Page 20 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

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materials are specified: 'Metal drums used for with the line of the Wall in Berlin. The early The form of Christo's solution to this shared
transporting gas and oil (with different labels, store fronts are touched by the romanticism of interest, which might be formulated as the
like ES SO, TOTAL, SHELL, BP) of fifty or old New York, an effect emphasized by the literalization of art, without relinquishing
two hundred litres capacity', and so on. tender and exact sense of human scale implicit formal control, is logical and convincing. The
Acceptance of the trade names is significant: in the architecture which Christo scrupulously early packages were domestic in scale, but soon
they function as a block to symbolic preserves. The store fronts radiate a kind of expanded from table-tops to the hardware of
interpretations of the kind present in Man Ray's suspense, as if the blocked windows or the closed transportation, culminating in 1963 with the
allusive object. What Christo is doing is door might admit one if you only knew the hours wrapping of a Volkswagen. In the following
re-contextualizing known objects, not of opening. However, our perceptual and year he began, with the store front, to play with
modifying them. He adds in his project that physical links are arrested as the invitation stays the paradoxes of inside-outside space.
`This iron curtain can be used as a barricade unfulfilled. What Christo has done is to turn In the studio or gallery, space is suddenly
during public work in the street, or can be used psychological response, as the façade becomes a reversed, as the spectator confronts the one-
to transform the street into a Dead End. Finally, wall, absolutely cancelling the inside. In 1965-6 sided, faithfully-scaled stores; doors, windows,
this principle can be extended to a quarter, even the development of the store fronts paralleled fascias, all human in scale, but not serving
to a whole city'. The Temporary Wall was put that of the packages and moved to a stricter, as an outlet for goods. The result is not a
up in June 1962, as an extension of the harder form. The later façades are more severe frustration of consumer expectation, but an
programme of Pierre Restany's Galerie J into and less diverse in colour. Christo evokes the experience of re-contextualization. As art
the streets. mid-century production line rather than the becomes more literal, control passes from, say,
Objects such as a chair, a pram, or a bicycle, nineteenth-century craftsman as the source of the act of drawing to the act of contextualization.
built for use, when mantled or inverted, both form. It is worth remarking, as a sign of The store fronts have subtle correspondences
invite and resist participation. The function Christo's tact (which is a short word for with the space of urbanism, as well as being
of these objects is interrupted by Christo at the unostentatious thoroughness), that the style- one-to-one replicas of architecture's human
level of use, not of symbolism. He is not making characteristics of both types of store front are scale. For instance, it is psychologically true
the objects enigmatic or dreamlike; he is inconspicuous. The older architectural forms that we experience most buildings that are sited
violating our operational relationship to the have a minimum of specific ornamental details directly on the sidewalk mainly in terms of the
objects. They are distorted, but not and the new store fronts have the anonymity of first storey; the second floor and above are
hallucinated. It was Christo's intention to standard parts. As nearly as possible Christo's virtually invisible. Hence the store front (or the
provoke reactions in the spectator, but these store fronts represent a zero style vernacular, foyer) is, in itself, the best known, the most
were to be physical and behavioural, rather than with the minimum of elaboration compatible public zone of a building; the threshold is the
erotic, as in Dada and Surrealist objects. It is with total plausibility. (It is like Gloria focus of attention. Thus, when Christo seals
more like experimental psychology than Grahame's comment on the style of a hotel room show windows with sheets or with paper, he
psycho-analysis; there is action rather than in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat: 'It's nice. Early cancels the internal space that we anticipate and
reminiscence; the maze replaces the couch. Nothing'.) Christo's simulated places are defines space as what is between us and the
When a known object cannot be operated in the intimately known but topographically glass. The spectator's investigative, voyeuristic
customary ways, the reflexes of the spectator, in anonymous : he achieves what might be impulse is converted into an experience of
terms of expectation and reaction, are aroused, described as 'schematic familiarity'. himself, as an object in space. As of the
but suspended. Belief in a reflexive, participatory Constant in Christo's art for the last ten packages, it is true to say that there is
mode of art is central to Christo's work, both years is the use of objects at the same size as life, concealment but no illusion. The responses
the earlier objects and the later environments. either by incorporating real objects in his art or generated by the screened object or the familiar
Gradually Christo moved away from the by simulating real places. The packages of façade are based on the objective act of making a
object, a shift that came about empirically as a 1959-65 stretched plastic membranes over package or screening a window. The factual
result of anxious work, and not as the result of objects, so that the top skin, the outside of the basis of such art is neither transcended nor
planning. In 1963 he made a group of vitrines package, determined the content of the work, undermined : it is the source of the mystery.
which in retrospect are of the greatest and not the contents within. The identity of the Christo is the antagonist of the imaginary.
importance. These showcases had paper on internal, supporting objects was withheld rather Christo made other Temporary Monuments,
the glass to hide the interiors, but electric than obliterated, because Christo, like other in addition to the rue Visconti wall : in Cologne
lights inside attracted attention to the denied artists of his generation, wanted to combine, in a and in Gentilly. These works, improvised with
function of display. Christo's earlier objects double focus, an untransformed object with a urban waste (the only material available in
had been characterized first by textural contrast new object, the work of art. The tendency of sufficient numbers or sufficient bulk) were
and later by a substratum of organic reference figurative art has been to synthesize signs for accompanied by projects for work on a bigger
in the membranes of polyethelene. With the objects with properties internal to the work of scale, without the materials of junk culture. In
vitrines, however, he avoided any associative art, to produce a sign-cluster readable both as 1961 Christo drafted a Project for a packed public
elements : aluminium, glass, paper, electric referent and as formal structure. The work of building, to be 'completely enclosed because it is
light, were used straight, in a way that prefigures art is in the middle, in a complex state of packed on every side. The entrances will be
all his subsequent work. mediation. In Christo's packages, however, we underground, placed about fifteen or twenty
In New York in 1964 Christo made his first are faced with an original object, a core he has metres from the building. The packaging will be
store front; it is both an extension of the vitrines not made, and a skin that he has. In the store of rubberized tarpaulin and reinforced plastic
of the previous year and a fantastic expansion to fronts, real space is occupied, but in a similarly material reinforced at average intervals of ten to
full architectural scale. The idea of packaging complex way. The original object is known, at twenty metres, by steel cables and ropes. The
now appears as the shielding of the internal least as a type or class, and exists as a level of packed building could be used as :
space from the viewer. Christo constructed a reference, along with Christo's own scenic . Stadium with swimming pools, football
store front, of a vernacular New York design, decisions. We are presented, therefore, with a field, Olympic stadium or hockey and
which confronts the spectator solidly. double-layered rather than a unified image, ice-skating rink,
However, the points at which we expect to consisting of two objects. It is a way to combine 2. Concert hall, conference hall, planetarium
enter, either by looking in the window or by the literal (in terms of solidity and thereness) or experimental hall,
opening the door, are inoperative. It is as fully with the making of a new structure (the 3. Historical museum, of recent or modern
sealed as the bricked-up houses that coincided entertainment of the artist). art,
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