| In Review: Christo and Jeanne Claude |
| Written by Ken Hamel | |
| Wednesday, 24 September 2008 | |
 Jeanne-Claude and Christo lecture at the Buell Theatre - photo by Ken Hamel/DenverArts.org In the pantheon of artists who are American household names, there are few: Warhol, Pollock... and of course Christo, who—along with his partner and artistic collaborator Jeanne-Claude—is known as the artist that wraps things: Pont Neuf over Paris' River Seine, Berlin's Reichstag, trees in Switzerland, islands off Key Biscayne, the list goes on. As part of the Center for Visual Art's current exhibit highlighting the environmental artists' sublime installations (Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Prints and Objects - on display until November 1st), the world renown duo gave a public lecture to an audience of hundreds at the Buell Theater on September 18th covering their career from when the artists met in Paris back in 1958 to their present day projects. The perfunctory technical difficulties that seem to reliably mar public lectures accompanied by slides brought out the wit of Jeanne-Claude, who worked the crowd and killed time until the presentation was ready, and made no secret of her disdain for the cliche that the artists' work is limited to wrapping objects. Jeanne-Claude rolled off the many projects that did not involve wrapping (such as California's Running Fence and Rifle, Colorado's Valley Curtain) yet the duo's excellent and thorough website at http://www.christojeanneclaude.net has no shortage of "wrapped" productions ("Wrapped Fountain and Tower," "Wrapped Kunsthalle," "Wrapped Monuments," "Wrapped Roman Wall," the list goes on...) Jeanne-Claude also went on to mention there are three things she never does: 1) Never flies together with Christo; 2) Never assists in the preparatory works of art Christo hand crafts for the various installations and 3) Never allows Christo "the joy and pleasure of working with our tax accountant." Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the artists' work is that their very complex and expensive projects are totally funded by Christo's beautiful and detailed preparatory studies, pencil and collage artworks built up from maps and sketches, some small, and others quite epic in scale. Christo accepts no sponsorships in order to maintain complete control over the final work and the installation process; In fact, it's the process of getting permits that is the most difficult part of each work, but nonetheless is as integral to the artistic process as the ephemeral final presentation of the work itself. The artists' also discussed their upcoming Colorado encore "Over the River," a series of fabric panels to be suspended over the Arkansas River, and discussed the process of designing the work which includes building scale models of the rigging that will eventually be used as part of the ultimate installation. The current ETA: July 2012 "at the earliest."
The Pont Neuf Wrapped |
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