Twenty-five years ago, in the autumn of 1998, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped 178 trees in Switzerland. The trees were sited around, and adjacent to, Fondation Beyeler in Basel and for a month they were wrapped in over 55,000 square meters of a woven polyester, a fabric used in Japan during the winter to protect trees from frosts and heavy snow.
The actual number of trees appears to be shrouded itself - it is variously reported as different figures, ranging from 162 to 178. What we do know is that eight teams, comprising climbers, pruners and workers worked simultaneously over a nine-day “wrap” and the work itself remained installed for the characteristically short time of a month, coming down in mid-December of the same year.
“Each project is an enormous journey in life” - Christo
Christo and Jeanne-Claude had been wrapping objects since the early 1960s, in fact their first exhibition in 1961 at Cologne’s Galerie Haro Lauhus included tarpaulin-wrapped oil barrels. Nonetheless “Wrapped Trees” was particularly significant as the two artists had been forced to wait over thirty years to realise the project - back in 1966 the Saint Louis Art Museum in Missouri, USA denied them permission for a work of the same name. Long lead times for increasingly complex works and their related negotiations would go on to be a striking feature of the couple’s practice.
Marking the anniversary of the successful realisation of the tree-wrapping project, Gagosian is showing an exhibition of sculptures and works on paper by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in their Basel space - a space which itself is less than four miles from the 1998 installation.
“Christo: Selected Works” is an opportunity to revisit one of the most unique and distinctive voices in contemporary art - Christo and Jeanne-Claude took their art into the public sphere with unrivalled success, creating hugely popular immersive and architectural experiences where counter-intuitively beauty was often revealed through concealment.
It is estimated that their 2015 installation - which also turned out to be one of their last - “The Floating Piers” was seen by more than a million people in its sixteen-day life, a viewing total which would take a decent capital city museum months to achieve.
Unusual funding methods - no sponsorship, everything paid for by the artists - together with their regular practice of relatively short-term interventions coupled with an ethos of no-trace-left and everything recycled, meant that despite the grandness of the gestures, they nevertheless avoided over-exposure, and each project was a true “event”.
The exhibition at Gagosian includes early sculptures from the 1960s, together with studies for their site-specific interventions - the studies themselves often being amazing drawings, utilizing charcoal, enamel, pastel, pencil, crayon, and frequently becoming more like assemblages with photographs, fabrics, handwritten notes, maps, and perhaps unsurprisingly also string, used.
Interestingly, it turns out that over and above the Basel connection, there is also a circularity in that Larry Gagosian himself worked as a construction assistant in 1976 on the Christo and Jeanne-Claude piece “Running Fence” in California (24.5 miles long, 18 foot high, 14 days existence).
The exhibition Christo: Selected Works is on show at Gagosian in Basel, Switzerland until October 28, 2023.
1998’s “Wrapped Trees” was organized by Josy Kraft, project director, and by Wolfgang and Sylvia Volz, project managers, who also surveyed the trees and designed the sewing patterns for each tree. J. Schilgen GmbH & Co. KG, Emsdetten, Germany, wove the fabric. Günter Heckmann, Emsdetten, Germany, cut and sewed the fabric. Meister & Cie AG, Hasle-Rüegsau, Switzerland, manufactured the ropes. Field manager Frank Seltenheim of Seilpartner, Berlin, Germany, directed the eight production teams.
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009) met in their early 20s, became known as Christo and Jeann-Claude, and were particularly known for large-scale, site-specific, wrapped-fabric installations.
photo credits: Wrapped Trees, photo: Wolfgang Volz, Courtesy Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation and Gagosian; installation view photo: Annik Wetter, Courtesy Gagosian; The Umbrellas, photo: Eeva-inkeri, Courtesy Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation and Gagosian
