But, Is It Art?
Reviewed by Dr. Jerry Flack
Christo (Christo Vladimirov Javacheff) and Jeanne-Claude (Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon), who were professionally known only by their first names, were born during the same hour of the exact same day, June 13, 1935. Christo was born in Bulgaria. In his young adulthood he escaped the Russian and Communist-dominated Bulgaria to Western European democracies such as Austria, Switzerland, and France. By 1958, he was a portrait painter in Paris. Jeanne-Claude was born in Morocco to a wealthy French family. They met in Paris when her family commissioned Christo to paint family portraits. The couple fell in love and married in 1958. They collaborated their talents and worked together for the next 50 years. (Their sole child was a son, Cyril.)
Initially, Jeanne-Claude knew little about art. Christo explained to her that he only painted traditional works of art, such as portraits, for financial survival. He introduced Jeanne-Claude to art with trips to the Louvre Museum. His own art was very different than the classic paintings in museums.
He wrapped small objects in paper and fabric and tied them with string. His unique art might be best described as concealment. One of the reasons Christo became so taken with wrapping as art expression is that in his homeland of Bulgaria the custom of wrapping gifts was unknown.
Jeanne-Claude soon joined Christo as a collaborator. With virtually no money for art supplies, the young artistic couple began their joint career by wrapping small, everyday objects such as lamps, chairs, shoes, and even telephones. Finally, in 1961, they began to wrap much larger objects that could only be seen outdoors. One early example consisted of gigantic rolls of industrial paper on a shipyard dock. People who had never seen a single painting or sculpture in great museums such as the Louvre were introduced to Christo’s monumental mysteries. They had to guess what the uniquely wrapped packages were hiding.
Art critics were divided in their assessment of Christo’s (and Jeanne-Claude’s) creations. “Not art,” said some. “Yes, it is!” many of their professional colleagues contended. Ultimately, the couple would become world-famous for their massive works—often referred to as environmental art.
Resources for wrapping ever-larger objects with voluminous fabrics and ropes became possible as their smaller wrapped works of art sold in art galleries that acknowledged their creative works.
As the size of their wrapped art objects grew, Christo and Jeanne-Claude accepted the reality that their works of environmental art must, of necessity, be temporary. Not all of their realized works were wrapped. In 1962, the couple painted and used huge oil barrels to create a wall that completely blocked a busy Paris street. The police gave them hours to deconstruct the symbolic work of art that protested the building of the Soviet Iron Curtain.
Seeking greater artistic freedom, the couple moved to New York City in 1964. As time passed, they began to wrap (temporarily) ever greater spaces. In 1969, they completely wrapped Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1985, the collaborators wrapped the famed Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris. Again, they faced a turning point. The couple realized that they should expand beyond the wrapping of human-made objects, even gigantic bridges and buildings. They began plans to wrap trees, ocean coasts, and hang gigantic curtains such as the Valley Curtain, 1972, near Rifle, Colorado. A project such as the Valley Curtain took years of planning and hundreds of workers to suspend an orange curtain made of a nylon fabric that unfurled 1,250 feet above the Arkansas River on August 10, 1972. It took 28 months of planning and work to create Valley Curtain, but due to the danger of high winds, the deconstruction of the gigantic curtain took place just 28 hours after it was unfurled. Documentary films and other media coverage made the Valley Curtain a sensation around the world.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were “green” decades before the environmental term became popular. They never sold their environmental art materials, even autographed swatches. They recycled every inch of fabric, rope, and steel used in their enormous projects such as the 6,500,000 square feet of bright pink woven organic polypropylene fabric used in Surrounded Islands, 1983, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida. Moreover, before surrounding the eleven islands, the artists removed 40 tons of garbage from the bay area. Christo and Jeanne-Claude never accepted grants or commissions for their massive works of art. Much of their planning involved seeking appeals and permits from local, state, and federal agencies and environmental organizations. Millions of observers enjoyed their temporary environmental works of art at no expense. Christo was once asked why art works such as Surrounded Islands were deconstructed after just two weeks of existence. He replied by comparing such works to rainbows. He noted that art lovers did not wait 24 hours to study one of nature’s masterpieces. Art is fleeting.
Neri’s narration is revealed through a series of dialogues, both documented and invented, to invite readers to best understand how the collaborators worked tirelessly together, often taking conflicting positions in the planning stages of enormous projects. Beyond the book’s key narrative and illustrations, the author provides a wealth of expository components as back matter. “About Christo and Jeanne-Claude” provides biographical facts that are not revealed in the primary story line. “Author’s Note” accents personal meetings and interviews he had with his subjects. He was perhaps the last person to interview Christo before the artist’s death in May of 2020.
Two pages of “Fun Facts About Christo and Jeanne-Claude” is rich in essential information about the subjects. They were incredibly dedicated to their work. They worked 13 hours a day, seven days of the week throughout their half century of marriage and artistic collaboration. The grand scale of their projects took years and years to move from inspiration to realization. The longest project, L’Arc de Triomphe Wrapped, 2021, Paris, took 59 years of planning and was actually realized a year after Christo’s death. (Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009.)
A closing bibliography notes books, films, and websites.
Elizabeth Haidle’s illustrations portray the 50 years of marriage and artistic collaboration of the title couple. She highlights their most famous realized works of environmental art. She emphasizes the reality that their completed works, while briefly exhibited, were freely enjoyed by millions of people.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this unique double biography, it is that truly creative people never give up. In their 50+ years of artistic endeavors, Christo and Jeanne-Claude completed 23 mammoth projects around the world, but they failed to succeed with the realization of 47 other enterprises. In part, many of their plans for environmental art were of such grand scale and so near urban centers that they were unable to receive permission to proceed. Even so, they considered their life work a success despite the reality that they were at least one project shy of even realizing 50 percent overall success of their monumental dreams.
Home and School Activities
What Is Art? The second half of the 20th century world of art was filled with artistic invention. Many avant-garde artists broke existing rules of classical art. In most instances, such innovations were immediately associated with their revolutionary artists. No one could view a wrapped or draped project of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s and attribute it to any other artist. Andy Warhol’s pop art included signature photographic images of Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings looked exactly like pages out of popular comic books. His paintings even included word balloons. Jackson Pollock was famed for his “drip” paintings. Alexander Calder created unparalleled mobiles that were floating abstract sculptures. After students have become more familiar with the works of these revolutionary artists, suggest that they summarize their impressions of such works, particularly the realized projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in an article they have been commissioned to write for an imagined art journal, What Is Art? Is a project such as Valley Curtain a work of art or an act of folly?
Newly Wrapped Works of Art. The fabric art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude is instantly recognizable, especially in photographs and drawings of their masterpieces. Ask readers to examine travel and photography books that highlight human constructions and natural wonders of the world that travelers should see at least once in their lifetimes. Motivate pro-Christo and Jeanne-Claude environmental art projects. What are some human constructions and natural phenomena that the collaborators might wrap or drape if they were still alive? Human creations might include a locomotive and several cars of the Orient Express (Europe); Pyramid Kukulcan (Mexico); Taj Mahal (India); Karnak Temple (Luxor, Egypt); and Easter Island Statues (Pacific Ocean). Nature provides olympian subjects as well. The environmental artists might wrap or drape the Santa Maria Cataract (Iguassu Falls, Brazil); Lake Louise (Banff, Canada); or a section of the Great Barrier Reef (Australia). Creative students can draw blueprints for a massive undertaking or paint a watercolor of a realized project. Recall that Christo and Jeanne-Claude did not harm the environment. Their public works of art rarely extended beyond two weeks between realization and deconstruction and left Earth sites cleaner than they had been.
S.T.E.M. Connections. As the magnitude of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s public art expanded, so did their need to consult engineers, architects, mathematicians, and other professionals and amateur volunteers in their mammoth projects. Student researchers can use author Neri’s bibliography to learn more about projects that ultimately came to take as many as a half-century of planning. As gifted readers study the intensive preparation of the collaborators, suggest that they find examples of how S.T.E.M. basics were integral to such accomplishments as Running Fence, 1976, Northern California, believed to be the longest artwork ever created. It was 24.5 miles in length and used 2.15 million square feet of fabric. How was it or other gigantic works designed, engineered, and constructed? Challenge advanced students to create original mathematical story problems about the creation of one or more of the couple’s most famous realized creations.
History. Christo and Jeanne-Claude were students of historical constructions, including ancient burial structures that pre-dated Egyptian pyramids and may have originated in Mesopotamia. Mastaba is Arabic for “stone bench.” Mastabas were ancient tombs that were rectangular in shape with sloping sides and flat roofs. The construction materials were mud bricks or stone blocks.
The London Mastaba, 2018, commemorated the 60th anniversary of the famed couples’ environmental structures created with painted oil barrels. The structure floated above Hyde Park’s Sepentine Lake in the center of London. It was constructed with 7,506 horizontally stacked and painted barrels held in place by 32 anchors. The sculpture was typical of the life work of the famed couple and their completed life projects. Ever conscious of the environment, the temporary structure covered only one percent of the Serpentine Lake. It was financed entirely through the sale of Christo’s art works. No public funds were used and the completed project was free to all observers.
Prior to his death in 2020, Christo’s final enterprise was to be the construction of a monolithic mastaba to be erected in the Liwa Desert south of Abu Dhabi. Using online resources, encourage students to view colorful images of the London Mastaba, 2018. Once they have a visual understanding of both ancient and contemporary mastabas, suggest they draw a blueprint for a future desert mastaba or paint images of what one might look like if temporarily erected on the floor of Arizona’s Monument Valley (with Navajo Nation and Department of Interior permission).
Neri, G. Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrap the World: The Story of Two Groundbreaking Environmental Artists. Illus. by Elizabeth Haidle. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2023.
