Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Arc de Triomphe, Unwrapped a posthume wonder
It’s finally here! After multiple delays (including falcon’s nesting on the monument, Christo’s death in May 2020 and a global pandemic) - the artistic duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude are back one last time with their monumental and temporary piece: l’Arc de Triomphe,Wrapped. Dreamed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the 1960s and completed fifty years later by his nephew Vladimir Yavachev as Christo desired before he passed away; the Arc de Triomphe,Wrapped involved more than 1000 people and represents 25,000 square meters of recyclable silvery blue polypropylene fabric encased in 3,000 meters of red rope in the same fabric.
On view from September 18th to October 3rd 2021, the famous Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly known as Place de l’Etoile) was made traffic-free for the opening weekend, a wonderful initiative for pedestrians to admire the enormous “wrapped” Napoleonic monument by foot without any disruption.
sketches of Christo’s L’Arc de Triomphe,Wrapped on sale at the 2020 BRAFA
Understanding Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art is understanding their state of mind. Behind each of their astonishing public art works, there has always been the desire for utter creative freedom and it was made possible through the ingenious self-financing of all their artworks. Indeed, the gigantic 14 million euro project was fully financed by Christo himself through the sale of his preparatory drawings, collages, scale models of l’Arc de Triomphe as well as lithographs dedicated to other subjects - he did not benefit from any private or public fundings.
This grandiose posthume work of art is the last from Christo and Jeanne-Claude, an extraordinary couple whose unpossessible art -which they wished accessible to all - will remain forever etched in our memories as temporary bubbles of beauty and folly in a very real world.
