Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The most visible site-specific artists in America were Christo Javacheff (b. 1935) and Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon (1935-2009). Christo and Jeanne-Claude, as they were known, embarked on vast projects (both rural and urban) that sometimes took many years of planning to realize. In 1958, Christo emigrated from Bulgaria to Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude; they moved to New York together in 1964. Their work was political and interventionist, frequently commenting on capitalism and consumer culture by wrapping or packaging buildings or large swatches of land in fabric. They “wrapped” the Reichstag in Berlin and one million square feet of Australian coastline, for instance. In each case, the process of planning battling bureaucracies was part of the art, frequently taking years to complete. By contrast, the wrapping itself usually took only a few weeks and the competed project was in place for even less time. Christo-and Jeanne-Claude funded each new project from the sale of books, Christo’s original artworks like drawings, collages, and other ephemera relating to the preceding projects.

In February 2005, Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005. This project took 26 years to realize, during which time the artists battled their way through various New York bureaucracies, meeting many obstacles and making changes to the work along the way. They finally installed 7,503 saffron-colored nylon panels on “gates” along 23 miles of pathway in Central Park. The brightly colored flapping panels enlivened the frigid February landscape and were an enormous public success. The installation lasted for only 16 days.^[1]