The quintessential artist of his time

Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-1976
Nylon fabric, poles and steel cables
5.5 m x 39.5 km
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

Arguably the loveliest and most spectacular of the Christos' epic projects was the Running Fence (1972-1976), 39.5 kilometers long, in Sonoma and Marin Counties north of San Francisco. Against considerable opposition, the Christos won through and put up their long white fence stretching in from the Pacific Ocean, across farms, past villages. To reach that point, they had gone through 18 public hearings and three sessions at the superior courts of California, and had drawn up an environmental impact report the size of a telephone directory.

Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California
In order to obtain the necessary permits from the governmental
agencies in California, the artists had to prepare a 355-page environmental impact report
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

It was the first E.I.R. ever done on a work of art. But the reward was visible to all. The beauty of the snaking fence was enhanced by its oblique similarity to the Great Wall of China; and that similarity was eerily underpinned by the coincidental fact that Chairman Mao Tse-Tung died on the day before the Running Fence was completed. Coincidences are not germane to a work of art, but they can unwittingly heighten its impact.

Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-1976
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

The Running Fence, 5.5 meters high and 39.5 kilometers long, extending across the properties of fifty-nine ranchers near Freeway 101 north of San Francisco, following the rolling hills and dropping down to the Pacific at Bodega Bay, was completed on September 10, 1976. All the white nylon fabric (160,000 square meters), the steel cables (145 kilometers) and poles (2,060), and the earth anchors (14,000), were designed for complete removal: no visible evidence remained on the hills of Sonoma and Marin Counties to indicate that the Running Fence had ever been there. The removal began (as agreed with the ranchers and the authorities) fourteen days after completion.

Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-1976
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

He borrows land, public structures and spaces, Albert Elsen wrote. Unlike a warrior-ruler such as Napoleon, who is forever associated with sites by force of arms, Christo's permanent identification with places and historic structures is by the force of art. On the matter of permanence, opinion is naturally still divided not least because it is obviously too early to say; in any case, the Christos themselves would be the first to object to the introduction of the idea of permanence into art projects defined by their temporary nature. But the artists' identification with their sites can be confirmed by anyone who drove the 65 kilometers of public roads in Sonoma and Marin Counties from which the Running Fence was meant to be viewed. The excited international response to the work reflected a simple truth: that the Christos, in impressing their own intuition of beauty upon the landscape, were expressing intuitions shared by many.

Wrapped Walk Ways, Jacob L. Loose Park, Kansas City, Missouri,
1977-1978
Fabric covering 4.5 km of walkways
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

The Wrapped Walk Ways (1978) that followed (in Kansas City's Jacob L. Loose Park) were like chamber music after a grand symphony in the Romantic tradition, but they possessed their own intimate beauty. To prepare the 12,540 square meters of saffron nylon fabric, an army of seamstresses at a West Virginia factory and on site in the park were employed, and a task force of 84 people was needed to install the material. Over four kilometers of walkways in formal gardens and jogging paths, remained covered from October 4 to 16, 1978, after which the material was removed and given to the Kansas City Parks Department for recycling, and the park itself restored to its original condition.

Wrapped Walk Ways, Jacob L. Loose Park, Kansas City, Missouri
1977-1978
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

The project was popular with the public: as so often, part of the Christos' charismatic success derived from their ability to mobilize large numbers of people, inculcating a team spirit and a joint sense of achievement. In this respect, their orchestrated projects were compared by some critics with therical or musical enterprises. Marina Vaizey reminds us that the co-operative approach has time-honoured roots in artistic tradition: We are used to the notion of collaborative projects in art and technology in two different ways. In both art and design there is the notion of the studio, of apprentices, students, assistants, and specialists working under artistic direction. This is a practice well-established in the early Renaissance, and which evolved from the ways in which craftsmen and artists were once indistinguishable philosophically, although each individual might have a speciality. For example, in northern Italy in the fourteenth century, the creation of devotional works of art required several skills, not necessarily all practised by the same person. Some prepared the panels, some were specialist gilders, some painters, and the person to whom the panel was ascribed was in charge of the overall design and composition, although he would not have made it entirely on his own.

He has harnessed the methods of democratic capitalism to the making of art, Marina Vaizey has observed. His method is inseparable from his art [...] He and his work are at home in the centre of cities, and in remote countryside. He has made huge projects that have existed for only days or weeks, then to vanish forever, memorialized only by the media, and in the memories of those hundreds of people involved in the process of their making. The immortality of artworks, inscribed over the centuries into our consciousness of sculpted stone or printed page or long-surviving melody, has never been more radically defied than by the Christos' works often involving elaborate technical operations, months or years of planning, and the labor of many, only to disappear, leaving no trace at the site where they were created.