Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Origins
• Christo (born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, Bulgarian: Христо Явашев, June 13, 1935) and Jeanne-Claude (born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, June 13, 1935 – November 18, 2009) were a married couple who created massive and environmental works of art.
• They married over objections from Jeanne Claude’s family(they became their supporters later), forming one of the most durable and creative partnerships in the history of art.
• Christo studied art at the Sofia Academy from 1953 to 1956, and went to Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) until 1957, when he left for the West by bribing a railway official and stowing away with several other individuals on-board a train transporting medicine and medical supplies to Austria.
• She was described as "extroverted" and with natural organizational abilities. Her hair was dyed red and she smoked cigarettes, and tried to quit many times until her weight would balloon. She did not enjoy cooking.[5] She took responsibility for overseeing work crews and for raising funds.[2] She said she became an artist out of love for Christo (if he'd been a dentist, she said she'd have become a dentist
• Their works were credited to just "Christo" until 1994 when the outdoor works and large indoor installations were retroactively credited to "Christo and Jeanne-Claude
• They flew in separate planes: in case one crashed, the other could continue their work.
Concerns/About Work
• A trademark of the work is its 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 impact.
• Each of every work has been an attempt to create art at monumental scale by temporarily transforming a natural or man-made landmark.
• They situate each project in a community and time and time again they have literalized their grandest imaginative excursions, made their thought visible, and then removed it.
• A simplistic view of their works is to perceive them as wrappers of buildings, bridges and other objects.
• The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to create works of art or joy and beauty and to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes.
• They push aside all suggestions of metaphoric or symbolic meaning, saying “Our art has absolutely no purpose, except to be a work of art. We do not give messages”.
• All expenses for the temporary work of art were paid by Christo and Jeanne-Claude through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs. The artists do not accept sponsorship of any kind.
• Do you know that I don't have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they're finished. Only the preparatory drawings and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain.
• The emphasis on the TEMPORARY. Works existed for only a brief moment in time. The projects left no trace, but lodged themselves forever in the memory of those lucky enough to see them during their brief flowering.
• To them, the fact that the work does not remain creates an urgency to see it.
• After 2 weeks, all sites are restored to their original conditions and materials recycled.
• What often is left is the memory of joy and the varieties and phases of sheer pleasure.
• “Joy and beauty” is realised by creating in real space and time the idea they conceived, on their own terms, without compromise to the art idea, paying their way, beholden to no one, no strings attached.
• Creating “Joy and Beauty” requires a complete devotion to work and unparalleled discipline, both of which are ingrained in their lives.
• Restoring the land to its original condition after each project is a commitment. Paying all workers for their labour is another. Not less is their commitment to create a transfixing aesthetic experience that changes perceptions for a lifetime.
• Jeanne Claude emphasizes that they make the art entirely for their own purposes and pleasure, and the public response is a welcome bonus but incidental. She emphasizes that they make art entirely for their own purposes and pleasure, and the public response is a welcome bonus but incidental. She speaks the projects as “children”, saying that parents are pleased when strangers admire their child, but this admiration is not the reason the child is desired and created. The art is made to satisfy the artists’ own desire to see their ideas built, because they believe they will be beautiful.

Early Works
• From modest beginnings in Paris wrapping everything from tin cans to the Australian coastline, the Christos have gone further beyond wrapping, retaining ONLY the use of fabric as a common medium.
• The packages (his earlier works) convey poignancy and yearning for expression, something that can’t be precisely known but seemingly wants to be free – with overtones of coercion and repression. These affecting works resemble to that of a displaced person, the journey from a troubled past to an unknown future, a reference to Christo’s own ambiguous status following his flight from the Communist East.
• Radically transformed public sites, defying assumptions on the limits and uses of art.
• INFLUENCES that may have inspired the Christos are
1. Henry Moore’s drawing, (Crowd Looking at a tied-up object)
2. Man Ray’s photograph (The Enigma Of Isidore Ducasse
• Christo and Jeanne Claude began working as a team in 1961 with the Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor, in which a coarse tarpaulin and ropes draped stacked oil barrels and rolls of paper. The shape of Dockside Packages which lasted only a few days and is known now through photographs – appears ominous, like a wrapped military tank.
• PATIENCE is an underappreciated aspect of their method. The Running Fence was conceived in 1972 and realized in 1976. The Wrapped Reichstag was only accomplished after twenty-four years in 1995, following destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and elaborate negotiations with the German parliament.

Works
Pont Neuf (sculpture and architecture)
• Even as a work of architecture, the bridge continued to function, boats continue to sail under its wrapped arches, while cars were driving and pedestrians walked on it. Invariably, the huge cost of their projects would bring forth suggestions that they remember instead the many orphans of the world. That would get them going. The Pont Neuf cost $2.5 million and by the time they sent 1,760 yellow umbrellas almost 20 feet high, dancing up and down the hills near Bakersfield, California, the tag came to something like $26 million.
• Begun under Henri III, the Pont-Neuf was completed in July 1606, during the reign of Henry IV. No other bridge in Paris offers such topographical and visual variety, today as in the past. From 1578 to 1890, the Pont-Neuf underwent continual changes and additions of the most extravagant sort, such as the construction of shops on the bridge under Soufflot, the building, demolition, rebuilding and once again demolition of the massive rococo structure which housed the Samaritaine's water pump.
• Wrapping the Pont-Neuf continued this tradition of successive metamorphoses by a new sculptural dimension and transformed it, for 14 days, into a work of art
• Ropes held down the fabric to the bridge's surface and maintained the principal shapes, accentuating relief while emphasizing proportions and details of the Pont-Neuf, which has joined the left and right banks and the Île de la Cité, the heart of Paris, for over 2000 years
The Gates
• The couple's best known American work was the installation known as The Gates in Central Park, New York, in 2005. They festooned 23 miles of the park's footpaths with 7,500 saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames. More than five million people saw The Gates, and it was credited with injecting about $254 million into the local economy.
• The gates and the fabric panels could be seen from far away through the leafless branches of the trees.
• The grid pattern of the city blocks surrounding Central Park was reflected in the rectangular structure of the commanding saffron colored poles while the serpentine design of the walkways and the organic forms of the bare branches of the trees were mirrored in the continuously changing rounded and sensual movements of the free-flowing fabric panels in the wind.
• The people of New York continued to use the park as usual.
• The Gates bring together a number of career-long themes in the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, where they have lived and worked for forty years, the arts capital of the world, the place that offers perhaps the greatest diversity of population and concentration of people in the world.
• The fabric on The Gates, Running Fence and the Reichstag is seen like a second skin, very related to human existence.
• “The fabric will move with the wind, with water, with the natural elements. It is moving, breathing.
• The energy of the wind is so much translated with The Gates.
• The Gates forces the public to see not just the work of art, but also to see that space in extraordinarily different ways and exciting new alignments. This experience is the essence of what Christo’s Gates may offer.
• The Gates in Central Park is bound to present the idea that we live in an increasingly constructed landscape, that is an entirely man-made landscape.
• Our experience of “nature” through television, films and national parks looks as though it is so carefully managed and yet the management is kept out of sight.
• For those who walked through The Gates, the saffron colored fabric was a golden ceiling creating warm shadows. When seen from the buildings surrounding Central Park, The Gates seemed like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees and highlighting the shape of the meandering footpaths

The Surrounded Islands
• The Surrounded Islands were designed to be seen from the buildings, all around the bay, from the bridges and causeways, from the roads, by boat and also from the air – Christo flew by helicopter ONCE – for 20 minutes – and only at the Surrounded Islands.
• It is the most expensive project they had ever undertaken.
• Despite being in the middle of a major city, it nevertheless seemed oddly isolated and unreal.
• It closely resembled the artist’s renderings that when anyone who knew the drawings saw the actual work, he or she had a sense of déjà vu. It was visually breath-taking and blended seamlessly into the surrounding environment.
• These islands were unnoticed for decades, between the cities of Miami and Miami Beach, in the midst of the heavy cross-bay traffic of boats and auto-mobile causeways.
• The luminous pink color of the shiny fabric was in harmony with the tropical vegetation of the uninhabited verdant islands, the light of the Miami sky and the colors of the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay.
• Permits were obtained from the following governmental agencies: The Governor of Florida and the Cabinet; the Dade County Commission; the Department of Environmental Regulation; the City of Miami Commission; the City of North Miami; the Village of Miami Shores; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management.
• Surrounded Islands was a work of art underlining the various elements and ways in which the people of Miami live, between land and water.
• It was perhaps Christos’ most photogenic work, and unlike any of their other projects, the best view of it was either from a helicopter or on television.
• Most people experienced this work through the media and to communicate as aesthetic idea to a mass culture audience became one of the most important new issues in art of the late twentieth century.
• The Christos succeeded more than any other artists in developing the maximum potential of mass media – including television

Wrapped Reichtag (sculpture and architecture)
• After a struggle spanning the seventies, eighties and nineties, the wrapping of the Reichstag was completed on June 24, 1995 by a work force of 90 professional climbers and 120 installation workers.
• The Reichstag remained wrapped for 14 days and all materials were RECYCLED.
• A work of sculpture and architecture, this work can be seen as a huge monumental sculpture and work of architecture. It manifests elements of antique drapery and folds, the building however remains intact.
• The artists do not accept sponsorship of any kind since the work of art was entirely financed by the artists, as in all previous projects, through the sale of preparatory studies, drawings, collages, scale models as well as early works and original lithographs.
• The Reichstag stands up in an open, strangely metaphysical area. The building has experienced its own continuous changes and perturbations: built in 1894, burned in 1933, almost destroyed in 1945, it was restored in the sixties, but the Reichstag always remained the symbol of Democracy.
• The building symbolizes some of the most deeply felt issues of German national identity.
• Throughout the history of art, the use of fabric has been a fascination for artists. From the most ancient times to the present, fabric forming folds, pleats and draperies is a significant part of paintings, frescoes, reliefs and sculptures made of wood, stone and bronze. The use of fabric on the Reichstag follows the classical tradition. Fabric, like clothing or skin, is fragile; it translates the unique quality of impermanence.
• For a period of two weeks, the richness of the silvery fabric, shaped by the blue ropes, created a sumptuous flow of vertical folds highlighting the features and proportions of the imposing structure, revealing the essence of the Reichstag.
The Umbrellas (urbanism and environmental art)
• An installation of 3100 two-storey high umbrellas, blue in Japan and yellow in California, spread across areas of 48 kilometres and included elements of urban planning.
• To continue with the project, the Christos needed permission from the Ministry of Construction in Tokyo. The project created house-like structures without walls running along highways and roads, or set alongside schools, temples, gas stations, etc.
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude have designed The Umbrellas to be seen by driving, walking – and going UNDER the umbrellas – resting on the sitting platform/base cover designed for this.
• The Umbrellas were NOT designed to be seen from the air – the projects cannot be fully enjoyed from the air.
• Hundreds of umbrellas were placed along the roads, very accessible, on public property for the public to freely touch, enjoy and photograph.
(At the end of The Umbrellas installation)
• After 18 days, The Umbrellas were removed from the land. They were taken apart and most of the materials were recycled.
• The paint was scraped off the aluminum parts, (poles, ribs and struts) which was melted down and used again as aluminum like soda cans or whatever aluminum is used for.
• The steel bases became scrap metal or were used as bases for satellite dishes
• The fabric used in the projects is always industrial man made fabrics, which are manufactured for ecological purposes (air and water filters, or sand bags against floods), or agricultural purposes, such as "erosion control mesh" which was used for the Wrapped Coast in Australia in 1969, and for construction purposes.
(Rationale behind The Umbrellas)
• Like all their projects, this work of art was not only aesthetic about creating joy and beauty – it was also about comparison showing the similarities and differences in the ways of life and the use of the land of two peoples – the two richest in the world – living across the Pacific Ocean.
• Why Umbrellas? An umbrella is a symbol for shelter, against both rain and sun. It is an image that is easily understood, by any age, any country, any civilization, and this, for the past 4,800 years, since the umbrella shape was invented in Mesopotamia. Today, Iraq is part of what was Mesopotamia, where, in those days, the people believed that the sky was a giant umbrella placed by the Gods, to protect human beings. That shape is found throughout the art history of any century and civilization, as in: Persepolis in Iran – bas relief "Darius under an umbrella." The main characters in paintings and frescoes are often under an umbrella to show their importance
• SPACE is an element of the three-dimensional works of art – a sculpture has its own space around it, while a painting is a flat surface. Christo and Jeanne-Claude wanted to show the differences of the use of the space in the inland valley in the USA and in the inland valley in Japan – they needed a free standing module or shape that they would place in a configuration reflecting the availability of the space in the valley in Ibaraki and the valley in California. The whole of Japan is about the same size as the state of California.
• Why the colour blue? In Japan where it rains throughout the summer the landscape is green. There is a river, the Sato River, in which 90 umbrellas were standing in the water. Many different shades of green vegetation – it is a humid and wet landscape, therefore: blue umbrellas.
• Why the colour yellow? In Southern California, the dry season lasts during the whole summer – the grass is burnt by the sun, and becomes blond grass on brown hills – it is a dry landscape, therefore: yellow umbrellas. This was part of the aesthetic of the temporary work of art.
• Some Similarities, Two inland valleys – used by people. Not touristic – real life – inhabited by people doing their usual activities.In both Countries: people – houses – villages – small towns – roads – traffic – barns – churches – temples – schools – post offices – restaurants – stores – gas stations. In the two richest countries in the world.
• Some Differences, 452 Landowners in a shorter valley in Ibaraki, Japan, 12 miles (19 km). 26 Landowners in California – the valley was 18 miles long (29 km).
• Why Ibaraki ? Why California? When Christo and Jeanne-Claude were looking for the two ideal valleys across the Pacific, they wanted the valleys to be quite accessible, not far from a metropolitan area, so that the work could be easier, for the workers and supplies, and also for the visitors. Ibaraki is just north of Tokyo, close to Narita International Airport.The California site is just north of Los Angles, close to LAX International Airport. The Pacific Rim unites the two sites, it would not be so if Christo and Jeanne-Claude had chosen the East Coast of the USA or the northern part of the West Coast, the landscape would be too similar to the verdant Ibaraki, and it would not have the relationship brought by the Pacific.
• Why more umbrellas in California than in Japan? There were 1,760 yellow umbrellas in California and 1,340 blue in Japan. The valley was longer in California, it was 18 miles (29 km) long while in Japan the valley was 12 miles (19 km) long.
• Why 3,100? The number of umbrellas came out of the inspiration of the artists, while looking at the topographic maps and later in 1988, walking around and climbing up and down many times, surveying the land and creating their own design or drawing on the two landscapes. There was an ever present factor to limit the number to 3,100 – that factor is called Jeanne-Claude, who kept saying that the maximum cost should be for 3,000 umbrellas, however there were 3,100. Financially she lost, esthetically she won.

Running Fence (urbanism and environmental art)
• Running Fence was an installation art piece by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, which was completed on September 10, 1976. The builders removed it 14 days later, leaving no visible trace
• The fence implies separation, enclosure, confinement, a wall, a railing, a palisade.
• It was large, dramatic and impossible to ignore.
• Not in a museum but part of one of America’s most remarkable landscapes.
• It consisted of a veiled fence 24.5 miles (39.4 km) long extending across the hills of Sonoma and Marin counties in northern California, United States. The 18-foot (5.5 m) high fence was composed of 2,050 panels of white nylon fabric hung from steel cables by means of 350,000 hooks. The cables were supported by 2,050 steel poles stuck into the ground and braced by steel guy wires anchored to the earth.[1]
• The route of the fence began near U.S. Highway 101 and crossed 14 roads and the private property of 59 ranchers to reach the Pacific Ocean near Bodega Bay. The required environmental impact report for the piece was 450 pages long.[1]
• The piece is said to have been partly inspired by fences demarcating the Continental Divide in Colorado.
• When puffed by winds, each section of the woven fabric – tens of thousands of yards of it share the same exact concavity/convexity.
• It can be described as enchanting with its ever-changing responsiveness to the wind, the light, and the rolling brown hills and valleys of North Carolina.
• The nylon fabric was the fence’s body, designed to reflect, absorb, and ripple its complimentary medium, light, bright essence.
• The piece was the subject of a 1978 documentary film Running Fence by Albert and David Maysles.
• Running Fence crossed 14 roads and the town of Valley Ford, leaving passage for cars, cattle and wildlife. It was designed to be viewed by following 40 miles (64 kilometers) of public roads, in Sonoma and Marin Counties.

Evolution of Art
• Christo enrolled at the Vienna Academy Of Fine Arts for a semester before painting portraits of society ladies and children in order to survive. Moved to Paris right after.
• Evolved as an artist while in Paris, almost from the beginning where he began to use fabric.
• Began wrapping cars, bottles , chairs, anything he could find, everyday objects of no particular beauty of interests.
• This is a resemblance to Pop art where he assumes that any object could be worthy of attentions of art, there were no hierarchies or distinctions anymore.
• Chosen objects were wrapped in canvas and tied securely with string, rope or twine. Some of it are painted.
• This went on for a few years, even to the extent of wrapping the same objects and juxtaposing the items. (Wrapped Cans and bottles) 1958 – 1959.
• Wrapping of small objects which are transformed into limited editions for a collectors market was of importance to Christo since it was a source of income and funding needed for projects that became larger and costlier. Occasionally given for the purpose of good relations.
• Later, preparations for written documentations, photo collages and logistical analysis has become more complex over the years as their works are becoming demanding and ambitious. This was essential to the development of their artistic progress, as they were needed to convince authorities to give permission for a project to succeed, to publicize and define the nature of a project.

References

Books
• Brian O’Doherty , Remembering The Running Fence (University of California Press, 2010)
• Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Christo and Jeanne-Claude (Taschen, 2001)
• Rudy Chiappini , Christo and Jeanne-Claude (Skira, 2006)

Web
• Jeanne-Claude -- Christo’s Dynamic Muse: Manuela Hoelterhoff http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agEeAUIHTR8o • Jeanne-Claude
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/6614804/Jeanne-Claude.html