Sometime at the start of 2021 my friend Dave Edwardson touted the idea of heading over to Paris to catch 'The Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped' the final project by the incredible Christo & Jeanne Claude. I'd only recently discovered the duo's work through a timely visit to the Oxfam bookshop on Back Wynd where I often go to peruse their second hand art books. Lo and behold I found a vintage gem featuring the early career works of Christo, covering his barrel installations on the streets of Paris. It seemed like a serendipitous moment.
Fast forward 6 months and details emerged about Christo & Jeanne Claude's potential last project and perhaps what will be their most poignant work, the Arc Wrapped. Sure to be a once in a lifetime event, I secretly held out hope of being able to travel to Paris and to witness the spectacle first hand. Of course there would be many hurdles to overcome first. I'd first met Dave a few years earlier during the first Nuart Aberdeen tours. A regular visitor to Aberdeen, Dave reached out and joined me for a tour of the city where we discussed our shared love of art, music, computer games, comics and a whole lot more. His work often brought him up to Aberdeen and over the years we became firm friends meeting up to check out shows and the latest additions on the streets of Aberdeen.
With his work taking him all over the country, Dave would often share photos of the latest shows in London, Manchester and anywhere else that had something of interest. With long distance drives being a solid part of his work week, I was onboard to head over to Europe to check out some shows in the Netherlands before making our way down to Paris. Of course I had 8 weeks of Nuart Aberdeen productions to get through first. I've already covered some those experiences in previous blog posts and there's a lot more to speak about but ill save that for another post. There's also a whole story about getting over to Amsterdam for this trip, flying during Covid was a ball ache!
But from great struggle comes great rewards and when I finally touched down on Dutch soil I was instantly hit with the excitement of being a stranger in a strange country again, about to embark on an amazing trip with good friends. It's hard not to feel lucky when you can get on a plane and go somewhere new. After a stay over in Amsterdam we headed south, taking in the sights and sounds of Rotterdam before driving on to Paris. Arriving late, we decided to wait until morning before venturing into the city centre with fresh eyes and legs!
Lucky for us, Dave had planned everything out, we'd jump the tube to this station and head straight to the Arc followed by a day of hoofing it around Paris to various galleries and exhibitions. I doubt we'd have seen half of what we did if it hadn't been for Dave's meticulous organisational skills but the 20,000 steps a day was a real change of pace from the last 18 months. I think we we're all happy to be out of Scotland and about to experience something special though and Parisian sun was shining for our first day out. Usually when going to see a live band there's a level of excitement and anticipation that comes with the experience but you don't really get that going into a gallery to look at art, static objects in static spaces but this felt different, this felt like a real moment. Sure enough as soon as we emerged from the subway onto the Champ Elysees we got our first glimpse of the Arc in all its newly wrapped glory!
We quickly joined the throngs heading for the underpass entrance, navigating our way through security and the thousands of other visitors, eager to get a proper look at the monument. Emerging from the little entrance, the scale and magnitude of the project instantly hit us. The giant gray stone arch stood before us, its hulking solid mass suddenly replaced by billowing mass of what seemed like empty space. Before having a chance to process the sight helpers appeared holding miniature swatches of the fabric used to cover the arc, handing them out free to visitors. It's important to mention that all Christo & Jeanne Claude's projects worked on the basis of being free at the point of entry, a simple act of generosity which runs throughout their public installations and events with the Arc Wrapped following suit.
We spent the next hour milling around on the giant roundabout, taking in the magnitude of the project and the incredible yet simple beauty of the work. Of course that simplicity was almost 60 years in the making, from Christo & Jeanne Claudes initial work wrapping everyday objects to grand ambitions of wrapping a building. Its a simple leap from a building to a monument and there's none more recognisable than the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile or the Triumphal Arch of the Star in english. It's interesting to see the early vision for how these wrapped building could look, almost replicating the simple shapes and folds of their smaller counterparts. The wrapped objects we're designed to give a hint of the object inside but through the act of wrapping them they become something else, a revised form through the eyes of the viewer. So simple yet quite a powerful gesture for the early 6o's.
After spending some time enjoying the atmosphere around the Arc Dave led us off back down the Champs in search of the accompanying exhibition at Sothebys Paris who we're showing off the original drawings and plans for the Arc project. We ended up taking a less direct route and stumbled upon another exhibition 'Christo - Early Works & Unrealized Projects' featuring some of his original wrapped objects along with drawings, paintings and models for projects which never came to fruition. Of course you can see the evolution of the duo's ideas as they attempted to wrap trees and rivers while the oil barrels used in their early street interventions took on a new life, creating pathways across rivers and oceans. And some of these concepts were adapted like for the Floating Piers projects or The London Mastaba.
I was really struck but the attention to detail in many of these concept sketches and the grand scale of ambition involved. The drawings and scale models for what may in fact be their final project 'The Mastaba' were truelly wonderful, a work of art in itself. The same can be said for the drawings and plans for the Arc which were on display as part of the event at Sothebys a few blocks away. It felt surreal to come from the full scale realised vision and stepping into the pre production planning through these large scale drawings. Every angle, every vantage point and every fold had been carefully considered and not just in the lead up to the project but over the course of decades. It felt special to be able to see these works knowing that just a few blocks away thousands of people were enjoying Christo & Jeanne Claude's vision.
The project was literally a lifelong ambition for Christo, having first set upon the idea early in his career. There's a great project timeline here that traces the complete evolution of the project.
"In 1961, three years after they met in Paris, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began creating works of art in public spaces. One of their projects was to wrap a public building. When he arrived in Paris, Christo rented a small room near the Arc de Triomphe and had been attracted by the monument ever since. In 1962, he made a photomontage of the Arc de Triomphe wrapped, seen from the Avenue Foch and, in 1988, a collage. 60 years later, the project was finally concretized."
The technical aspect of the project alone is a huge undertaking with special metal frames being required to protect the Arc from the rough woven fabric, itself a product of an extensive research and development process. The fabric sheets were meticulously draped around the Arc with not a single piece actually touching the structure of the building. This led to the flowing nature of the piece as its billowed and moved with the wind, almost like a giant organic creature that's hiding in plain sight. And this invited the public to interact with the piece, being able to run your hands along the red ropes and metallic sheets. The small swatches given away by the crew revealed the underside of the fabric we're actually blue, the silver standing in for the white on the French tricolore flag and the red ropes completing the design.
