Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in October 1958 when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of her mother, Précilda de Guillebon. Their first show, in
Cologne, 1961, showcased the three types of artworks for which they would be known: wrapped items, oil barrels, and ephemeral, large-scale works. Near Christo's first solo show in Paris, in 1962, the pair blocked an alley with 240 barrels for several hours in a piece called
Iron Curtain, a poetic reply to the
Berlin Wall. They developed consistent, longtime terms of their collaboration. They together imagined projects, for which Christo would create sketches and preparatory works that were later sold to fund the resulting installation. Christo and Jeanne-Claude hired assistants to do the work of wrapping the object at hand. They originally worked under the name "Christo" to simplify dealings and their brand, given the difficulties of establishing an artist's reputation and the prejudices against female artists, but they would later retroactively credit their large-scale outdoor works to both "Christo and Jeanne-Claude". They eventually flew in separate planes such that, in case one crashed, the other could continue their work. The couple relocated to New York City, the new
art world capital, in 1964. Christo began to make
Store Fronts, wooden facades made to resemble shop windows, which he continued for four years. His largest piece was shown in the 1968
Documenta 4. In the mid-1960s, they also created
Air Packages, inflated and wrapped research balloons. In 1969, at the invitation of the museum director
Jan van der Marck they wrapped the
Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art while it remained open. It was panned by the public and ordered to be undone by the fire department, but the order went unenforced. With the help of Australian collector
John Kaldor, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and 100 volunteers wrapped the coast of
Sydney's
Little Bay as
Wrapped Coast, the first piece for
Kaldor Public Art Projects.
1970s Within a year of
Wrapped Coast, Christo began work on
Valley Curtain: an orange curtain of fabric to be hung across the mountainous
Colorado State Highway 325. They simultaneously worked on
Wrapped Walk Ways (Tokyo and Holland) and
Wrapped Island (South Pacific), neither of which came to fruition. The artists formed a corporation to benefit from tax and other liabilities, a form they used for later projects. Following a failed attempt to mount the curtain in late 1971, a new engineer and builder-contractor raised the fabric in August 1972. The work only stood for 28 hours before the wind again destroyed the fabric. This work, their most expensive to date and first to involve construction workers, was captured in a documentary by
David and Albert Maysles. ''
Christo's Valley Curtain'' was nominated for
Best Documentary Short in the
1974 Academy Awards. The Maysles would film many of the artists' later projects. Inspired by a snow fence, in 1972, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began preparations for
Running Fence: a 24.5-mile fence of white nylon, supported by steel posts and steel cables, running through the California landscape and into the ocean. In exchange for temporary use of ranch land, the artists agreed to offer payment and use of the deconstructed building materials. Others challenged its construction in 18 public hearings and three state court sessions. The fence began construction in April 1976 and the project culminated in a two-week display in September, after which it was deconstructed. Their 1978
Wrapped Walk Ways covered paths within
Kansas City, Missouri's
Loose Park in 12,540 square meters (135,000 square feet) of saffron-colored nylon fabric covering 4.4 kilometers (2.7 miles) of the park's formal garden walkways and jogging paths.
1980s Christo and Jeanne-Claude planned a project based on Jeanne-Claude's idea to surround eleven islands in Miami's
Biscayne Bay with of pink
polypropylene floating fabric.
Surrounded Islands was completed on May 7, 1983, with the aid of 430 workers and could be admired for two weeks. The workers were outfitted with pink long sleeve shirts with pale blue text written on the back reading “Christo Surrounded Islands”, and then in acknowledging the garment's designer, "designed and produced by
Willi Smith". Jeanne-Claude became an
American citizen in March 1984. The couple received permission to wrap the
Pont Neuf, a bridge in Paris, in August 1985. The bridge stayed wrapped for two weeks (22 Sep - 5 Oct 1985).
The Pont Neuf Wrapped attracted three million visitors. Wrapping the Pont Neuf continued the tradition of transforming a sculptural dimension into a work of art. The fabric maintained the principal shapes of the
Pont Neuf but it emphasized the details and the proportions. As with
Surrounded Islands, workers who assisted with the installation and deinstallation of
Pont Neuf Wrapped wore uniforms designed by Willi Smith. Separately, a worker was killed during the deconstruction of the Japanese exhibit. Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Berlin
Reichstag building in 1995 following 24 years of governmental lobbying across six
Bundestag presidents.
Wrapped Reichstag 100,000 square meters of silver fabric draped the building, fastened with blue rope. Christo described the Reichstag wrapping as autobiographical based on his Bulgarian upbringing. The wrapping became symbolic of unified Germany and marked Berlin's return as a world city.
The Guardian posthumously described the work as their "most spectacular achievement". In 1998, the artists wrapped trees at the
Beyeler Foundation and its nearby Berower Park. Prior attempts had failed to secure government support in
St. Louis, Missouri, and Paris. The work was self-funded through sale of photographic documentation and preparatory works, as had become standard for the couple.
The Gates Work began on the installation of the couple's most protracted project,
The Gates, in
New York City's
Central Park in January 2005. Its full title,
The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979–2005, refers to the time elapsed between the year of the artists' initial proposal and the year they were allowed to proceed, having received permission from the newly elected mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg.
The Gates was open to the public from February 12–27, 2005. A total of 7,503 gates made of saffron-colored fabric were placed on paths in Central Park. They were high and had a combined length of . The mayor presented them with the
Doris C. Freedman Award for public art. The project cost an estimated US$21 million, which the artists planned to recoup by selling project documentation.
Big Air Package Christo filled the
Gasometer Oberhausen from March 16 until December 30, 2013, with the installation
Big Air Package. After
The Wall (1999) as the final installation of the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition,
Big Air Package was his second work of art in the Gasometer. The "
Big Air Package – Project for Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany" was conceived by Christo in 2010 (for the first time without his wife Jeanne-Claude). The sculpture was set up in the interior of the industrial monument and was made of of translucent fabric and of rope. In the inflated state, the envelope, with a weight of , reached a height of more than , a diameter of and a volume of . The monumental work of art was, temporarily, the largest self-supporting sculpture in the world. In the accessible interior of
Big Air Package, the artist generated a unique experience of space, proportions, and light.
X-TO+J-C: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Featuring Works from the Bequest of David C. Copley In 2014, the
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presented the exhibit
X-TO + J-C: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Featuring Works from the Bequest of David C. Copley, one of the museum's patrons and trustees who also had the largest collection of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work in the United States.
X-TO + J-C featured more than fifty works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, including pieces such as Christo's evocative Package (1960), alongside drawings related to his early concealed objects: chairs, road signs, and other commonplace items. Christo himself gave a lecture in which he discussed two works that were in progress:
Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado, and
The Mastaba, Project for the United Arab Emirates.
The Floating Piers The Floating Piers were a series of walkways installed at
Lake Iseo near
Brescia, Italy. From June 18 to July 3, 2016, visitors were able to walk just above the surface of the water from the village of
Sulzano on the mainland to the islands of
Monte Isola and San Paolo. The floating walkways were made of around 200,000 polyethene cubes covered with of bright yellow fabric: of piers moved on the water; another of golden fabric continued along the pedestrian streets in Sulzano and
Peschiera Maraglio. After the exhibition, all components were to be removed and recycled. The installation was facilitated by the
Beretta family, owners of the oldest active manufacturer of firearm components in the world and the primary
sidearm supplier of the
U.S. Army. The Beretta family owns the island of San Paolo, which was surrounded by
Floating Piers walkways. The work was a success with the Italian public and critics as well.
The London Mastaba The London Mastaba was a temporary floating installation exhibited from June to September 2018 on
The Serpentine in
London. The installation consisted of 7,506 oil barrels, in the shape of a
mastaba, a form of an early bench, as well as a style of tomb, in use in ancient Mesopotamia, with a flat roof and inward sloping sides. It sat on a floating platform of
high-density polyethene, held in place by 32 anchors. It was in height and weighed . The vertical ends were painted in a mosaic of red, blue and mauve, whilst the sloping sides were in red with bands of white. Simultaneously with the display of
The London Mastaba, the nearby
Serpentine Gallery presented an exhibition of the artists' work, entitled
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Barrels and The Mastaba 1958–2018. The exhibition comprised sculptures, drawings, collages, scale-models and photographs from the last 60 years of the artists' work. Another
Mastaba of over 400,000
oil barrels is intended to be built at
Al Gharbia, from the city
Abu Dhabi.
Over the River Christo and Jeanne-Claude announced plans for a future project, titled
Over The River, to be constructed on the
Arkansas River between
Salida, Colorado, and
Cañon City, Colorado, on the eastern slope of the Rocky mountains. Plans for the project call for horizontally suspending of reflective, translucent fabric panels high above the water, on steel cables anchored into the river's banks. Project plans called for its installation for two weeks during the summer of 2015, at the earliest, and for the river to remain open to recreation during the installation. Reaction among area residents was intense, with supporters hoping for a tourist boom and opponents fearing that the project would ruin the visual appeal of the landscape and inflict damage on the river
ecosystem. One local rafting guide compared the project to "hanging pornography in a church." The
U.S. Bureau of Land Management released a Record of Decision approving the project on November 7, 2011. Work on the project cannot begin, however, until the Bureau of Land Management issues a Notice to Proceed. A lawsuit against
Colorado Parks and Wildlife was filed on July 22, 2011, by Rags Over the Arkansas River (ROAR), a local group opposed to the project. The lawsuit is still awaiting a court date. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's inspiration for
Over the River came in 1985 as they were wrapping the Pont-Neuf and a fabric panel was being elevated over the
Seine. The artists began a three-year search for appropriate locations in 1992, considering some eighty-nine river locations. They chose the Arkansas River because its banks were high enough that recreational rafters could enjoy the river at the same time. Christo and Jeanne-Claude spent more than $6 million on environmental studies, design engineering, and
wind tunnel testing of fabrics. As with past projects,
Over The River would be financed entirely by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, through the sale of Christo's preparatory drawings, collages, scale models, and early works of the 1950s/1960s. On July 16, 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management released its four-volume Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which reported many potentially serious types of adverse impact but also many proposed "mitigation" options. In January 2017, after the
election of President Trump, Christo canceled the controversial project citing protest of the new administration as well as tiring from the hard-fought legal battle waged by local residents.
''L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped'' Continuing their series of monumental "wrapping" projects, the
Arc de Triomphe in Paris was wrapped in 30,000 square meters of recyclable
polypropylene fabric in silvery blue, and 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) of red rope. Originally scheduled for autumn of 2020, it was postponed a year to Saturday, September 18 to Sunday, October 3, 2021, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in France and
its impact on the arts and cultural sector worldwide. Following Christo's death, his office stated that the project would nevertheless be completed. Several articles in the press cut the name of Jeanne-Claude on their coverage of the event leading to a debate about the suppression of the place of women in art history. == Reception ==