Christo and Jeanne-Claude

                     Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Christo, a man, and Jeanne-Claude, a woman, were a married artist couple who designed and organized large-scale fabric spreading projects.   They wrapped monuments and buildings and spread floating fabric skirts around islands. A typical project involved years of planning as well as the hurdles of obtaining funding for the project and dealing with protests and lawsuits opposing the project.

  Please look at one of their most famous projects  ‒ wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin. 

                        

The wrapping occurred in 1995, for a period of 14 days.  After that, according to Christo, all the wrapping materials were recycled.   There was substantial opposition before the wrapping but when the public saw the Reichstag covered, the effect was so impressive that a scheduled debate between proponents and opponents had to be cancelled because the opponents dropped out. 

    Let’s consider the psychology and aesthetics of wrapping.  What is the psychological effect and how is it achieved? First off, the wrapping isn’t meant to conceal in the sense that a burka conceals a woman’s body.  It is meant to enhance the form.

  Please look again at the Reichstag picture.  Do you see what looks like gussets, form fitting on the parapets, buxom rendering in the upper areas, cinching at the waist, pleat-like gathering.  It is all familiar.  

It looks a lot like a custom tailored suit, or better yet, a custom made dress by a top designer.  Notice the ruffles at the very bottom of the skirt and the sensuous play of the shadows. Some thought it looked voluptuous.

    Besides our aesthetic argument, it is said that a Christo project brings art to people who otherwise wouldn’t experience art.  It is a communal experience and it transforms the environment. 

The man-wife team also built an extensive floating walkway across lake Iseo near Brescia, Italy.  The walkway is like a pontoon bridge, covered in fabric, as wide as a broad avenue going a long distance between two towns and continuing out to and around an island.  We have an aerial view that shows how extensive the walkway is, but I suggest that you, by means of an image search, see lake-level photos showing hundreds of people walking along.  Note that the saffron fabric continues through the towns.

    As you see, I am selecting from their many projects  Look, in the next picture, at the way they wrapped trees, in a park in Riehen, Switzerland.  The wrapping is sheer like women’s stockings, not meant to hide, but to enhance. The photo is done in the contre-jour manner ‒ against the light.  The light is coming from the back and creates a dramatic silhouette effect. Because the trees are not in leaf, the illuminated covering makes them look like magic bubbles.

    I used to have mixed feelings about Christo’s work, thinking about the cost to build, and what becomes of the materials afterwards.  It is claimed though, that their projects are financed voluntarily, most times privately, and partially at least by Christo and Jeanne Claude themselves, by selling preparatory studies, drawings, collages, scale models, and lithographs.

              Louis Kahn and Bangladesh Parliament Building

    Please look again at the wrapped Reichstag.  In a way, it looks like a castle, especially if it were seen from an airplane high overhead.  I know of a building that bears a resemblance to the wrapped Reichstag without being wrapped. True to our mission the building is abstract.  Please view our aerial photo of the parliament building of Bangladesh.

The building was designed by the American architect Louis Kahn.  It was built in 1962 with substantial contributions of labor by local people in this poor country which at that time was called East Pakistan.  In 1971, nine years after the completion of the Kahn building, there erupted a bloody war of independence, of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan (now Pakistan), with atrocities and genocide committed by the Pakistanis.

    During the war, airplanes flying in from West Pakistan on a bombing mission, flew right over and past Kahn’s building.  They ignored it because from a great height it looked to them like an old ruined castle. That was an unintended benefit of the design.  I suggest you look via an image search at ground level exterior views and spectacular interior views.   
Louis Kahn has a big reputation among other architects and he has a distinct style ‒ strongly modern yet with classic overtones.  Kahn led an interesting life, including having multiple families simultaneously. His son Nathaniel Kahn is a perceptive filmmaker who made a documentary of his father’s works and his own quest to learn more about his father.  The documentary is called My Architect: A Son’s Journey and is available on Youtube. It is a richly rewarding video.