Street Art can be packing !

Have you heard about Christo ?

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff comes from Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon came from Morroco (she died in 2009). They were a married couple of artists who created environmental works of art. They are famous for wrapping objects and buildings. They both become American by naturalization.

They created ephemeral works of art and fabric is their raw material. They wrapped landscapes, monuments and places for a while. 
They hid buildings and objects in order to highlight their shape. By hiding colors, details, trompe-l'oeil, fabric allows us to rediscover buildings.  
Fabric is a way to reveal the pure form. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo's wrappings as a "revelation through concealment."

Christo allways creates outsized  and very ephemeral works of art (a few days). The couple traveled a lot and wrapped monuments all around the world !

 

           The most famous wrapped monument of Christo is the Reichstag (1971).

With Christo, the relationship between the work of Art and the reviewer has evolved. Indeed, these impressive works of art are located in the street. 

 

For instance, Parisians are used to walking on the Pont Neuf, so when the bridge was wrapped, people still walked on it ! The contact is natural. The entire artistic concept is based on the interaction between the viewer and the work of art. The  viewer becomes an actor of the work. 

  The street is a public place, sometimes the works are located in places where there is quite a crowd. So, works are very accessible. This is not the viewer who is going to the museum, this is the work art which meet the viewer and makes him active.

 

Sensation is a primordial point in Christo’s works. The viewer’s feeling makes part of Christo's artistic approach. Usually, people are very impressed by these wrapped monuments. The works are gigantic and overscale. 

When the viewer is far from the work, he can see the entire fabric. But, when he draws near, he just can just see a little part of the work ! Christo plays with this frustration.

To put it in a nutshell, we can say that package, wrap, fabric and hijack are all words that show Christo's projects. The stretched skin over the building makes us think differently about what was very commonplace before !