Christo and Jeanne-Claude

ChildArt, April-June, 2008 by Carrie Foix

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are artists who work together and create large-scale environment works. These works are temporary and they are removed from the site where they are installed, typically after about two weeks. Christo and Jeanne-Claude choose part of an environment in which to make their art and people then see the whole environment with fresh eyes, even after the artwork has been removed, for it remains in the memories of people who have viewed the transformed environment.

Even though they are world-famous artists, if one were to look for a name by which to call their art, Christo and Jeanne-Claude would be comfortable with the label, "environmental art." This label suits their work well not only because they often create their artwork in a specific location but they are also environmentally responsible, as they restore the location to its original condition, but with two exceptions.

One exception is Valley Curtain in Rifle, Colorado, between Grand Junction and Glenwood Spring, where a group of workers fastened an orange curtain made of woven nylon fabric in the Grand Hogback Mountain Range. The Valley Curtain project took 28 months to finish. On August 11, 1972, twenty-eight hours after completing the Valley Curtain, a gale estimated at 60 miles per hour made it necessary to start the removal. The owners of the east slope and west slope of the valley in which the work was installed asked that Christo and Jeanne-Claude leave the main foundations in the mountain as a memento and said they would be sad if it was removed. So, Christo and Jeanne-Claude left the main foundations of the work installed in the mountain at the landowner's request.

The second exception is Surrounded Islands, a project in which the artists did not put back the forty-two tons of garbage from the beaches of the islands in the Biscayne Bay of Miami, Florida, which they had removed in order to create the work. Eleven of the islands were surrounded with pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water, floating and extending out from each island into the bay. There were eleven islands, but on two occasions, two islands were surrounded together. The fabric was sewn to follow the contours of the islands.

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The Surrounded Islands were designed to be seen from the buildings, all around the Biscayne Bay, from the bridges, from the roads, by boat, and also from the air. The shiny pink fabric was in harmony with the growing tropical plants and grass on the island, the light of the Miami sky, and the colors of the shallow waters of the bay. Their use of fabric or cloth highlights a fragile, sensuous, and temporary nature in their art.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artwork embraces process but first it involves their vision, which comes from either Christo or Jeanne-Claude. Christo makes drawings to help visualize their ideas. By the completion of a project, Christo has made many drawings in order to clearly outline the project in such detail that the finished project can be created on location as it appears on paper. These preparatory drawings, collages, and scale models show the evolution of the details of the project, the development and crystallization of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's initial idea. The preparatory works reflect the years of research Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done about the location and information about the site, the people who use that area, and the technical details of the structure.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude describe the actual installation of their projects as the "hardware" part of their work and describe the preparation and drawings as the "software." The software period is the time during which the project exists in the form of Christo's preparation drawings and in the imagination of both artists, their collaborators, and all of the people from whom they must obtain permissions to create their work. It sometimes takes Christo and Jeanne-Claude many years, sometimes decades, to receive permission to build their work in some locations.

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The environmental art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude has elements of painting, sculpture, architecture and urban planning. As they explain, "Nobody talks about a painting before it is painted and nobody talks about a sculpture before it is sculpted." Architecture and urban planning, however, are always discussed before they are constructed. Many people talk about the possibility of a new bridge, highway, or airport before those are built.

Similarly, many people discuss Christo and Jeanne-Claude's environmental art projects before they are installed. While Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work draws the public into the process before it is built, the public responds to the work. The public does not shape the work, but their comments and ideas about the proposed work help determine whether the artists receive the necessary permits and are allowed to proceed with the project.

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There is an important difference between Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works of art and typical architecture and urban planning. Christo and Jeanne-Claude pay for their works of art with their own money. They sell their art to museums, art collectors, art dealers, and galleries. The money from the sale of Christo's original drawings is used to pay all the expenses of the preparation, completion, maintenance and removal of their projects, such as the materials, labor, shipping, insurance, engineering, staff, rentals, and legal expenses. The reason that Christo and Jeanne-Claude pay for their projects themselves is because they want to work in total freedom, which is why they never accept grants or sponsors.