© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag

Interview with Christo

Interviewer: Masahiko Yanagi

Page 4 of 12

With friendly permission by Prestel Verlag

Collage 1987
Foto: Michael Cullen
Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo, New York

Yanagi:

I would like to ask you about the Wrapped Reichstag project for Berlin. The suggestion to wrap this historic building came from Mr. Michael Cullen in 1971. What was your first reaction toward that proposal?

First, I had a special interest in Germany because I had my first personal exhibition in Cologne in 1961, and since 1958, I have had a great number of collectors, museum people, critics and friends in Germany who are interested in my work. So there was a natural relationship with the German art scene and German culture in general. Also, in 1968 I did a large project in Germany, the 5,600 Cubic Meter Package, Documenta IV, Kassel, West Germany, 1968, which was the first technically complicated work, and one of my first large, structural projects, involving a great number of permits and, of course, the fabulous help of German factory engineers. The first inspiration about Berlin was actually related to something I did in Paris. In June 1961 I had an exhibition in Cologne. During that same summer of 1961 the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, was installed. I was still a stateless refugee, without a passport or nationality, and I was dead scared. When I came back to Paris I did my poetical interpretation of the Berlin Wall: the Iron Curtain - Wall of Oil Barrels, 1961-62, a temporary wall of 240 oil barrels closing the rue Visconti in Paris. In a way, I had a lot of links with Berlin, even though I didn't go to Berlin until 1976. In 1971 I was in Colorado working on the Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72, and Michael Cullen sent me several postcards proposing an exhibition in Hannover, and then to do the project in Berlin. I remember that I was very interested right away. We met Michael for the first time in Zurich, Switzerland, in the fall of 1971. Being out in nature working in the mountains of Colorado, I had a very great urgency to do an urban project.

In 1970 I did two projects in Milan: the Vittorio Emanuele and Leonardo da Vinci wrapped monuments. It is a constant interest of mine to use a focal point in a city and temporarily transform it in my way. The idea to go to Berlin and to work on the Reichstag project was so much more inspirational because of my links with Eastern Europe, and I was in some way expecting that finally I would do a project that could be visible from both East and West Berlin. This is why we were so keen right away on the Wrapped Reichstag because that building is the only structure which is under the jurisdiction of the four Allied forces: the British, Soviet, American, and French military forces, plus the two Germanys, East and West.

The building is of paramount importance to the German nation and to European history, and it is dramatically related to what Germany is today. The building is physically on the edge of Tiergarten park, and by being remote from the center of West Berlin, it projects itself on the two Berlins: on one side you have East Berlin, completely restored with Communist, Stalinin architecture with its faceless facades and empty avenues, and in West Berlin you have the very flamboyant, Western architecture, skyscrapers of steel, glass, neon lights, and so much life. The Reichstag is a significant building, and visually the wrapping can be rewarding. Another aspect of the project is all the interrelations I would trigger. I would provoke direct discussions through getting the permits from both sides: from East Germany and the Soviets, and from West Germany and the three Allied forces. I don't know if you remember what was happening in the early '70s. It was the time of detente, the end of the Brandt administration (Willy Brandt was very much the starting force of East/West relations), West Germany's involvement with East Germany was getting better, and that was a good indication that we could succeed in getting the permits. But, we really didn't begin to work seriously on the Reichstag project until 1975.

Drawing (two parts) 1991
Foto: Wolfgang Volz
Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo, New York

Yanagi:

You have just mentioned that you were interested in the city of Berlin because of its political implications. Before the Reichstag project, had you thought of any other project for Berlin?

Yes! You will be very surprised that one of the first Running Fence ideas was to have a Running Fence just along the Wall and there are some drawings from between 1970 and 1972 of a fabric fence in West Berlin, running for 40 kilometers, hiding the Wall... that was my first project for Berlin. I abandoned it because it wasn't really doing anything to engage the East Germans on the other side of the Wall because basically it was almost the same as building a fence which was a repeat of the Wall, but entirely in West Berlin.

Much before you started the Reichstag project, in as early as 1961 when you created the manifesto Packaged Public Buildings, you proposed wrapping parliament buildings along with museums and concert halls. Were you interested in parliament buildings as symbols of politics and political systems?

I mentioned a parliament building basically because it is the most public building. A concert hall can belong to the concert society, and a museum to the museum society, but a parliament building belongs to the nation. It is the optimum because it represents the truly public structure.

---

© 1995 Christo & Prestel Verlag