Revelation through concealment

Wrapped Cans and Bottles (1958-1959) included several wrapped bottles and cans alongside a few unwrapped painted cans, and bottles containing red pigment.

The wrapping of small objects that could be transformed into limited editions for a collectors' market was to be of considerable importance in Christo's future career, since it became an important source of income and thus of the funding needed for projects that became ever larger and costlier. Thus in the 1960s there were editions of wrapped magazines; of a Wrapped Flower (this was not in fact published by George Maciunas at the time and was found in his archives after his death in 1978); of Wrapped Roses (in 1968, on the occasion of Christo's exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, to help cover expenses incurred by his mastaba there and, in the same year, an edition from Richard Feigen Graphics in New York); a Wrapped Painting in 1969; a wrapped model of Cologne cathedral, done together with German artist Klaus Staeck in 1969; prints of wrapped trees in 1970 (the first life-size Wrapped Tree dating from 1966 in Holland); and so forth. Occasionally these small-scale objects have been given away for purposes of good relations, but more usually they have attracted collectors who want lasting mementoes, and have played a part, however indirect, in making Christo's larger-scale projects possible.

The principle of wrapping, covering, and concealing (yet not entirely disguising) allowed for surprising versatility. Works such as the Package on Table (1961), Wrapped Chair (1961) or Wrapped Motorcycle (1962) might be clad in semi-transparent materials instead of (or in addition to) opaque fabric.

Package on Table, 1961
Wood, fabric and ropes
124 x 61.5 x 30cm
New York, Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

Objects might be only partially masked; or, of course, they might be entirely enveloped so that the content was neither visible nor recognizable (Package, 1961). For the principle at stake in this process, witless to hostile critics and enchanting in the eyes of Christo's supporters, David Bourdon found the perfect formula, in a biography published in 1970: revelation through concealment.

That is indeed the key. Christo touches the world with wonder. From those modest beginnings in Paris he has gone on, over a career of thirty-five years, to wrap everything from tin cans to a stretch of Australian coastline and has created a body of work that, as we shall see, has gone far beyond wrapping, retaining only the use of fabric as a common denominator. His work has afforded one of the eeriest visual spectacles of our time (Bourdon), and has made the Christos celebrities on the international stage. Not that fame in itself is of interest: but theirs is the reward for an unusual steadiness of vision.

"Der Spiegel" Magazine Wrapped, 1963
Magazine, polyethylene and rope
30 x 13 x 2.5cm
New York, Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo
Foto: Eeva-Inkeri

During Christo's French years, the Paris art scene was dominated by the Nouveaux Réalistes, the group of New Realists founded in 1960 by Pierre Restany. Christo's membership of this group is sometimes disputed, not least by the artist himself. The eight founder members of the group, signatories to the original manifesto, were Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Jacques de la Villeglé‚, Jean Tinguely, Arman and Daniel Spoerri. Others who subsequently became associated with the group Gérard Deschamps, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint-Phalle, César, and Christo himself never in fact signed the Paris Manifesto. Though he was not formally invited to join, Christo exhibited at the group's 1963 show in Munich, and later in Milan. Pierre Restany has claimed that this signalled his membership. Christo denies that this was so, and Bourdon noted that Christo's involvement was marginal and brief; but Christo is now widely considered one of the thirteen members of the Nouveaux Réalistes, and indeed exhibited with the group at a much later date, in Nice (JulySeptember 1981) and at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (MaySeptember 1986).

Be that as it may, it was in an art climate created by the Nouveaux Realistes that Christo first wrapped objects and engaged on his earliest oil barrel projects. He was also exhibiting: in 1961 he had his first one-person show at the Haro Lauhus Gallery in Cologne, where he exhibited his first outdoor barrel structures. Cologne at that time was already developing the lively art scene for which it is now known, and Christo met John Cage, Nam June Paik and Mary Bauermeister there, as well as his first collector, industrialist Dieter Rosenkranz. The Dockside Packages (1961) and Stacked Oil Barrels were created in and for Cologne parallel to his exhibition. The former, on the Cologne riverfront, consisted of several heaps of cardboard barrels and industrial paper rolls covered with tarpaulins and secured with rope; the latter was precisely described by its title (the barrels lying on their sides). Both works were made by simply rearranging material already available at Cologne's Rhine docks.

Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor (detail), 1961
Rolls of paper, tarpaulin and rope
480 x 180 x 960cm
Christo standing in front of his Dockside Packages
Foto: Stephan Wewerka

David Bourdon observed in his biography of Christo that the large assemblages of oil drums he erected along the Cologne waterfront were hardly distinguishable from the stockpiles that are found in harbors everywhere but Christo had in fact composed his materials, and had used hoists, cranes and tractors to arrange them as he required. This touches upon the very heart of what is sometimes seen as a minimalist element in Christo's artistic approach. Traditionally, artists declare themselves free both in their selection from given reality and in their skill at handling their chosen material; the Christos, throughout their careers, have always challenged this conception, by their great readiness to accept what is given and subject it to little alteration.

1961 was also, of course, the year in which, on August 13, the Wall was built by East Berlin's Communist regime. A stateless man with no passport, himself a refugee from a Communist country, Christo was deeply affected and angered by the East German move. On his return to Paris from Cologne in October 1961 he began preparing his personal response to the building of the wall. This was the Wall of Oil Barrels Iron Curtain (1961-1962); the Christos proposed to block Rue Visconti, a narrow one-way street on the Left Bank, with 204 oil barrels, and prepared a detailed description of the project.

Wrapped Road Signs, 1963
Wooden road signs, steel stand, lantern, chain, fabric, rope and jute
181 x 62.5 x 47cm
New York, Collection Jeanne-Claude Christo
Foto: Wolfgang Volz

The preparation of written documentation, accompanied by photocollagesand logistical analysis, has become ever more complex over the years as the Christos' projects have become more demanding and ambitious, but the purposes served by these documents have remained essentially constant: to persuade the relevant authorities to give permission for a project to proceed, to publicize and define the nature of a project, and, as commentators have pointed out, to deflect critics' attention from esthetic evaluation towards the examination of technical, social or environmental data. In the case of the Wall of Oil Barrels The Iron Curtain project the document failed in its first purpose: permission was refused. (Years later, in New York, when the Christos proposed to close 53rd Street with 441 barrels to mark the end of the Dada and Surrealism exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art on June 8, 1968, he was again out of luck: various city authorities refused to grant them the necessary permission.)

Undeterred, the Christos went ahead with their Wall of Oil Barrels The Iron Curtain project without permission. For eight hours on June 27, 1962, they blocked the Rue Visconti at various times the home of Racine, Delacroix and Balzac with 204 oil drums. Christo carried every one himself; the armies of helpers, both professional and unskilled, who were to become so familiar a feature of the spectacular art projects in later years were conspicuous by their absence on this occasion. The barricade, measuring 4.3 by 3.8 by 1.7 meters, obstructed the traffic as predicted. The oil barrels were left in their found state, in their industrial colors, complete with brand names and rust.

The Christos were inevitably summoned to the police station to answer for the obstruction, but no case was ever pursued. Whether the barricade was understood by casual passers-by to refer to the Berlin Wall is a debatable point; at that time there were frequent demonstrations in Paris in protest against the Algerian war, and permission may even have been refused because officials mistook the project for a protest on that issue. But the Christos had made a breakthrough nonetheless in terms of public art, by using a street, oil barrels, and even the presence of people in the street given features never previously considered admissible in art to create a temporary work. Crucial to the Christos' post-modern approach to art has always been this emphasis on the temporary.