Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images, fonte: www.christojeanneclaude.net

The first time I heard of Christ was probably when I was so young that I couldn’t even remember. The first time I heard of Christo I remember it perfectly because I was a second year student of Architecture who was attending the course “Theories and practices of architectural design” by prof. Arch. Giangiacomo D’Ardia. As soon as I saw a photo of the Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-83 it was love.

Biographical notes

Christo’s work (at Civil Registry as Christo Vladimirov Yayachev, born on 13 June 1935 in Gabrovo in Bulgaria) includes painting, sculpture, architecture and landscaping. A complete artist, forged by the horrors of World War II and the persecutions of the Communist regime against his father and his chemical products factory, he immediately found shelter in a wonderful world in which men often escape from the problems of real life.

His mother Tzveta Dimitrova was general secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia and in 1953 the cultural training of her son began, interspersed with the obligations of the regime which required students to instruct peasants on how to arrange the elements of the landscape to impress the travelers.

Three years later, the young man left his homeland to move first to Vienna and then to Paris, making ends meet by executing portraits for high society ladies and children. And it was in Paris that Christo met his love and a lifelong partnership was born with Jeanne-Claude, the daughter of a French general who commissioned him a family portrait.

The packaging

Lacquered canvas, Cotton fabric, Tarpaulin, reinforced plastic sheets, cloth, jute, polyethylene, Plexiglas, coated fabric, polypropylene, polyamide, nylon fabric, steel ropes and cables.
The packaging first began with small everyday objects and then moved on to increasingly large and daring projects. A process that the critic D. Bourdon defined: “Unveiling by concealing”. This is because the fabric, placed on an object, enhances its shape, presence, declares and affirms its existence, but at the same time conceals its content, making it mysterious, desired.

In 1961 the two spouses Christo and Jeanne-Claude began to denounce social and environmental problems with their works.
On June 27, 1962, despite not obtaining permission to do so, they built a wall of oil barrels, the Wall of Oil Barrels, Iron curtain, 1961-62, blocking Rue Visconti in Paris for eight hours before the intervention by the authorities.

A significant and ambivalent gesture to focus the attention of public opinion on what was happening in Germany (where the Berlin Wall was being built) and on the most precious non-renewable source in the world, which would later become the cause of numerous conflicts between Nations.

The use of barrels (left rough, with industrial colours, brands and rust), the blocking of a public road and the participation of many professional and non-professional helpers, are characteristics that have never before been considered admissible in art to create a temporary work. Some magnificent designs for the packaging of buildings are also dated back to those years.
The plot of Project for a wrapped public building, 1961 is a facade masterpiece, which it seems to have been outlined by the hands of an Archistar.

But why pack the buildings?

To obtain permission to carry out his first works, Christo attached a report to the proposals in which he expounded a practical justification to the evaluating committees: the packaging could serve as protection during maintenance work or as protective scaffolding in the case of demolitions. Christo understood that a captivating practical and temporary purpose could be exploited to create art. As if today we looked at what normally appears in the imagination of a construction site with work in progress as an opportunity.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude in numbers

Today we evaluate anything based on reviews, likes, comments, views and followers on social media, publications and other data of this type.
Numbers weigh on our lives and influence our decisions. Just as they affect a person’s work and the artistic career.

In the 60’/70′ when the great Rock concerts reached record entries and the Bands made dizzying numbers with their records sold, Christo was at the centre on the amount of material used, of people involved, of preparatory sketches, of visitors, of working hours. Numbers that altogether surpassed any imagination and that for this reason have become iconic.

The most exciting figure is precisely that of the people involved: 125 workers, climbers and students for the construction of Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Australia, 1969; 99 for Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72 and 5000 tickets sold in two weeks to enjoy the aerial view of the Surrounded Islands with a Miami tour helicopter company. They are just a few well-known examples.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Italy

In the summer of 1968, Jeanne-Claude was involved in Spoleto, Italy, with the construction of the Wrapped Medieval Tower and Wrapped Fountain. In the baroque square of the historic center. The two works were exhibited for three weeks on the occasion of a festival in which the artists had been invited. Packaging in such contexts has focused the visitor’s attention on the content.

Often we do not observe what surrounds us because it is always under our eyes. Deprivation, on the other hand, leads to a desire, a lack. In 1970 the city of Milan organized a major exhibition for the tenth anniversary of Nouveaux Realistes. For this exhibition Christo and J.C. conceived two temporary projects.

black and white photo of an overgrown wall

The Wall – Wrapped Roman Wall, Via Veneto and Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy, 1973-74

One was the packaging of the monument to Leonardo Da Vinci which remained wrapped in white fabric and red ropes for several days in Piazza della Scala; the other involved the monument to V. Emanuele, in Piazza Duomo, packed for 48 hours. Four years later, the realization in the capital: The Wall, wrapped Roman wall wrapping part of the Aurelian walls of Via Veneto, near the gardens of Villa Borghese, in 259 meters of polypropylene and rope fabric for forty days.

Three of the four packed arches continued to be used for vehicular traffic and the fourth for pedestrians. The last major work created by Christo in Italy dates back to 2016, on Lake Iseo.

Environmental impact

Not everyone knows that Christo and J.C. to carry out their great works, produced, as in the case of Running fence, Sonoma and Martin counties, California, 1972-76, many voluminous reports on the possible environmental impact.
Over the years, all the areas involved in the temporary interventions of the two artists have been restored to their original state and the materials used for the creations recycled.

Three emblematic works by Christo

It is difficult to choose among the many works created over the course of a long and spectacular career.

  • The floating piers: The aforementioned construction on the surface of Lake Iseo.
    A walkway 3 km long, 16 meters wide and 50 centimeters high, made up of 70,000 square meters of iridescent yellow fabric supported by a floating modular structure made up of 200,000 cubic meters of high-density polyethylene, to allow visitors to walk between the islands and the localities of Sulzano, Monte Isola and the Island of San Paolo.
    A perfect symbiosis therefore between landart and practicality, an underlining to the concept that Christo’s success was above all having been able to involve the public in his works.
Bridge over the water to Lake Iseo

The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-16

  • Wrapped Reichstag. The most fascinating aspect of this project is the perseverance and stubbornness with which Christo and jeanne-Claude “had fought” for 24 years to obtain permission to carry it out.
    And then the preparatory drawings, the parliamentary session of the Bundestag in Bonn in 1994, in which Christo, sitting in the stands, observed the politicians discuss the approval and the final result: a building, a symbol of power, emptied and transformed into a work floating, almost ghostly, delicate, candid, unique, something that is truly unprecedented in history. To do this, 100,000 square meters of aluminum-coated, tightly woven polypropylene fabric and 15,600 meters of blue polypropylene rope of 3.2 centimeters in diameter were used.
Reichstag in Berlin

Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95

  • Wrapped trees, foundation beyeler and berower Park. It took two years of planning to select the 178 trees they wanted to package. They created models for each of them to study the single form and the overall composition.
    On November 13, 1998, the ambitious project was carried out, using 55,000 square meters of woven polyester fabric and 23.1 kilometers of rope. The height of the trees ranged from 25 to 2 meters, while the diameter ranged from 14.5 centimeters to 1 meter.
    The translucent fabric that made up cloud-like shapes revealed tree branches like arteries of a living organism.
Overgrown trees in Switzerland

Wrapped Trees, Fondation Beyeler and Berower Park, Riehen, Switzerland, 1997-98

A project inspired by a work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Artificial Flowers

In 2014, Toto Holding and the “G.D’annunzio” University of Chieti and Pescara – Department of Architecture, launched a competition of ideas for the arrangement of the junction area between the A24 and the GRA.

Render of the Artificial Flowers project

In particular, among the objectives of the competition was that of selecting an overall idea of ​​arrangement of the areas of the junction which, starting from environmental issues, placing a lot of emphasis on the use of environmentally friendly materials and renewable energy sources, was able to give the motorway junction a characterization, even figurative, due to its importance and its strategic position.
So in collaboration with the Arch. Gianvitale Manocchio and Pasquale De Santis it has been decided to enhance this area by drawing inspiration from one of the most ambitious and expensive projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Umbrellas, Japan-Usa, 1984-1991.

A project that can be used simultaneously in two different places, giving life to a single work. In Japan there were 1340 blue umbrellas, in the United States 1760 yellow umbrellas. Each included “basic umbrella” was 6 meters high, 8,66 meters in diameter and weighed around 200 kg. A volume of 7600 liters of paint was used, 18 km of poles, 24,800 km of battens and 410,000 square meters of fabric.

Umbrellas in a park in Japan

The Umbrellas, Japan-USA, 1984-91

In the project areas we designed a main compositional element consisting of a hexagonal structure, supported by a steel stem, designed in order to create covered spaces with a personal visual impact, also recognizable by the cars passing on the highways.

Technical drawing of an "Artificial Flower"

Interposed modules between vehicular traffic and contextual buildings, which in addition to creating a meeting place in such an unusual place, re-evaluating the concept of gray infrastructure, also contribute to the reduction of noise and smog, in favour of the production of renewable energy and recycling of rainwater.

Diagram of an "Artificial Flower"

Source of the cover image: www.christojeanneclaude.net