Jeanne-Claude; Guardian obit (Christo)
Hyfler/Rosner
She was one half of the environmental artist known to the
world as Christo
Christopher Turner
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/nov/20/jeanne-claude-christo-obituary
The flame-haired artist Jeanne-Claude - or Mrs Christo, as
she sometimes called herself - worked with her husband to
mummify the Pont Neuf, to envelop a string of Miami islands
in flamingo-pink nylon, to bind the German Reichstag
building in aluminium fabric and to erect 7,503 billowing,
saffron "gates" in Central Park, New York. She has died aged
74, from complications of a brain aneurism suffered after a
fall.
Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon was born in Casablanca,
Morocco, where her father, a French general, was stationed
at the time. She was born on exactly the same day as her
husband and collaborator, Christo Javacheff. "Both of us at
the same hour," Jeanne-Claude liked to say, "but, thank God,
two different mothers." She often acted as spokesperson for
the pair, explaining that as "twins", they had an almost
symbiotic relationship and spoke in one voice (usually
hers). "Sometimes we would both have the same idea at the
same time," she marvelled, "You know how people who live
with a dog start looking like their dogs?"
She was much more than simply his muse or manager. Until
1994, all their artworks bore only Christo's name,
apparently because they thought it would be easier for one
artist to become established, but since then the pair have
shared the credit. It was entirely her idea, Christo said
after the fact, to create Surrounded Islands (1980-83),
which used 6m sq ft of pink fabric to outline an archipelago
in Miami as if with a highlighter pen ("a giant Pepto-Bismol
spill", according to one critic). Christo retroactively
corrected the record and now they are acknowledged as joint
authors of every outdoor installation they plotted from 1961
onwards. That year Christo proposed the wrapping of their
first building, the �cole Militaire in Paris (perhaps an
Oedipal proposition on Jeanne-Claude's part).
She met Christo in 1958, soon after he moved to Paris from
his native Bulgaria, where his father owned a textile
factory. Influenced by Man Ray, who in 1920 wrapped a
sewing-machine in a blanket, bound it with string and
photographed it to illustrate the surrealist's famous
definition of beauty - "the chance encounter of a
sewing-machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table" -
Christo had begun to parcel objects. In his humble attic
studio, he wrapped cans, bottles, shoes, chairs - which he
considered his "real" art and autographed with his first
name - while paying his way by washing dishes and painting
conventional portraits, which he signed with his surname.
Jeanne-Claude's mother was impressed with a Javacheff
portrait she spied at her hairdresser's, and invited the
struggling migrant to the family chateau to paint one of
her. Their debutante daughter remembers seeing the artist at
work and remarking: "Mother's brought home another stray."
She assumed Christo was gay. "He is so skinny," she said to
her mother, "and he's got long thin hands - and he paints."
Christo invited Jeanne-Claude up to his garret to see the
sculptural work of which he was more proud. "Christo opened
the door and I had a split second to see what was inside and
then it was dark," Jeanne-Claude recalled. "In that second,
what I had seen was packages from the floor to the ceiling,
all piled up on top of each other. And I thought, 'My God,
this guy is crazy.'" But, despite first impressions, and to
her parents' disappointment, the two fell in love.
Jeanne-Claude walked out of a three-week-long marriage to an
older man and in 1960 had a child with Christo - Cyril
Christo, now a poet. Her parents refused to speak to her for
two-and-a-half years. "They loved Christo as a son but not
as a son-in-law," she said.
Christo gave Jeanne-Claude a crash course in the history of
art - until then she had thought the Louvre, with its
"superb wooden parquet" floors, fit only for illegal
roller-skating sprees. She, in turn, encouraged him to
embrace increasingly bigger things - a car, a tree, a cliff,
a bridge, an island, a parliament. The more expensive and
ambitious the scheme, the more surreal it seemed and the
more publicity it attracted. Their installations were media
events. Christo referred to his iconoclastic creations with
some pride as "irrational, irresponsible, useless".
The couple emigrated from Paris to New York in 1964. "We
immediately loved New York," Jeanne-Claude said. "As we were
standing on the prow of the SS France, suddenly there it was
in front of us. And Christo took me in his arms and said,
'Do you like it? I love it! I give it to you, it's all
yours!'" (He proposed, but never got permission, to wrap
several skyscrapers.)
Their relationship lasted 51 years, and they did everything
together, Jeanne-Claude said, except three things: "We never
fly on the same airplane. I do not draw. Christo is the one
who puts on paper our ideas. And I have always deprived him
of the joy of working with our accountant." She described
their union as passionate and volatile. "We are terribly
argumentative and scream and criticise each other non-stop,"
she admitted. "It is very helpful. It makes us think.
Christo is right 75% of the time."
In January 2005 I met the couple in Central Park as they
prepared for The Gates to be installed, the only public
artwork they managed to realise in their adopted city. They
wore his'n'hers white fur hats and identical coats for
protection against the snow. Jeanne-Claude had lipstick to
match her signature dyed red shock of hair, leg-warmers up
to her knees, grey steely eyes and an omnipresent cigarette.
She was a forceful presence and did most of the talking.
Christo was anxious and impatient, keen to get back to their
SoHo studio to continue the "preparatory" sketches that were
sold to finance the huge cost of the project ($23m). "We do
not accept sponsors," Jeanne-Claude explained, "because we
wish to work in total freedom. We want to do what we want,
where we want it, how we want it. but not always when we
want it."
Jeanne-Claude spearheaded the lengthy campaigns to obtain
permits. Her tenacity was legendary and forbidding. The
artists spent years in public hearings, courts and even
parliamentary sessions (the Bundestag voted on whether or
not they should be allowed to wrap the Reichstag building),
in their determination to see their concepts realised. "The
most difficult part is getting the permits," Jeanne-Claude
told me. "It took us 25 years to finally wrap the Reichstag
[building]. 10 years to wrap the Pont Neuf. 35 to wrap the
trees in Switzerland. We have completed 18 projects, The
Gates will be the 19th, but we have failed, F_A_I_L_E_D, 37
projects. They were refused and we have lost interest in
them. We do those projects for us, we do not do it for the
public." When she died, Jeanne-Claude was working on their
plan, conceived in 1992, to cover six miles of the Arkansas
river in Colorado with shimmering, translucent fabric.
Their fleeting and dramatic interventions have been
immortalised in six films by the documentary maker Albert
Maysles. The first of these, Christo's Valley Curtain
(1974), about the huge, orange fabric dam they built in
Colorado, was nominated for an Oscar. Maysles's stylish
films bring the couple's ephemeral artworks vividly back to
life and record Jeanne-Claude's dogged attempts at diplomacy
and the almost military discipline she brought to their
realisation. We follow the exhilarating process of their
construction, with all the snags, and enjoy the construction
workers' and onlookers' arguments about whether or not they
are art.
"Jeanne-Claude and I borrow space and create a gentle
disturbance in it for just a few days," Christo has said of
their work. "When they appear for a few days, they carry
this tremendous freedom of irresponsibility."
Christo and Cyril survive her.
. Jeanne-Claude (Javacheff), artist, born 13 June 1935; died
18 November 2009