The only meaningful C++ program I’ve ever written was a command line animation of Christo’s gates in Central Park.
I was in high school and was incredibly cynical about the whole thing, so I made an animation of a very primitive ASCII Godzilla that would trample the gates after playing an ominous tune using Beeps.
Now of course I regret my dismissive stance (the gates were very beautiful), but I’ll never forget that C++ program.
Interesting fact that might have affected his works and ultimately millions seeing them.
Christo's father was a prominent chemical textile manufacturer in Bulgaria and Christo was probably exposed to fabrics and textile rolls very early in his life.
There was a 60 minutes episode long ago about him and his wife, probably the 80s. It seemed pretty clear she raised the money. What I remember most is that they, or her, were good at hobnobbing with the rich and getting them to donate millions for these projects. A single project might cost $20 million and to make it they might raise $40 million (and this was 1980s dollars)
In the, "I could have painted that" line -- I've always been more impressed that someone could raise the money and get the permits/clearances to do a lot of these things.
I hope that with sculpture and large scale installation art there aren't as many people who say "I could have done that." The job is more engineering than art, coming up with materials that can say, drape over a building with sharp projecting features but also be light enough not to pull down the structure itself, etc. Large sculpture even more so.
C&JC figured a way to finance their projects through a few big landmark donations along with a proto Kickstarter campaign. They would sell numbered plans and drawings with a deep discount before the event happens. They had different support tiers ranging from postcard to one of the first ten copies of each plan and have a thriving community of collectors.
There is a lot of art that I don't 'get', and I've been sort of dismissivie-to-unaware of over the years. Christo's art is one of those.
But as time has passed and I've had a chance to experience some of those artists work in person I've had a few a-ha moments where the art clicked for me and I now enjoy and appreciate them.
Christos has been around long enough and talked about enough that I think there may be something that I could learn from it by seeing it first hand.
There is a documentary[0] of his work on Floating Piers[1] which is pretty nice.
It was one of his latest projects, completed after Jean-Claude died, and it was _really_ impactful, with hundreds of thousands of people coming to "experience art" for free.
It is sad to hear he won't be making more of this stuff, RIP.
A few years ago I saw a retrospective, with a bunch of drawings and background stories from different projects.
As I get farther in my career, I spend less time writing code, and more time convincing people that we should deploy that code.
I think the art itself is neat, but haven't seen any of it in person. The years of negotiations with neighborhood, city, state, and federal organizations to actually put the art up, well that, that's pretty humbling.
I've thought that Christo and Jeanne-Claude had an interesting artistic business model: the finished works are public and free to view, but they sold large quantities of sketches and other artifacts to collectors to fund their work.
I don't know if there are other established artists doing that. Maybe it's more common than I realize.
Yes... the so-called sketches were often done after the major work was already completed. Kind of like reverse preparatory work. His work was very expensive indeed, and tthis was one of the ways they funded it. That and tax write-offs from big buisness.
I never understood the Jean Claude thing. She always insisted very vocally that she and Christo were a creative partnership. However, there is no discernable difference betweeen Christo's work before JC, and that which he produced after they partnered. So where is her creative inmput?
My experaince of her is colored by a very colourfull fax I recived from her whilst interning at a major London gallery. I made the huge mistake of addressing a communication only to Christo.
No, it’s not that common. While most artists stop at sketches - and Christo sketches are enough to grant him a relevant place in modern art (it really worths to study them) - he always pushed to realization whenever possible.
I also saw his gates in central park. He was a true artist -- his art brought joy. On paper it makes no sense why those things would make me happy, but boy they did.
after a "Christo's Fence" exhibit in the SF Bay Area long ago, a property owner acquired some materials from the effort and made an overhanging enclosure from it on his inner-urban property. While working away on some construction project, a muscular tattooed guy and I started talking about it, and the result was that I was dared to climb up to the three story roof and cross the alley on the Christo's Fence material alone (a sheer drop below). With the expression "danger == fun" in mind, I did cross the alley from above on the white cloth material -- it did not tear, I did not fall, and I had a lot of fun. Thanks Christo's Fence !
He wrapped the sidewalks of Loose Park in Kansas City in orange. Kansas Citians had no idea what to think. As a kid I thought it was pretty cool. Maybe it helped pave the way for the weird sculptures on top of Bartle Hall, and the equally weird shuttlecocks on the Nelson Art Gallery grounds - which Kansas City (eventually) embraced and came to love.
I designed and built a burning man shade structure for out camp with one of Christo's Running Fence panels that we found in an old barn in Northern California. I was so glad about how many of my 'neighbors' knew about Christo. I got a little street cred from that :)
The "waste of resources" argument never held too much importance in my mind, because he and JC were able to pay for the art installations on their own, as "wasteful" as that may be. That they were able to convince wealthy donors to pony up $ is something I'm sure many aspire to. And who are we to complain if someone can get others to believe in an idea with private funding? VCs, anyone? Kudos to them for their persuasiveness.
And separately, on the apparent quantities of material -- much of that was pretty completely recycled (metal, plastic), so it was chiefly the manufacturing and installation labor that was really spent. You could equally say that it also produced jobs wherever their art went.
2.
I think the thing that leaves the more dissatisfied taste in my mouth is that much of it didn't seem like very innovative or even subjectively amazing art. It only seemed to be self-fulfilling. In the sense that it was like the Kardashians -- they only seem to be popular because everyone says they're popular. Yet I don't get why they're popular. And similarly, looking at the art itself, if you didn't know better, nothing would say, "amazing", "world changing". (personal taste, of course)
You almost suspect that Christo's beginnings were spaghetti thrown against the wall, seeing if anyone would buy into some silly idea of wrapping something in colored plastic, like he was grasping for artistic straws. And it was only because he proposed something so large and crazy that it was different. And then when the first or 2nd one got some odd traction, it turned into an unexpected snowball. If he hadn't gotten any early success, you wouldn't look at the ideas and retrospectively say they were stunning, and what a shame they didn't get built.
I will say that the NYC gates and others that people were able to walk through and enjoy en masse were fun. But people like walking around in colorful new things anyway -- occupy the family for a couple hours. You wouldn't call Disneyland "art" exactly.
And it never shook me out of the nagging thought that there was something disproportionate -- maybe even "unfair" or overhyped about the popular success of the guy -- much like if the boss's son were to be winning a bunch of art shows sponsored by the family. Or that he was only an "artist" by virtue of being able to get people to pay for his experiments and the bigness of them.
Anyway, at least we have the memories to think about.
Art as a big polluter and waste of resources seem like a stretch. Biggest polluters are military and agriculture. I don't think art would make it on that list.
Same here and take a swatch they were giving away. Something about how ephemeral it was made it appealing. I tried taking photos but they never did any justice to the feeling of standing inside a giant artwork. I was saddened by the fact I couldn't share it with my wife since she wasn't in NYC, but maybe that was partially the point.
As a Bulgarian, I'm saddened. As an environmentalist - I only am saddened that another human being has died, but not much. But as an inquiring mind I keep wondering: Is wrapping stuff up a mental condition or artistry? :D
A bit late, but here's a very unique photo of the "running fence" taking from my backyard as a kid in Petaluma, Ca. You can see it 'running' along the top of the hill in the background.
he came to a part of my state that was probably not too famous for one of his projects
at first I questioned the value but then I relaxed and came to appreciate the work he had created, the dialog, the introspection and the choice of place
https://christojeanneclaude.net/mobile/projects?p=over-the-r...
it was an impoverished place from a capitalist perspective, but a place rich with stark beauty he acknowledged and leveraged into his art
It's really too bad that Over The River was never finished. I always like the idea a lot, and would have gone out there to see it. Anyway he and jean-claude moved on and did other pretty great things.
Over the River was one of many projects that Christo was deeply passionate about. When I spoke to him about the project six years ago he was still hopeful about it; it had been a non-realized project started with Jeanne-Claude. And he spoke of finishing their vision even after her passing, which seemed to affect him greatly. I am saddened of his passing.
That was the first thing I'd ever seen by him when I was a kid (in a photo that was part of a National Geographic piece). I wish I could have seen it in person. I remember thinking how audacious it was to wrap an island in pink plastic and call it art. It was also my first exposure to large scale temporary art installation pieces.
I see it the same, but I recognize it is going to annoy a lot of people to say so out loud.
Warning: cynicism ahead.
A lot of art seems about being in the "in group", so you can show your sophistication by appreciating things that others don't get. It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DsGleQsaU )
I'll give him this, I admire the fact that he was able to convince someone somewhere to give him the money to do these things. But I'm sure there are a huge number of artists that would do more interesting things with the kind of resources these things take. To me they are from the school of art that says that the more audacious and obnoxious something is, the better. The goal seems to be to get people to think about the question "what is art?", which to me is a rather boring semantic question that I don't want to waste a lot of time thinking about. Sorry.
Honestly, I'd have a lot more appreciation of this sort stuff if those who put it out there presented it with a bit of an evil grin, rather than with an air of smugness and pretension.
I'll try to take your comment seriously and explain what I like about his stuff. I personally find wrapping the Reichstag to be great. I live in Berlin, and see the building regularly, and it's just such an entertainingly absurd thing to do to a very important building such that looking at it gives me joy. (There's a lot of modern art that does not do that for me.) It's just fun to look at. For me it's something like watching Monty Python -- the absurdity is a lot of what makes it interesting. (I don't mean to imply that that's the only reason anyone could like it.)
I am a musician, and while there's a lot of "new music" that I don't get (or enjoy), there's a lot of it that I do. Mostly in the area I know things about (i.e. jazz). As you get into more more abstract art, often it does become "specialist" because it requires catching references and constructs that are used elsewhere and hearing how a piece uses, extends or intentionally avoids those. A casual listener won't catch that stuff, and a lot of the music may not be immediately appealing on a raw aesthetic level. But that's not specific to high-art. Pretty much any sitcom contains cultural references that are only funny in context.
Mediterraneo10's comment about Ligetti though reminds me of something: I've introduced a lot of folks to "new music" (the snooty term folks mostly use for "classical" stuff that's come out since around the 1950s or so). I do that by taking them to the symphony. I almost always pick concerts that have at least some "new" pieces, and everyone I've taken has enjoyed them. There are some things that I'd find almost unlistenable on a CD at home that make sense even to the casual listener in that format. I think a lot of music is written for a particular type of space -- like trying to understand techno without ever setting foot in a dance club would be backasswards. I think it's the same with classical music, and a lot of jazz as well.
> It's not so different from liking certain genres of music that strike the rest of us and just being borderline-offensive noise.
As a fan of certain avant-garde music, I've talked with a fair few fellow concertgoers about what their "origin story" is, how they got into this music that appeals only to a niche. It never had to do with discovering a community of fans and wanting to fit in with them – discovering like-minded people only happened later. Rather, the exposure to the avant-garde music was something random. Often it was seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey and being bowled over by the György Ligeti pieces in the score.
In my own case, I owe my discovery of this music to listening to one of the new-arrivals CDs in the classical-music section of my local record shop (remember CDs and listening booths?). What I heard made me hooked for life, and it was some years before I ever discovered any kind of group that I could even be in with.
The same is true of visual art. Vastly more people like Vasarely or Bacon because they stumbled upon one of those Taschen volumes in a bookshop, than hang out in art-gallery circles and actually talk to other art lovers.
So excuse me if I take offense at your post, which seems to dismiss music that authentically gives us pleasure (and initially a purely solitary pleasure) by tarring us fans as disingenous frauds or peacocks. There is almost always someone who posts the same thing as you in these kind of discussions, and it never ceases to disappoint me.
Well there is a difference between "avant guarde" music and certain things which everyone in a certain social group likes. When I was a teenager in the late 70s early 80s, it was mostly hard rock that was socially approved by my peers. In design school in the 80s, it was gothy stuff. Regardless, social groups were almost defined by their music.
Also, very few are ever going to admit, even to themselves, that their motivation is impressing others. More likely they will, uhh, take offense at the suggestion. Hey, I remember my sister accusing teenage me of only liking the kind of music that I liked because it was cool to like it. And yeah, I was offended. Doesn't mean there isn't validity there.
Again, how are people trying to "impress others" by listening to this music if they never talk to other people about that music? When I discovered avant-garde music, it was clear that this is something that I should enjoy alone and my friends would not react kindly to it. It was rather a source of shame and insecurity, not a badge of how cool I was. Yes, eventually I moved to a city where this music gets performed and I could meet likeminded people, but that was years later.
Again, I'm not talking about you. It could be you, but that's not what I'm really talking about.
I gave examples of whole social cultures that revolve around a musical genre. And I'm not saying there isn't some value in whatever music they like. But do you think it is just coincidental that tastes in music, art, sports, etc aligns so closely with cultures where people have a vested interest in fitting in?
I remember as a kid trying SO HARD to care about professional football, because it was cool to like a team, or at least to be able to talk about a game that happened on sunday. I gave up after a while. I have friends now that if I really want to fit in with, I need to like expensive scotch and enjoy talking about it (I'm sure I could get used to it, but my natural reflex is to spit it out), or maybe I should take up golf, and try to really care about what to me is a deadly dull sport.
Trying to impress your in group, not the out group.
south park has made great fun of this with their portrayal of goth kids complaining that everyone is conformist and then demanding that their friends be conform to be just like them, like the same music they like and wear black.
As I mentioned, few people who get into avant-garde music through recordings even have an "in group" to impress. They could only get an "in group" if they moved to a fairly small number of cities around the world.
Really surprised you seem to assume this is about you. If there's no in-group to impress with your eclectic tastes, and you enjoy them on your own, it really doesn't apply to you.
Christi's work required a ton of money, that had to come from somewhere. It clearly wasn't the mass appeal, since he didn't sell tickets or anything. It was rich people who wanted to impress one another with their sophisticated sense of art. (or maybe just with the fact that they had so much money burning holes in their pockets)
> Honestly, I'd have a lot more appreciation of this sort stuff if those who put it out there presented it with a bit of an evil grin, rather than with an air of smugness and pretension.
Forgive me but these comments always rankle me a bit. Most artists I know (and I am one) are craftsmen working hard at what they do. Even the famous ones and most well-known.
I'm talking less about the artists than the people who, you know, spend $100 million on a Rothko. (and those that would like to have that kind of money so they could spend it on a Rothko)
I'm sure the artist himself was sincere enough. I guess he worked hard, but his paintings don't impress me that he had such amazing talent or was such a craftsman, only that he managed to find a particular niche.
> A lot of art seems about being in the "in group"
I think you're seeing this from the wrong angle. Art is the process of moving people to this "in group" by showing them things that they didn't realize before. You need to use empathy to enjoy art.
While waiting for my wife at Trader Joe, I spent the whole time listening to one of my favourite bands - Bolt Thrower - the - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GPFduVKuEg - it's so relieving :)
I do feel that Christo is perhaps ranked dead last of artists who this generic criticism applies to. Frank Stella? Sure. But Christo put massive scale objects out in the world where the public could enjoy it for free. I can't imagine anything less "in-group" than that.
I haven't seen any of his works in person, but anybody I know who has seen one was impressed. More than by the pictures. Even the folks from outside "artist circles"
>A lot of art seems about being in the "in group", so you can show your sophistication by appreciating things that others don't get.
His art is highly accessible though, you don't even have to go to a gallery to experience it because it's right there in the world. There's nothing to get, it's just beautiful, has a huge sense of scale and having so much bright color of the same shades entering your eyes is something you'll likely only experience that one moment if your life.
>The goal seems to be to get people to think about the question "what is art?"
Couldn't be further from the truth, I think you'd really benefit from visiting a gallery and seeing some work in person. You don't really experience art from the pictures and looking at is so cynically as to having a take of "admiring how they swindled money".
Really to me art is more like a theme park for adults but you're closer to it, it can be designed to give you good sensations as well as bad and the thing in front of you has no reason to exist outside of being a piece of art but I'll remember those experiences for the rest of my life.
>These are multi-ton plastic monuments to some guys ego.
i've found that part of appreciating art is separating the aesthetic value from the worldly reasoning.
in other words : lots of art can be viewed as a waste of resources -- there is no intrinsic value other than what others assign to it. The (real) non-monetary value lies in the interpretation and aesthetic value the art itself achieves, not in the comparison and measure of how efficiently it achieved that aesthetic versus currency spent.
Foil wrapped buildings and waterways that many can walk across are aesthetically interesting in our society because those particular views are rare or non-existent. Other-worldly.
The value is in the novelty of having the opportunity to see something totally unlike the known world that you've already experienced.
After all that : art is still subjective. Maybe his works just won't ever click for you -- that's okay. Support the art that you might enjoy in the future by supporting artists as a valid work of life as a whole, regardless of ones' tastes.
Art isn't useless, and usefulness is highly subjective. No matter how sustainable we attempt to behave we cannot distinguish pleasures from necessities in a meaningful way.
Then again, even if the footprint of art in its entirety is rather small, this doesn't absolve artists from the same responsibility we all share. A responsibility you rightfully point out, not apparent in Christo's art.
Then again, most of his work is from decades ago when the urgency of sustainability wasn't as obvious as it is now.
I don't think he deserves being remembered for wastefulness.
It's uncharitable to diminish someone's art to just ego, feels sadly cynical. Our problem with pollution is systemic, what he's done is a drop in the bucket. Certainly we can't all afford to do it but to have one artist do it and for his pieces to achieve worldwide recognition I'd say it was demonstrably valuable to people.
There are lots of things that are kind of wasteful. Parades, lots of art, celebrations, pro sports, etc. it’s part of life. Some people enjoy austerity and austere lives. That’s okay, but many people like to enjoy life with a little more vibrance that can produce “unnecessary” waste.
>Arts investment contributes up to £4 to the local economy for every £1 spent, according to a new report published by the Local Government Association (LGA).
The difference between an art grant and a tax credit (which Marvel/Disney have got plenty of) doesn't feel especially material to me at that scale. The resulting artwork is also accessible to everyone.
Or read them, to remind oneself what a narrow perspective on the world one gets here.
It's a bit like reading comments about technology from politicians. Although come to think of it, "The internet is a series of tubes" is actually probably more accurate.
Except there are at least 3 posts here about finding the discarded fabric laying around. Most seems to have been repurposed, but the lack of having any use for it afterward seems a gross oversight. We are splitting hairs here, so I should acknowledge while it is not littering, it is still preponderously wasteful and short-sighted.
I visited the installation "Big Air Package" in Germany a while back. And it was transformative.
The installation consists of a canvas "balloon" inside an old, desafected gasometer. The public can visit the interior and the exterior.
At that time, I remember quipping to myself that it was a cathedral for the non-believers. The peace and tranquility of its "inside" space lending it spiritual properties. But yes, it was just an industrial amount of canvas and rope that they had to landfill somewhere.
if you had to wrap a building in fabric, how would you do? you could marvel at the logistics involved. the precious know-how of the artist. imagine walking in the same street everyday and suddenly discover that the parliament building is wrapped in tin foil. maybe that sighting would have had a permanent impact on how you view things. maybe that happened to thousands of passersby that week.
I have a house, a car, clothes, and food. All these things serve an important utilitarian function, but I've spent gratuitously more than I need to on embellishments to the aesthetic value of these utilitarian things. Most people do the same. The only thing that distinguishes Art is that it doesn't posture as having some kind of underlying practical utility.
Some people might say the same of Burning Man. (Not me, of course, but some people.) What about Stonehenge or the Pyramids or Göbekli Tepe? I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like the kind of thing people just do sometimes.
You're not alone. Many people share that view. You're right from your perspective.
Taking a step outside that view for a minute, I think part of the appeal of environmentally focused value systems is it allows you a trump card what stands above all else with moral supremacy. Once you've made a pronouncement nothing can usurp it and you don't ever need to back down. Because within that morally focused environmental value system environmental considerations trump everything else.
In short it's a way to be absolutely right which is very attractive and a lot of people subscribe to it. Standing above others is a very satisfying place to be.
Funnily enough, I think that's part of what Christo's work explores. In taking these grand monuments and covering them up he is sort of posing the question that something else can stand above them. Perhaps our projections? From that point of view I think you can consider his work as a monument to the the collective ego we put into our own pronouncements upon things. Which is pretty cool. Art can do that.
A lot of people agree with you. He had an exhibit in central park a while ago and most people I knew thought it was a pure waste of time and resources. Only a few who were in art school at the time cared about it. They even volunteered to help build it.
Since then, I haven't heard another mention of christo, the central park exhibit or anything related to that by anyone. So makes me wonder what the point of it was. But if it made some happy then so be it.
All of this "modern art" is just terrible and not soothing to the soul. They create these installations to "elicit a response" from viewers, but any talentless hack can do that. It's not art.
There's a movement to return to traditional art and architecture. It's amazing, but I can't seem to the recall the name of the organization. They had beautiful paintings made by artists in the traditional art style.
Traditional art and architecture never went away. Some people have continued to follow traditional styles in every form of art, regardless of what the current vogue is. Sometimes people’s estimation of the impact of modernism is very distorted, as when some claim that classical music in the 20th century became all dissonance and ugliness, but if you actually add up composers around the world in the 20th century, you find that most of them were writing traditional tonal music, and modernists were a minority that in many places could hardly get any performances.
Usually organizations that call for a "return to traditional art" are ostensibly simply seeking to boost the visibility of traditional styles. But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely. That seems very rude to that set of people out there (however small or large) who do enjoy avant-garde or modernist art, and who feel their lives would be poorer without it.
"But if you engage with those organizations’ ideologues, it often doesn't take long for the mask to come off, and for the person to admit that he/she wishes for non-traditional art to disappear entirely."
Not only that, but they often seem to be engaged in a larger cultural war where making art great again is just one front.
Just to not mince words: many of them are white supremacists and cultural chauvinists. Tweet a picture of old town Sarajevo or the Alhambra at one of those “traditional European architecture” twitter accounts and see how they respond.
You realize I'm not talking about these art exhibits right? I'm talking about stuff like duck taping a banana to a frame. Or having your painting shred itself after a timer goes off.
For some reason I'm reminded of Bette Davis's famous remark on hearing about Joan Crawford's death: "You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
My favorite art installation of this genre was not by Christo, but it was a spoof inspired by his "Gates" in Central Park, in reaction to a piece called "Floating Island" that was itself billed as an "anti-Gates".
TL;DR: long story short: Gates was a lot of orange "doorways" installed in Central Park in Manhattan. Then a piece of green landscape garden was towed around on Manhattan's rivers, on a barge, by a tugboat. But somebody was inspired to chase the barge in a motorboat with a Christo inspired orange doorway on it...
> For some reason I'm reminded of Bette Davis's famous remark on hearing about Joan Crawford's death: "You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
Fascinating that his art had such a profound impact on your life that you feel this way.
Yeah, never heard of this person before, but seeing what useless nonsense he managed to waste millions of dollars on, it is at least good that he won’t be wasting anymore art grants.
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I was in high school and was incredibly cynical about the whole thing, so I made an animation of a very primitive ASCII Godzilla that would trample the gates after playing an ominous tune using Beeps.
Now of course I regret my dismissive stance (the gates were very beautiful), but I’ll never forget that C++ program.