© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag

Interview with Christo

Interviewer: Masahiko Yanagi

Page 9 of 12

With friendly permission by Prestel Verlag

Collage 1992
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Private collection, Berlin

Yanagi:

What kind of material are you going to use, and what color will it be?

Different from the rather light woven nylon used for The Pont Neuf Wrapped, the fabric for the Wrapped Reichstag will be a much thicker fabric, coated with P.V.C., a heavy material. By coating the fabric it will be very much like the material I used for the project in Kassel the 5600 Cubic Meter Package, making the folds much stiffer and angular, very much like a Gothic sculpture - with more broken shapes, not rounded. The fabric will be extremely structural and less refined than in The Pont Neuf Wrapped. It will be in a silver metallic color, like the frosted metal of automobiles, but not like aluminum. The fabric I used for the latest scale model is not exact, but already gives some idea of the material, because it is not white. For the early collages and the first scale model I simply used white cloth. The metallic colored material will magnify the contrasts between the highlights and the shadows. In that way it will be very strong visually because the sky of Berlin is always cold blue or gray. I think it will be very beautifuul with Berlin's metallic sky.

Collage 1992
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Private collection, Berlin

Yanagi:

Listening to your detailed explanation about the actual wrapping and having looked at beautiful photographs of your previous projects, it is evident that you pay a lot of attention to how the actual wrapped object will look. How important is the visual or aesthetic aspect of your project?

Very important. It is everything, that's how important it is. After the Pont Neuf project many people were surprised to see how the work was different from what they had envisioned, because they had assumed I would wrap the Pont Neuf in the ugliest way. We were curious to see that many people were not aware that the fabric would be visually gratifying, very beautifiul and intensely strong. I am conscious of how much excess fabric is required for the folds to be distributed harmoniously, of how the energy of the folds and the gravity of the fabric will be translated. All those details are a very important part of the way I plan my project. Often people are astonished when they finally see my realized work of art because they haven't taken a careful look at the drawings or may have never looked at the drawings at all. They've only heard that Christo is going to wrap a bridge, or make a fence. Certainly with the Reichstag project, I want very much to go beyond the early scale model proposition and drawings by using a much richer and fuller material. But I am not yet sure how I want the sections of fabric to be sewn (there will be special sections for the facade and for the towers), or how the fabric will be distributed around the sculptures and walls. It is not yet clear, this is why we need one-and-a-half years of lead time to go into production with the real materials. A lot of details have to be taken care of so that the completed project can be visually rewarding.

Since you did The Pont Neuf Wrapped last fall [1985], the Reichstag project is the only wrapping proposal in progress [1986]. Does this mean that you are losing interest in wrapping?

Formally the Reichstag project is related to my ideas of the late '60s. I cannot say whether I will or will not wrap anything else in the future. Probably the wrappings represent a most significant period of my work. The wrapping project which was broadest in scope, scale and the elements was the Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, One Million Square feet, Australia, 1969. An additional aspect of the Reichstag project is in its being a public building, a part of architecture not civil engineering as in the case of The Pont Neuf Wrapped. Therefore, the Reichstag project has an enormous significance for me, with the scope of what we discussed before, my early '60s propositions for Wrapped Public Buildings. Certainly the Reichstag project is the culmination of that idea. I cannot say that I will never again cover something with fabric, but for the last 15 years, the projects which we realized from the Valley Curtain, to the Running Fence and the Surrounded Islands and hopefully now The Umbrellas, project for Japan and Western U.S.A. are formally very different and go beyond wrapping or covering.

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© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag