The artists Christo & Jean-Claude undertake large scale projects that temporarily transform landscapes or buildings, typically by wrapping them in fabric. Their most well-known works involved wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 (a project that took 24 years to come to fruition), wrapping the Pont-Neuf in Paris in 1985 and surrounding a chain of islands in Biscayne Bay, between Miami City and Miami Beach in 1983. The Maysles Brothers have been documenting the process and creation of their artworks since 1973. The results are wonderful, and heartening in a way that is completely unexpected. These are no po-faced art documentaries – there’s hardly a critic in sight and the films are all the better for it. Instead they concentrate on the projects themselves and the characters involved in their creation.
Take the first two projects they document – Valley Curtain and Running Fence. The first was a 381m wide by 111m high orange curtain suspended in a Colorado valley and looking like a huge happy orange grin when unfurled; the second a 24 1/2 mile long, 18 ft high nylon drape running through two counties of California and on into the sea – both serious feats of engineering by the by. We are taken through the planning meetings with sceptical councillors and landowners and get to gauge the balance of public opinion. Amazingly, down-home ranchers are soon adopting the projects of this long-haired, heavily French-accented Bulgarian man as their own and become determined to see them through. This is all part of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art of course - a democratic, public consultation of which the final works are an ephemeral expression, art in which ownership is shared and enjoyed by a community, with the works themselves funded through selling the preparatory sketches and photographs of the projects. For an artist tutored in Stalinist Bulgaria, from where he escaped penniless, this is subversive stuff indeed.
Three factors aid the joyful appeal of these films. Firstly, there’s the understated documentary approach of the Maysles brothers, whose filmmaking never calls too much attention to itself, and is content to let scenes unfurl in their own time. Then there’s the appealingly ruffled central character of Christo himself – gauche, stubborn, wearing his heart on his sleeve, a smile never far away from his mouth, persisting in his belief in his projects against constant doubt and suspicion. He is complemented perfectly by Jeanne-Claude who provides one of the most telling lines of the documentaries, when in Islands, she says to a sceptical councillor. ‘How many children wake up early on a Sunday morning begging to be taken to an art gallery to see if a picture is still there? That’s what they will do if we wrap these islands, they will beg their parents to take them.’ For those of us who weren’t there, these documentaries partake in that same magic.
Five films chronicling five of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's environmental artworks. These are no po-faced art documentaries. Instead they are uplifting, heartening films that concentrate on the process of public consultation that leads to the final ephemeral, and quite beautiful artworks. Features Christo's Valley Curtain, Running Fence, Islands, Christo In Paris and Umbrellas.
Rivers And Tides
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5 Films About Christo And Jeanne-Claude: A Maysles Films Production (DVD & Book)
