The Useless Beauty of Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Key takeaways
- Sure, they were broke—the hotel proprietor said they could pay him back later—but they were jazzed about their new digs.
- The other day, at the Gagosian in London, several art installers were hoisting ropes and clambering up ladders, in order to mount the work in a gallery for the first time.
- Yavachev began working with Christo in 1990, when he was a teen-ager, and newly freed from the constraints of Communist Bulgaria.
Illustration by João Fazenda Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story In 1964, the married artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude moved out of the Chelsea Hotel and into the top two floors of a loft on Howard Street, in So Ho. Sure, they were broke—the hotel proprietor said they could pay him back later—but they were jazzed about their new digs. The place had big windows and an airshaft. (Later, they bought the building; it was the seventies.) Eventually, the airshaft became a storage unit, and it was there, in 2018, that Christo’s studio manager discovered a scale model, complete with electrical wiring and preparatory drawings, for a project the artist had forgotten about from half a century earlier. Eureka!
The other day, at the Gagosian in London, several art installers were hoisting ropes and clambering up ladders, in order to mount the work in a gallery for the first time. The piece, “Air Package on a Ceiling,” was designed in 1968 for the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Philadelphia, and involves a giant sheet of plastic suspended from the ceiling and crossed by ropes that make it bulge and fold. (It never reached the I.C.A., owing to technical concerns.) The effect is disorienting, as if the air had turned solid. Overseeing things was Christo’s nephew, Vladimir Yavachev, who was dressed in layers of black. “I mean, it’s up there—it’s not falling,” he said, peering at the plastic.
Yavachev began working with Christo in 1990, when he was a teen-ager, and newly freed from the constraints of Communist Bulgaria. He arrived in New York having never met his uncle, who had escaped the Eastern Bloc years earlier, by bribing a customs officer, and had never returned. “In Communist Bulgaria, there was a word for it,” Yavachev said. “You don’t become an immigrant, you become a nevuzvrashtenetz, which means ‘the one that can never come back.’ ” Christo and Jeanne-Claude travelled the world wrapping things: cars, islands, the Sydney coastline. “The enthusiasm was incredible,” Yavachev said.