Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Couturiers of and for the City
Illustration by Mike Thompson
On May 31, 2020 the artist Christo passed away at the age of 84. [1] He had, along with his wife Jeanne-Claude, worked on a number of installation pieces in major cities around the world. [2] The works had the following characteristics: they were (1) large in size, (2) site-specific, (3) dependent upon audience participation or engagement, and (4) ephemeral in their creation and placement. The first characteristic emphasizes their expansive size, measuring beyond the scope of an individual’s stationary and stable reception. The viewer’s all-seeing eye, in this case, was not all-seeing; or rather, the totality of the work exceeded the scope of one’s gaze. No longer reduced to the ocular gaze, perception was, is, and would be embodied, a tactile response to, and engaged interaction with, the surrounding work. The passing of this artist, whom I’m calling along with his wife “couturiers of the city,” provides an opportunity for reflection. The questions I ask here are the following: what do I mean by “Couturiers of the City,” what is the political import of their works, and what are implications of their work for fashioning a future?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works were specifically tailored for the sites they were placed in. These works were, in that sense, responsive to and engaging with the structures they surrounded, were entangled in, and decorated. That is a precise way to think of them: surrounding, entangling, decorating. Wrappings and trappings, fabric coiled around buildings and landmarks as snakes that, like the Laocoön, become as much a part of the work as well as undermining the centrality of the figures they entangle. [3] They change the meaning of that which they bind and bind themselves to.
Think of the following works: the Reichstag wrapped, [4] as gift to be opened during a public holiday; the curtain stretched across the valley in Colorado, [5] inviting viewers as much as welcoming seductive and salacious thought (“how green is that valley?!”); the floating piers of lake Iseo in Italy, [6] allowing everyone to walk on water and experience both the lake and the surrounding landscape differently; the 7,503 orange gates in Central Park NYC, [7] where New Yorkers and tourists alike felt like skiers on grass, whether or not they were actually high. To me, they are not just artists but fashion directors on a mammoth scale, couturiers of the city, whose model is precisely no longer a human body, but a historic one and a post-human one.
“By operating as tailors of buildings, Christo and Jeanne-Claude changed the very fabric of how cities are to be engaged with, encountered, and imagined. Their work has far-reaching implications within how we imagine buildings, and also what seeing buildings clothed does for our understanding of clothing and cities. ”
How should one understand the phrase “Couturiers of and for the City,” especially given that some of their works were not even in cities, but on water or geographic structures? The palette of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whether or not they were in cities, was of imagining the place of their work as a gathering of people; in that regard their structures constituted cities, even when outside of them, and they fashioned a different interactions with buildings and within cities for everyone around. By operating as tailors of buildings, Christo and Jeanne-Claude changed the very fabric of how cities are to be engaged with, encountered, and imagined. Their work has far-reaching implications within how we imagine buildings, and also what seeing buildings clothed does for our understanding of clothing and cities. Take the following question: what does it mean to dress a city, or consider a city in different garb? One way of interpreting it is to imagine the city as transparent, nude and exposed prior to being dressed up. Another way to interpret it is to suggest the malleability and change to the already existing dress and look of a city. The city is not naked, if it ever was, to begin with. It has always been clothed — dressed all the way down — and this metaphor is simply to highlight the necessary ephemerality and contingency of such dress. Buildings and cities can always change — for better and for worse — and it is about locating the ways in which such changes occur, and what affects those changes have by and upon the inhabitants.
We should take the lessons of Christo and Jeanne-Claude as inspiration for further clothing exercises. As a thought experiment, we ought to consider what buildings in our cities we would clothe, in what materials, and how. The U.S. Capital covered in chiffon? Any of John Portman’s buildings, [8] to go to Seinfeld, ensconced in velvet? [9] Taking the thought experiment further, what if we imagined not just specific sites or buildings, but entire neighborhoods, sections of cities, an entire city wrapped in some sort of fabric. What materials would we choose and why? How about mourning and funeral attire for sections dealing with traumatic moments? How about festive garb for commemorative events? Would we wish our thought experiment to have a political flavor, and cover Washington D.C. in literal red tape, like Blondie in her red-tape dress? [10]
“Every interpretation is legitimate,” Christo once said. [11] Let’s let that sink in for a moment. It is a political idea expressed as simply as possible and inviting everyone to the party. Again, let us let this sink in, as if we are the plush couch and the idea that quote expresses no longer an ephemeral thing in the cloud but a material that pushes down on our plush surface. Extending legitimacy to all opinions regarding the work extends legitimacy to everyone regardless of who they are, what they say, or think about the work. All are invited, and their participation can be from a distance in time and space (a virtual encounter), or an active in-person reaction (an actual one at a certain time and date). Moreover, this interpretation can take any form, spoken or not. Everyone’s interpretation of the work, and everyone’s changing interpretations of the work, are legitimate. This right is not insignificant; it is the very condition for the constitution of a public sphere. Such a public sphere is the condition for any democratic politics. We should perhaps, then, amend Christo’s thought. Every interpretation is not just legitimate; every interpretation is also creative.
“Their wrappings were cocoons inviting individuals to construct their own personal narratives, oral histories, and socio-economic stories in order to imagine not simply what was being covered over, but what possibilities could be unwrapped and problems unraveled. ”
Their works altered not just the landscape and people’s experiences with the space. They also transformed how those individuals encountered that space after the installation pieces, works, and wrappings were removed. For a period of time people were allowed to stew in their imaginary, whether that imaginary was one of amazement at how special a place became, zany its allure was, offense at the structures, or anger at annoying tourists that arrived to be amazed at the work. Such a moment of imaginary lasts more than a day. It travels with one, takes up residence in their thoughts, stays with them, and is a trace in their interactions with others.
At the end, after all the wrappings have been removed and scaffolding dis-assembled, what remains with one is what I’ll call the metaphysics of malleability. We get an idea of the “metaphysics of malleability” by answering the following question: How do the wrappings work? I think their power lies in their mediating capacity. They mediate citizens and non-citizens alike to the (mostly symbolic) buildings and spaces in the city they are situated in. People project their imaginations upon these buildings and spaces, wrapped as if for a commemorative occasion and deposited as a gift, while opening the wrappings facilitate interpreting the purpose and function of those buildings in a different way. The meaning of these buildings, and thus the city itself, becomes malleable. In other words, their work opens up new horizons of the imaginary. In virtue of placing their works in public sites and on public works, the works and buildings where the nature of the public and its problems are articulated, Christo and Jeanne-Claude fashioned a different imaginary for politics. Their wrappings were cocoons inviting individuals to construct their own personal narratives, oral histories, and socio-economic stories in order to imagine not simply what was being covered over, but what possibilities could be unwrapped and problems unraveled.
They were, and are, couturiers of the city, tailors of buildings, and architects whose material was the most inimical to architecture’s steel, marble, and concrete. Their fabrics and fabrications embellished as much as they critiqued, inviting disparate and completely contrary interpretations, thereby allowing the work to become the very public sphere that has been rendered invisible. For me, the greatest implication of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work has been their use of the most ephemeral materials to change the meaning and makeup of the most stable and long-lasting form of art, architecture. By targeting those symbolic points of cities, they effectively reinterpreted the city, and showed others how it could be done. The rest is up to the people that make up the cities.
Notes
[1] William Grimes, “Christo, Artist Who Wrapped and Festooned on an Epic Scale, Dies at 84,” New York Times, May 31, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/arts/christo-dead.html.
[2] Christo and Jeanne-Claude. n.d. “Realized Projects.” Accessed August 11, 2020. https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/realized-projects.
[3] Musei Vaticani. n.d. “Laocoön.” Museum collection. Accessed August 11, 2020. http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/museo-pio-clementino/Cortile-Ottagono/laocoonte.html#&gid=1&pid=1.
[4] Christo and Jeanne-Claude. n.d. “Wrapped Reichstag.” Accessed August 11, 2020. https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wrapped-reichstag.
[5] Christo and Jeanne-Claude. n.d. “Valley Curtain.” Accessed August 11, 2020. https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/valley-curtain.
[6] Christo and Jeanne-Claude. n.d. “The Floating Piers.” Accessed August 11, 2020. https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-floating-piers.
[7] Christo and Jeanne-Claude. n.d. “The Gates. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-gates.
[8] Portman Architects. “Projects.” Portfolio. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://portmanarchitects.com/projects/.
[9] Seinfeld, season 6, episode 11, “The Label Maker,” aired January 19, 1995, on NBC. Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgmiGN2mi2M.
[10] Blondie, Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision, 2007. CD. https://www.discogs.com/Blondie-Greatest-Hits-Sound-Vision-CD-DVD-And-Parallel-Lines-CD/release/6974868.
[11] Calum Lindsay, “‘Every interpretation is legitimate, even the most critical’ says Christo of his artworks,” Dezeen, August 16, 2018. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://www.dezeen.com/2018/08/16/video-christo-jeanne-claude-interview-installation-art-movie/.
