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Like the projects she created over the decades with her husband, Christo, Jeanne-Claude is no longer here, but the memory of her will linger.
Usually seen within a cloud of cigarette smoke and topped off by a halo of amazing red hair, Jeanne-Claude, who died at the age of 74 from a brain aneurysm after a fall a few weeks ago, was a vivid presence, whether puffing on the sofa in their studio in downtown Manhattan — or commanding armies of workers at sites throughout the world.
I saw her in action for the first time in 1976 when she presided over a huge barbecue of chicken parts on some California ranch whose puzzled owner had been persuaded to allow a 24.5-mile-long fence of enormous, billowing white panels to pass through his land and into the sea.
Christo, a puckish man born in Bulgaria, slight and polite, nibbled neatly on a wing. He was never interested in conventional bids for immortality.
Like all their “projects” — as they liked to call their vast creations, “Running Fence” existed for only a brief moment in time. The projects left no trace, but lodged themselves forever in the memory of those lucky enough to see them during their brief flowering. “Running Fence” was like a ghostly ribbon dropped down by an unseen hand. Who can forget it?
The extroverted daughter of a French general, Jeanne-Claude had true organizational abilities, which she decanted down to devoted engineers, designers and small armies of workers. Frogmen and mountaineers were drafted for one of their most exhilarating projects, “The Pont Neuf Wrapped” in 1985.
Met in Paris
Jeanne-Claude had met Christo, an emigre in Paris, in 1958, but they soon moved to lower Manhattan, where young artists had an easier time of it. For as long as I can remember, they lived in the same dumpy building and never took a vacation. A cat died early on; curly-haired son, Cyril Christo, turned into a fine poet and documentary maker.
Jeanne-Claude would make periodic attempts to stop smoking until her weight would balloon, briefly bringing out a festive assortment of large shirts and dresses. She really didn’t like cooking. A culinary institute a few blocks away served up dinner for her guests.
I am sure Jeanne-Claude put on her bright red lipstick with an air of triumph on the morning she first surveyed the Pont Neuf, swathed in 444,000 square feet of champagne-colored drapes.
At that point, Christo was still the sole artist in the family, though everyone knew that Jeanne-Claude had been there by his side tussling for 10 years with pompous bureaucrats and politicians before securing the approval of President Francois Mitterrand. Starting in 1993, she was always on the credit line.
Documentation
The process was part of the piece — photographed and documented in great detail within substantial books — and often recalled with bursts of laughter and amazement years later, as in: “Remember that poor lady who got flattened by the car?”
Like all projects, the wrapped Pont Neuf created a traffic jam with an average of 200,000 people strolling over the transformed bridge. Looking at the piece I wrote for the Wall Street Journal, I see that the crowds included a French duke, a Kuwaiti sheik, a few bewildered Japanese who thought the bridge always looked this way, and the unfortunate art lover who got so wrapped up caressing the material she ended up in the hospital.
That evening, Jeanne-Claude and Christo arranged for a tug to take their visitors along the Seine. As we drifted underneath the arches, they glistened in the spotlights like the portals to the palace of an Oriental potentate.
Many Orphans
Christo critics made her impatient and she was not one to mince words. Invariably, the huge cost of their projects would bring forth suggestions that they remember instead the many orphans of the world. That would get them going. The Pont Neuf cost $2.5 million and by the time they sent 1,760 yellow umbrellas almost 20 feet high, dancing up and down the hills near Bakersfield, California, the tag came to something like $26 million. They paid for everything themselves through the sale of his pictures, and refused all handouts.
Their last collaboration, “Over the River” remains unfinished, though started long ago, in 1992. For as long as I knew them, they would rattle on about their Central Park project and how crazy — crazy! — it was that they had never been allowed to do anything big in their city. Finally in 2005, after some 25 years, “The Gates” opened up — 7,503 steel frames hung with saffron-colored panels, fluttering in the breeze, changing colors and moods with the weather.
When I interviewed Jeanne-Claude for Bloomberg News the night before the official opening, she admitted with puzzled amusement to being the proud owner of 31 forklifts, all required to anchor and levitate the panels. Did I want one?
And then, for 15 days, the city basked in the pleasurable paradox of immensity and transience. It would be their billet- doux to the city they loved. (Bloomberg)
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