearings and sent his son, Christos grandfather Vitus Fischer, to Bulgaria to open the first ball bearing factory in Eastern Europe. Following the collapse of the project in disgrace--fourteen Bulgarian workers were killed in an industrial accident in the factory, and the lack of demand for ball bearings in the largely agricultural Bulgaria of the time led to financial ruin--Vitus Fischer, penniless and distrusted by the local police, took the name of Dmitri Javacheff (one of the laborers killed in the factory) and re-entered society under the assumed identity of a common, Bulgarian-born peasant working in a nearby milk production concern.

The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 2005. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer) Christo and Jeanne Claude.

Wrapped Coast, 1969. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer). Wrapped Reichstag sketch, 1994, Christo and Jeanne Claude. Christo and Jeanne Claude, The Gates, Central Park, 2005.

The Beginning of Christo In his youth, Christo had an interest in theatre and staged Shakespeare plays. In 1953, he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts, but was disappointed by the strict socialist curriculum imposed by the ruling Communist Party at the time. He studied art at the Sofia Academy from 1952 to 1956, and for another year in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) until 1957, when he escaped the Communist State by hiding himself in a truck transporting medicine to Austria. Christo quickly settled in Vienna, and enrolled at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. After only one semester there, he traveled to Geneva and soon after moved to Paris. As a result of his flight, he lost his citizenship and became a stateless person. His life in Paris was characterized by financial hardship and social isolation, which was worsened by his difficulty learning the French language. He earned money by painting portraits, which he likened to prostitution. Visiting the citys galleries and museums, he was inspired by the work of Joan Miro, Nicholas de Stael, Jackson Pollock, Jean Tinguely, and most notably Jean Dubuffet.

Wrapped Coast, 1969 90,000 sq. meters Valley Curtain, 1972 12,780 sq. meters Running Fence, 1976 200,000 sq. meters Surrounded Islands,1983 585,000 sq. meters Pont Neuf, 1985 40,876 sq. meters Wrapped Reichstag, 1995 115,600 sq. meters Wrapped Trees, 1998 55,000 sq. meters Amount of Fabric used during Project (square meters)

This process of reevaluation continues long after the project is supposedly completed.

In January 1958, Christo fabricated his first piece of wrapping art: He wrapped an empty paint tin with acrylic-soaked canvas, tied it, and colored it with glue, sand, and car paint. Years later, he remarked that he did not know why he created this piece. A German entrepreneur named Dieter Rosenkranz bought several of Christos small-scale wrappings, and through Rosenkranz, Christo met artist Yves Klein and the art historian Pierre Restany. Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in October 1958, when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of her mother, Prcilda de Guillebon. Initially, Christo was attracted to Jeanne-Claudes half-sister, Joyce. Jeanne-Claude was engaged to Philippe Planchon. Shortly before her wedding, Jeanne-Claude became pregnant by Christo. Although she married Planchon, Jeanne-Claude left him immediately after their honeymoon. Christo and Jeanne-Claudes son, Cyril, was born 11 May 1960. Jeanne-Claudes parents were displeased with the relationship, particularly because of Christos humble origins, and temporarily estranged themselves from their daughter. Despite this estrangement, the couple married on 28 November 1962.

No. 10
christo december

No. 11
christo december

2010

2010

Wrapped Coast, Land and Environmental Art, Jeffrey Kastner, 1969. Wrapped Coast, Christo and Jeanne Claude, 1969. Wolfgang Volz (Photographer). (photo on back cover).

The final realization of a project by Christo and JeanneClaude is not the installation of a particular piece. A project is not completed until the installation is removed and the site is returned to its normal state. Yet that formerly inviolate condition has been forever altered by the installation and the lingering resonance it leaves behind. While the fabrics, ropes, cables, poles, and whatever other materials used in an installation will be recycled and the site returned to its preinstallation status, the uncertainties and questions raised by the Christos efforts remain, dispersed among all those who have been engaged by the project. This process of reevaluation continues long after the project is supposedly completed. This creation of permanent states of reconsideration, instigated by work which is temporary by design, is perhaps the Christos greatest achievement.

No. 13
christo december

2010

Our internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art includes more than 26,000 works and continues to grow. With strong holdings in photography, painting and sculpture, architecture and design, and media arts, we strive to present key examples of Modernism as well as more recent works that reflect a variety of artistic developments occurring regionally, nationally, and around the world. Each year, in addition to organizing ongoing installations of permanent collection works, our curators develop a variety of collection-based presentations to complement the special traveling exhibitions hosted by the museum. Including both modern art masterworks and glimpses of contemporary art in the making, the permanent collection contributes to SFMOMAs standing as a dynamic art center where visitors can learn, reflect, and be inspired.

christ