Drawing (two parts) 1992
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Private collection, Berlin
Yanagi:
What is your purpose in having an exhibition
of a project in progress?
Christo:
There are many reasons. You should understand that when I do an
exhibition there are partly financial reasons, but more importantly it
is a means of applying pressure on the German people about the
significance of the project. For example, recently the minister of
culture of Cologne came to see some of my drawings, and I told him
that there will be an exhibition of the Reichstag project in
Japan. And he said, "What's this? In Japan? Who is interested in the
Reichstag in Japan?" And I was happy to tell him, "I made the
Japanese people interested in the Reichstag. No Germans ever did that, but I,
Christo, did that." That pressures the Germans vis-a-vis the
international image that the project has, which is beyond the boundary
of German politics, and culture. This is why I am very eager to have
the catalogue and broad public attention for this exhibition just a
few months before the final decision is taken in Bonn. There will be
elections in Germany in January '87, and the decision about the
Reichstag project will probably be made just after that. I hope that
having the Wrapped Reichstag exhibition in October 1986 at Satani
Gallery in Tokyo will be very instrumental in generating support. The
last time my work was shown at Satani Gallery, it was about the Pont
Neuf project, just a few months before getting the permit for
Paris. It could well be that the good omen will repeat itself for
Berlin.
http://www.kulturbox.de/christo/intview/iview12e.htm (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
