Berlin’s Reichstag wrapped in fabric sounds like an image from a surrealist painting-maybe a Dali or a Magritte. But check out the AGO’s latest special exhibit, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection, and you’ll discover that what sounds like surrealist myth is Christo’s reality.
For over 35 years, Bulgarian-born artist Christo, and Jeanne-Claude, his wife and partner in wrapping, have been making their mark draping polypropylene cloth over various landforms and manmade constructions. Their latest coup is causing New Yorkers to rediscover Central Park, bedecked throughout this month in thousands of metres of saffron-coloured nylon. But while New Yorkers have The Gates only for a few weeks, Toronto is home to the AGO’s Christo exhibit until mid-May.
The show includes photos of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s completed projects, as well as 39 preparatory works. The sketches are on display for the first time in Canada courtesy of billionaire businessman Galen Weston. The exhibit fills four rooms at the AGO: one for photos of the completed works, two for the preparatory works, and one in which various films about the artists will be screened throughout the exhibit’s duration.
The most striking feature of the exhibit is the scale in which the artists work. Aside from the obvious largeness of their final projects, there is also a huge amount of labour involved in executing Christo’s extravagant ideas. His preparatory works, often completed in multiple media, are substantial in size as well, and are accompanied by explanatory panels that include topographical maps and fabric samples.
Included in the exhibit are project descriptions for each of the completed works, that read more like construction proposals than anything else. And indeed, that is what they are on some level. This is not the kind of art that can be done in a cloistered farmhouse on the prairies, whenever and however the artist chooses. To execute their works, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have to consult with engineers to determine the feasibility of their theatric vision, and with environmentalists to ensure they’re not jeopardizing any resident flora or fauna. They even have to check in with politicians for the correct permits to do their thing.
For The Gates, the couple had to lobby New York city council for 25 years. The project was finally approved by mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003, and finally opened to the public last week. 7,500 16-foot-high gates with hanging panels of saffron-coloured fabric were erected throughout the pathways of Central Park, where they will remain until Feb. 27 (the panels of fabric will then be recycled into other materials after the installation closes).
Over the years, the artists have completed projects that involved covering 2.4 km of Australian coastline in fabric, wrapping a prominent bridge (the Pont Neuf) in Paris, and draping trees in Switzerland. They do more than just wrap, though: the couple built a 26-metre-high wall of brightly coloured oil barrels in Germany and peppered valleys with 6-metre-tall yellow and blue umbrellas for The Umbrellas, Japan-USA. The presence of both preparatory works and final photos allows ROM gallery-goers to see the modifications made to each project-Christo’s initial visual musings don’t always exactly match with what is eventually completed.
The work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude is not for everyone. To some, it seems borderline insane; to others, pointless. To be sure, wrapping bridges, buildings, and sections of coastline in various types of fabric isn’t a common practice. And the transience of their work (all of their exhibits are temporary, and they make a point of removing all traces of their art from the area) may provoke an apathetic “Why bother?” Despite this, there is something inexplicably captivating about what they do: these are playful and whimsical minds at work, creating visions fit for fairytale illustrations, or Tim Burton films.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection runs until May 15 at the AGO. The artists will speak about their works in progress at Convocation Hall on April 8 at 9:30 p.m. For more information, see www.ago.net.
