The Quintessential Artist

The Quintessential Artist

Did you know that 3,100 umbrellas spread across 30 miles of landscape could be considered art? Well it is. This project was titled The Umbrellas, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 1984-91. This is just one example of the many large-scale environmental works of art, called earthworks that Christo has constructed over the past 40-50 years. The purpose of this paper is to inform people about Christo and how he uses context on very large-scale earthworks to symbolize several different views and ideas.

To give a bit of history on the artist, Christo was born on June 13, 1935 in Bulgaria. Fascinated with art, he began drawing and painting at a fairly young age. Christo started out drawing mostly portraits, but as he became more and more well-known as an artist, he began to see more doors opening up for him and more freedom to experiment. Christo met Jeanne-Claude in Paris in 1958 when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. By the time he was done, they were inseparable. Since then they have collaborated on several different pieces of artistic work. (Baal, Jacob. Christo & Jeanne-Claude.)

The two have created many well known art works, such as the Surrounded Islands (Figure 3), The Pont Neuf Wrapped, The Umbrellas (Figure 2), and his latest creation, The Saffron Gates (Figure 4). These are all examples of very large-scale earthworks that took years of planning and sometimes months to create. While all of these projects are seen in photographs, the actual earthwork itself is the art, not the photograph, this is a common misconception. For as much time and effort that Christo and Jeanne-Claude put into the earthworks, one would think that they would leave them up for months, but they don't. Most of the earthworks get taken down about a week after they are completed. Many of Christo's pieces consist of fabric being wrapped, draped, or surrounding a certain object. Some critics find his work to be controversial, others find it breathtaking, and some just don't care one way or another.

To give an idea of just how "large-scale" some of his works of art are, I will briefly describe a few of them. The Surrounded Islands for example, which took place in Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida, took three years to plot out the surrounding of the islands, it was finally completed on May 7, 1983. Christo surrounded eleven islands, using 603,850 square meters of pink woven polypropylene fabric, the fabric extended 200 feet from the islands into the bay. Over all, this piece of work spread over 7 miles of the bay. Another one of Christo's earthworks, titled The Pont Neuf Wrapped, took over ten years to plan and used 40,876 square meters of fabric to cover the entire bridge. Even when this bridge was draped in fabric to form a piece of art, it was still used as a bridge. Cars drove over it, people walked on it and boats went underneath it. It took twenty-four years and over 100,000 square meters of fabric before they were able to complete Wrapped Reichstag (Figure 1). Christo's latest piece is titled The Saffron Gates, which he has been working on since 1979. The Saffron Gates, just completed on February 12, 2005, takes place in Central Park in New York City and consists of 7,500 gates which stand at sixteen feet tall. The gates consist of saffron colored fabric suspended from the top of the gates and are spread over twenty-three miles of walkway in Central Park. As you can see, these projects take considerable amounts of time and man power to construct and they are not always accepted by many people, which is why it usually takes so long to get started on the earthworks. (Vaizey, Marina. Christo.)

Christo's latest project is titled Over The River, which will be miles of fabric panels stretched over the Arkansas River in Colorado. The fabric will be three to seven meters above the river bed, so that it will not interfere with anything. As usual, however, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are getting some resistance with this project as well. Some think that covering the river may disrupt some forms of nature. Christo is very passionate about his work and is willing to do anything to ensure that he will be able to create it. He always pays for all of his projects and he always recycles the materials once he's done. He puts forth millions of dollars of his own money to see his ideas come to life. In my opinion, that shows that he is in it for the art and not the money.

The thing that I like most about Christo is that he makes people look at things in a new way. He takes something that people have seen before and alters it, and it really makes them think about what they're looking at. Christo usually takes something that is already beautiful or