Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, who was known for his monumental works on the environment with his late wife, Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, died. He was 84 years old.
Together, known simply as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, they have wrapped emblematic monuments in fabric, such as the Pont Neuf in Paris in 1985 and the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995; and mounted thousands of orange doors in Central Park, evoking the sacred torii gates of Japan, in 2005.
Christo died on Sunday May 31 at his New York home, according to a statement made on the artist's official Twitter account.
He is survived by his son, Cyril Christo, photographer, filmmaker and animal rights activist. Jeanne-Claude died from a cerebral aneurysm in 2009.
Christo: "I am a totally irrational artist"
After his death, Christo devoted himself to completing their concepts. In 2016, he carried out their work "The Floating Piers" on Lake Iseo in Italy, a project they imagined in 1970. For 16 days, golden tracks appeared on the lake, supported by 220,000 cubes made of polyethylene. Like many of their works, it was a popular success. Some 270,000 people walked on the water in the first five days.
In 2018, Christo unveiled "The London Mastaba", a floating installation on the Serpentine Lake in London composed of more than 7,000 barrels of oil. It is the artist's first general public work in the UK. His next work was to appear in Paris in September 2021 - the long-awaited packaging of one of the most famous monuments in the world, the Arc de Triomphe. In May 2020, Christo told CNN that he couldn't believe this was actually happening. "I never thought we would get permission -" I was flabbergasted. "
The press release announcing his death also indicated that the Paris project would go ahead: "Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always specified that their works in progress will continue after their death. L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris) is still running "track from September 18 to October 3, 2021."
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born the same day on June 13, 1935 - Christo in Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude in Morocco. In 1957, Christo attended a semester at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna before landing in Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude in 1958. He had already started to pack objects, such as furniture and oil cans, and they started working together in 1961 For decades, the couple only used the name Christo, until 1994 when Jeanne-Claude was added retroactively to many works as a collaborator .
The artists insisted that their ambitious projects focused on "joy and beauty", as Jeanne-Claude said in 2002. However, they did not create their works in a political vacuum, and for the s 'One of their first collaborations, they stacked barrels of oil to barricade a street in Paris to protest against the Berlin Wall.
Meeting Christo and Jeanne-Claude's landscapes and temporarily modified urban landscapes could be a bubbling experience that alters perception, and it took them years - and sometimes decades - to succeed. The Reichstag equipment lasted 24 years, from concept to completion; artists also viewed preliminary work as part of their art, calling it a "software" period while the "material" period encompassed when physical work materialized.
In 1980, the couple began planning "surrounded islands", renting 11 islands in Biscayne Bay in Miami for nearly $ 13,000 to wrap their perimeters in bright pink polypropylene fabric.
Christo unveils new work at Hyde Park in London
For three years, they worked tirelessly with their staff - which included lawyers, civil engineers and a marine engineer, a marine biologist and a manatee specialist - to bring their vision to life, faced with a number of barriers to obtaining permits and a federal. prosecution by a paramedic. "The Surrounded Islands" was finally unveiled in 1983 and was considered crucial to the rejuvenation of Miami in the 1980s as a cultural destination. The couple responded to any criticism of environmental concerns for their work, insisting that they restored each site to their original state - and in the case of the "surrounding islands", cleaning up the land by nearly 40 tonnes of waste.
Christo once described himself as "an educated Bulgarian Marxist who learned to use capitalism for his art". They were firmly independent, avoiding dependence on the art world to financially support their work. They financed it themselves, often selling preparatory drawings to be made.
"We pay with our money! No subsidies, no industry money," he said when opening "The London Mastaba" in 2018. "All of these projects are started by us. Nobody asked us to do it. Nobody asked us to wrap the Reichstag. Nobody asked us to install floating batteries. We decided to do exactly what we love to do. "
