Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Paris!

While many museums remain shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibitions will include shows at institutions that are now reopening as well as digital projects providing virtual access to art and culture.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris in 1958, where they lived for six years before departing for New York. This exhibition, which opens just over a month after Christo’s death at the age of 84, considers how the pair’s artworks from this formative period prefigured their later large-scale works. It also tells the decade-long story of the only major public project they completed for Paris in their lifetimes: wrapping the Pont Neuf entirely in fabric (1975–85). The exhibition, which runs from 1 July to 19 October, is a prelude to the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe – a lifelong ambition of Christo’s, which will be realised in September. Find out more from the Centre Pompidou’s website; you can also read Claire Barliant’s interview with Christo from the March 2020 issue of Apollo here.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here

Wrapping of Paul Niclausse’s statue Le Printemps, Trocadéro Esplanade, Paris, February 14, 1964 (1964), Christo. Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Fonds Shunk et Kender/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais; © Christo

Temporary Wall of Oil Barrels – The Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti, Paris, 27 June 1962 (1962), Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Photo: © Jean-Dominique Lajoux; © Christo

Purple Store Front (1964), Christo. Photo: © Wolfgang Volz; © Christo

The Pont-Neuf Wrapped (1975–85), Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Photo: © Wolfgang Volz; © Christo