Mountains,
museums, bridges and Central Park were just some of what he used to
make astonishing and popular art with his wife and collaborator,
Jeanne-Claude.
By
Christo,
the Bulgarian-born conceptual artist who turned to epic-scale
environmental works in the late 1960s, stringing a giant curtain across a
mountain pass in Colorado, wrapping the Pont Neuf in Paris and the
Reichstag in Berlin and zigzagging thousands of saffron-curtained gates
throughout Central Park, died on Sunday at his home in New York City. He
was 84.
His death was announced on his official Facebook page. No cause was specified.
Christo
— he used only his first name — was an artistic Pied Piper. His grand
projects, often decades in the making and all of them temporary,
required the cooperation of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of landowners,
government officials, judges, environmental groups, local residents,
engineers and workers, many of whom had little interest in art and a
deep reluctance to see their lives and their surroundings disrupted by
an eccentric visionary speaking in only semi-comprehensible English.
Again
and again, Christo prevailed, through persistence, charm and a
childlike belief that eventually everyone would see things the way he
did.
At his side, throughout, was his
wife, Jeanne-Claude, who, like her husband, used only her first name.
In the mid-1990s she began sharing equal billing with him on all their
projects, formalizing what the couple insisted had been their practice
all along. She died in 2009.
“The
Gates,” Christo’s Central Park project, typified his approach. Like
nearly all his projects, it began with a drawing, executed in 1979. Then
came the seemingly eternal round of lobbying public officials, filing
forms, waiting for environmental impact studies, speaking at hearings,
rallying support. All of this, Christo insisted, was part of the art
work.
“For
me esthetics is everything involved in the process — the workers, the
politics, the negotiations, the construction difficulty, the dealings
with hundreds of people,” he told The New York Times in 1972.
“The whole process becomes an esthetic — that’s what I’m interested in,
discovering the process. I put myself in dialogue with other people.”
When
New York’s parks commissioner at the time, Gordon J. Davis, rejected
“The Gates” in 1981, setting forth his reasons in a book-length
document, Christo simply incorporated the rebuff into the project. “I
find it very inspiring in a way that is like abstract poetry,” he told
the College Art Association. “He adds a dimension to the work, no matter
what he thinks.”
Given the go-ahead
by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, “The Gates” was
finally installed in February 2005. For two weeks, thousands of
strollers wandering 23 miles of the park’s pathways passed underneath
7,503 steel frames supporting free-hanging panels of saffron-colored
fabric. It was a stunning success.
“In the winter light, the bright fabric seemed to warm the fields, flickering like a flame against the barren trees,” Michael Kimmelman wrote in The Times.
“Even at first blush, it was clear that ‘The Gates’ is a work of pure
joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the
first great public art event of the 21st century.”
Christo
Vladimirov Javacheff was born on June 13, 1935, into a prominent family
in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. He took painting and drawing lessons as a child
and went on to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia, the capital,
while the country was under Communist control.
One
of his propaganda assignments was to advise farmers along the route of
the Orient Express how to arrange their haystacks and machinery in a way
that suggested bustling activity and prosperity. He later said that
this experience had taught him how to work in open spaces and deal with
people outside academia.
He was
studying and working at the avant-garde Burian Theater in Prague in 1956
when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian uprising. Seeing no future in
Eastern Europe, he escaped to Vienna, hiding in a freight car loaded
with medical supplies. After studying for a semester at Vienna’s Academy
of Fine Arts, he moved to Geneva and then, in 1958, to Paris,
supporting himself by painting portraits. There he met Jeanne-Claude
Denat de Guillebon, his future wife, while painting a portrait of her
mother.
In
his Paris studio Christo began collecting bottles, paint cans, oil
drums and wooden crates, some of which he wrapped in resin-soaked
canvas, tied with twine and coated with black or gray automobile paint
in an evolving work he called “Inventory.”
In
1961, as part of his first solo show, he stacked oil drums and a
wrapped Renault car inside the Galerie Haro Lauhus in Cologne. Nearby,
on the docks, he arranged mysterious wrapped objects that he called
“Dockside Packages.” Some critics saw in this early work an incisive
critique of packaging and advertising in late-capitalist society.
The
next year Christo staged a brilliant coup de theatre, a work he called
“Iron Curtain: Wall of Oil Barrels.” As part of a solo show at the
Galerie J in Paris, he blocked off the narrow Rue Visconti for several
hours with 204 stacked oil barrels, while his wife kept the police away
through a series of diversionary tactics.
After two of his wrapped “Packages” from 1961 were included in the “New Realists” show at the Sidney Janis Gallery
in Manhattan in 1962 — one of the earliest exhibitions of Pop Art and
the related French movement known as Nouveau Réalisme — he and
Jeanne-Claude turned their attention to the United States.
Encouraged
by promised exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Gallery in Manhattan,
Christo, though he spoke almost no English, moved to New York in 1964
with his wife and their young son, Cyril. That year, the Castelli
Gallery exhibited his “Store Front,” two display windows flanking a shop
door surmounted by a wrapped air-conditioner.
For
several years Christo had wanted to wrap not just packages but entire
buildings. He drew up plans to sheath five different art museums. One of
them, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, agreed to be wrapped
in 1969. Later that year, on an even larger scale, he wrapped a million
square feet of coastline near Sydney, Australia, in erosion-control
fabric.
Several
projects on a grand scale followed in the 1970s. For “Valley Curtain”
he strung orange nylon fabric along steel cables over a narrow pass in
Rifle, Colo.; a large semicircular opening allowed cars on the state
highway below to pass through.
Fierce
winds ripped the curtain to shreds two days later, a setback that
Christo shrugged off. “I as an artist have done what I set out to do,”
he said. “That the curtain no longer exists only makes it more
interesting.”
Then
came “Running Fence,” a series of white nylon fabric panels that snaked
their way over ranchland in Sonoma and Marin counties in Northern
California and crossed Highway 101 on their way to the ocean in Bodega
Bay.
For “Valley Curtain,” Christo
and his lawyer devised the system that made all of his subsequent works
possible. For each project a corporation was created, with Jeanne-Claude
as director and Christo as a salaried employee. Financing came from the
sale of drawings and small models to collectors and museums; Christo
never accepted grants or public money. When the art work was taken down,
the corporation dissolved itself, having earned zero profit.
He
began to achieve star status with several urban projects in the 1980s
and ’90s. In “Surrounded Islands,” he dressed 11 tiny islands in
Biscayne Bay in South Florida in flamingo-pink polypropylene skirts,
which made them look like floating tropical flowers.
Then
came the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris, stalled for decades by the
French bureaucracy and the political rivalry between Jacques Chirac, Paris’s mayor, and François Mitterrand, the president of France. It was a popular triumph when finally completed in 1985.
The
honey-colored fabric — 440,000 square feet of woven polyamide covering
the bridge and its 44 lamps — blended harmoniously with Paris’s urban
palette, and the bridge’s artful draping was deemed worthy of a couture
house.
“Whether it was ‘art,’ they neither knew nor cared,” John Russell wrote in The Times
of the public’s love affair with the wrapped bridge. “If it was
fundamentally vacuous, nobody complained. It was something to look at,
something to walk on and something to think about.”
Even
more difficult, politically, was Christo’s plan to wrap the Reichstag
in Berlin. The first drawing was made in 1971. For decades thereafter he
encountered nothing but resistance from West German officials. But with
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, momentum shifted his way, and in
1995 the work was completed.
In
between the Pont Neuf and Reichstag Projects, Christo and Jeanne-Claude
simultaneously placed 1,760 yellow umbrellas in the Tejon Pass, just
north of Los Angeles, and 1,340 blue umbrellas on a hillside near
Ibaraki, Japan.
“The
Umbrellas, Japan-U.S.A.” came to grief when one of the 485-pound
umbrellas in California came unmoored in high winds and killed a woman
and injured several other people. The two artists ordered the umbrellas
in both countries to be taken down immediately. As a Japanese crane
operator prepared to remove one of the umbrellas, his crane made contact
with a power line, electrocuting him.
For
“The Floating Piers,” completed in Northern Italy in 2016 — and the
culmination of his dream, he would say, “to walk on water” — he used
nearly two miles of saffron fabric to create a pedestrian walkway
connecting two small islands in Lake Iseo to the mainland. It was the
subject of the documentary “Walking on Water,” released last year.
At his death, Christo had one major project forthcoming: wrapping the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. First conceived in 1962, the project was to wrap the landmark in 25,000 square meters of silvery blue polypropylene fabric and 7,000 meters of red rope. The project will go ahead in September 2021, according to the statement announcing Christo’s death.
“Christo
and Jeanne-Claude have always made clear that their artworks in
progress be continued after their deaths,” the statement said.
Christo
is survived by his son, Cyril Christo, a wildlife photographer; his
brothers Anani and Stefan, who spell their last name Yavachev; a
grandson; and two nephews, Vladimir Yavachev and Jonathan Henery, both
of whom helped him with his work.
The
public loved Christo. Art critics delivered mixed reviews. To some, he
seemed more showman, or even charlatan, than artist. “The fact that
their work is so accessible is a factor in the disdain and hostility it
evokes in certain quarters,” Calvin Tomkins wrote in The New Yorker in 2004. “It makes some critics and quite a few artists exclude them from the pantheon of serious art.”
Both camps saw him as an unclassifiable figure.
The
artist Saul Steinberg, a good friend, said of Christo, “He not only
invented himself, he invented his art and, even more amazing, he
invented his public.”
Alex Marshall contributed reporting.
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Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel's very popular golden satirical book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is available in 5 continents and on Amazon U.S. Best Sellers Rank in Parody.
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Angelika Jung and Wolfgang Hampel in Marc Marshall's SWR 3 TV Show HERZSCHLAG-MOMENTE on Saturday 3rd of August 2019 21.50
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Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
The best president ever
Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
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https://www.booklooker.de › Bücher › Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club - and Vita Magica fans,
very witty book ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) by Heidelberg author, Betty MacDonald fan club - and Vita Magica founder Wolfgang Hampel is successful around the world.
This very funny book written in German got readers in the U.S. and many other countries.
Especially in these times we need golden laughter.
This wonderful book is the best medicine against bad mood.
Das sehr witzige Buch ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ' des
Heidelberger Autors und Vita Magica Gründers Wolfgang Hampel ist auf der ganzen Welt erfolgreich.
Das deutschsprachige Buch hat auch in den USA und vielen anderen Ländern seine Leser gefunden.
Gerade in diesen Zeiten dürfen wir das Lachen nicht verlernen.
Dieses wunderbare Buch ist die beste Medizin gegen schlechte Laune.
You can order Wolfgang Hampel 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' (Satire is my favourite animal)
Germany
Germany buecher.de
Germany Hugendobel.de
Germany - jpc
Germany - lehmanns media
Germany - Jokers
Germany - Weltbild
Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel's very popular golden satirical book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is available in 5 continents and on Amazon U.S. Best Sellers Rank in Parody.
( see list below )
We have a golden Betty MacDonald fan club Egg for you.
Tell us your favourite satirical text of Wolfgang Hampel's book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier, please and you'll get several fascinating Betty MacDonald fan club items for free.
Wolfgang Hampel's very successful book is available in many countries around the world. ( see links below )
A wonderful Betty MacDonald fan club egg: You can win a first edition of one of Betty MacDonald's books with a dedication of Betty MacDonald. It's a golden treasure.
Don't miss this unique Betty MacDonald fan club offer, please.
Thank you so much for your interest and support.
Greetings,
Astrid
Betty MacDonald Memorial Award Winner Wolfgang Hampel's very popular golden satirical book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is available in 5 continents and on Amazon U.S. Best Sellers Rank in Parody.
( see list below )
Angelika Jung and Wolfgang Hampel in Marc Marshalls SWR 3 TV Sendung HERZSCHLAG-MOMENTE am Samstag, den 3. August 2019 21.50
Angelika Jung and Wolfgang Hampel in Marc Marshall's SWR 3 TV Show HERZSCHLAG-MOMENTE on Saturday 3rd of August 2019 21.50
Angelika Jung and Wolfgang Hampel in Marc Marshall's SWR 3 TV Show HERZSCHLAG-MOMENTE on Saturday 3rd of August 2019 21.50
Marc Marshall in SWR 3 TV ' Talk am See ' - HERZSCHLAG - MOMENTE
Wolfgang Hampel's very witty book 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is No 1 Buecher de TOP List.
Wolfgang
Hampels sehr witziges Buch ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is
my favourite animal ) ist No 1 Buecher de TOP Liste.
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
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Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, weil Krimi-Königin Ingrid Noll Wolfgang ... sehr, daß wir die monatliche literarische Veranstaltung Vita Magica von Wolfgang Hampel bald einmal besuchen können.
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Austria
Brazil
Canada
Czechia
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Finland
France
Germany
Germany buecher.de
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Germany - jpc
Germany - lehmanns media
Germany - Jokers
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Japan
Mexico
Norway
Poland
Poland ceneo
Romania
Singapore
Slovak Republic
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Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung "Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg
Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
The best president ever
Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
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Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
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Satire ist mein Lieblingstier
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Satire ist mein Lieblingstier
- Satirische Gedichte. Mit Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung
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