The fabric of art

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are best known for their grandiose drapings of public spaces, but there's more to this artistic couple

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, November 19, 2009

Originally published on February 21, 2006

Whatever you do, don't call Christo and Jeanne-Claude the wrapping artists.

"Simply because we are not," says Jeanne-Claude emphatically. "We have created so many works that have nothing to do with wrapping."

True: the husband and wife creators who eschew last names and share a birthday — June 13, 1935; he was born in Bulgaria, she in Morocco to a French family — have gained worldwide fame during the past four decades by wrapping, among other things, the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf, Paris' oldest bridge. But they've also installed hundreds of umbrellas in California and Japan simultaneously, temporarily divided Colorado's Rifle Gap valley with an enormous orange curtain and just last year plunked 7,500 saffron-colored gates along the pathways of New York's Central Park.

"What is really the common denominator is the use of fabric," Jeanne-Claude explains by phone from New York.

And another thing: Don't compliment the fundraising abilities of the artists, subjects of a current Austin Museum of Art exhibition and speakers at the Paramount Theatre in March.

"We never raise money," she says in an arch Parisian accent. "When General Motors sells a truck, they're not raising money, they are selling a commodity. And we do the same. We sell everything we have."

That's true, too. In order to earn the millions — $21 million for "The Gates," in fact — to pay for their massive artworks, the artists sell preparatory drawings, collages and scale models. The couple serve as their own dealers, avoiding the usual 50 percent commission due a gallery owner. They sell everything directly from their Soho loft — the same one they've occupied since arriving from Paris in 1963. Shortly before the Gates opened last year, small drawings were going for a reported $30,000; larger wall-sized ones for between $600,000 to $1 million.

More than 70 of those preliminary works are on now on view in "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Würth Museum Collection." Culled from the private museum established by German industrialist Reinhold Würth, the exhibit is on its fourth stop of a five-museum United States tour.

So why the scrutiny into how the artists fund their projects?

Because unlike most art, the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude starts in the public spotlight years — sometimes decades — before it's ever realized. A painting, sculpture or even a complicated video installation is typically created — and paid for — in the privacy of an artist's studio and then brokered discreetly by a private gallery owner. Even the majority of public art is created within the confines of a government or corporate program that sets the parameters and provides the funding.

That route isn't an option when your aim is to bundle more than 119,000 square yards of silver polypropylene fabric and 17,000 yards of blue rope around the historic German parliament building or if you want to string 24 miles of white nylon through the hills of Northern California. To accomplish that, you need to involve a lot of people and government agencies.

"Nobody discusses a new painting before it is painted," Christo says, getting in on the interview after Jeanne-Claude has vetted a reporter's questions. "Nobody argues about it, criticizes it. But everybody discusses a new bridge or skyscraper before it physically exists. And everybody discusses our projects before they exist. That's because we borrow regulated, designed space and create gentle disturbances for a few days."

But unlike a bridge or a skyscraper, the disturbances Christo and Jeanne-Claude make don't come with predetermined permits. Hence, the pair engages in years of politicking before getting a green light. In the case of "Wrapped Reichstag" it took 24 years of negotiations including a vigorous debate in the German parliament.

Perhaps occupying center stage in the public eye accounts for the couple's own scrutiny over their image. Their Web site — www.christojeanneclaude

.net — includes a lengthy, detailed "Common Errors" section that addresses misconceptions (" ?Mr. Christo.' NO. Christo is his first name and the only one he uses"). And because the artists receive no royalties from the sale of books, posters or postcards about their work, they go so far as to insist that a sign declaring so be posted wherever items are sold. "By accepting commercial money, we would lose our freedom," Jeanne-Claude explains. "If you start with small commercial things, like postcards, then one day you'd find that you have given in to every commercial opportunity."

Of course, the artists do receive handsome payment for public lectures, such as the one they'll be giving in Austin next month. The museum, which has already sold 800 tickets, set the $48 admission price and declined to make public the artists' fee.

Without a doubt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude take an unabashedly entrepreneurial approach. Indeed, it's an unabashedly American approach for two foreign-born artists.

Born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria to an industrialist family that operated fabric and dye mills, Christo showed an early talent for drawings, studying at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia before emigrating to Western Europe in 1956. Settling in Paris, Christo eked out a living painting portraits by commission. He met the carefree socialite Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon when her mother hired the penniless artist to do several portraits. After they married, the couple for a time earned the scorn of the wealthy and influential de Guillebon family, though by the 1980s Jeanne-Claude's father would use his connections to then-Paris mayor, and later French Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac to advocate in favor of wrapping the Pont Neuf. The couple has one son, Cyril, a poet, who uses Christo as his last name.

In 1994, after three decades of attributing all their projects to Christo, the couple began sharing credit, though it's widely understood that Christo is the artistic generator while Jeanne-Claude rides herd over the more earthbound affairs.

Yet while Christo speaks astutely about how their very public creative process "creates a dynamic about the work before it physically exists that is absolutely part of the final object," it's Jeanne-Claude who insists on a poetic last word. "We create works of art of joy and beauty," she says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699