The avant-garde artist is famous for his spectacular, large-scale installations. After realising The Floating Pier project next year in Italy, Christo will turn his attention back to his grand plan for the Abu Dhabi desert.
In the darkened streets behind Rome’s Spanish Steps, a small phalanx of men and women of all ages moves purposefully in the direction of a local trattoria.
At the core of the group is an elderly man, deceptively slight in build and with a shock of wild, white hair. Ideas and observations flow as rapidly as his pace. Heedless of the traffic, several times it is only the outstretched arm of one of the entourage that prevents one of the greatest living artists of the last half century from becoming an obituary in the next day’s newspapers.
This is Christo, the man who, with his late wife Jeanne-Claude, wrapped the Reichstag and the Pont Neuf, turned Central Park orange and would like to build a monument of 410,000 steel barrels amid the sand dunes of Abu Dhabi.
The next day, Christo will unveil his latest project. The Floating Piers is three kilometres of floating pontoons covered in fabric of saffron yellow that will bridge the shores of Lake Iseo in northern Italy to two islands.
It will exist for 16 days in June next year and then be dismantled.
Christo is two months short of his 80th birthday but shows no signs of slowing down. Over dinner there is concern among those closest to him that he is talking more than eating.
“At my last check-up I had lost two kilos,” he explains. “All my life I have weighed the same, 130 pounds [59kg].”
The intervention swings the conversation from art to diet. Christo explains his robust health. “I eat a bulb of garlic every morning. Peeled and chopped.” His flailing hands mimic the rise and fall of a cook’s knife. “And a bowl of yogurt. I mix in the garlic.”
Floating Piers will be his first major outdoor project for 10 years and the first since the death of his wife, from a brain aneurysm, in 2009. The two made a formidable partnership, both artistically and as a couple.
Jeanne-Claude, with her hair dyed flame red, was born in Casablanca to French parents. She met and married Christo, a refugee from Bulgaria who has long dropped his family name of Yavachev, in the late 1950s. The couple lived and worked in the same building in New York’s SoHo district for nearly half a century.
In conversation, he still draws on her influences as though they are still working together. “She was a ferocious critic and that is what I am missing all the time. Always now, when I have a problem, I think ‘what would Jeanne-Claude do now?’”
And in many senses they still are a couple. Floating Piers is one of a trio of unreleased projects conceived by the couple at the time of her death. Another is Over the River, a series of fabric panels to be suspended over the Arkansas River in Colorado.
Although the project has been approved by the United States government’s bureau of land management, further progress has been halted for the foreseeable future by a series of legal challenges from local environmentalists.
The third is the Mastaba in Abu Dhabi. The name is taken from the Arabic word for ancient bench-like tomb structure, whose shape is also known as a trapezoid. It is planned for a site near Liwa Oasis in Al Gharbia and can be described as a work in progress.
The Abu Dhabi Mastaba was conceived in 1977, rising 150 metres and 300 metres along its vertical walls. Despite the obvious connection, the 250-litre steel barrels are not those used in the oil industry.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude have incorporated steel barrels in their work since they blocked a Paris street with them in 1962 as a protest against the building of the Berlin Wall.
Progress inches forward at a rate that might cause a lesser man to give up hope. After two decades of dormancy, an engineering study in 2008 resulted in a detailed plan for the Mastaba, which would be the world’s only permanent major structure by the artists. Four years later, in 2012, Christo commissioned a study on the economic and social benefits from Pricewaterhouse Cooper. This year, the next stage is unclear, but with Christo, it rarely is.
In 2005, the couple realised The Gates, 7,503 steel frames hung with orange fabric panels along paths in Central Park. As Christo points out, the full title is: The Gates. Central Park, New York City 1979-05, because: “It took all that time to realise.”
Despite the passage of approaching 40 years, Christo is not about to abandon the Mastaba, even at this stage of his life. He retains a connection to Abu Dhabi through the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award, an annual prize to foster artistic talent among students in the UAE.
This year's winners were Nada Al Mulla and Salwa Al Khudairi, two Saudi students at the American University of Sharjah.
Details of the Floating Piers were unveiled at Rome’s MAXXI museum of modern art, designed by the British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. Her connection with Abu Dhabi include the Sheikh Zayed Bridge and the proposed concert hall in the Saadiyat Cultural District.
In front of an invited audience, Christo explained the details of the project, which will use around 200,000 floating polythene cubes covered in fabric to create 16-metre walkways to create what he calls “a golden river of fabric”.
In total, the piers — in reality pontoons — will extend three kilometres, gently undulating with the movement of the water and connecting to Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, and the tiny San Paolo Island.
Like all Christo and Jeanne-Claude projects, behind the grand vision are years of meticulous planning. Models of the piers were tested last year on a German lake. In the next stage a team of divers will place 200 anchors, each weighing seven tonnes, at depths of up to 90 metres.
The fabric, in 50 metre rolls, will be made in Germany, and stitched into place using sewing machines powered by mobile generators. The final installation will take a week, with the help of a team of paid volunteers.
Like all Christo projects, no financial support is accepted, while admission is free. And like all his projects, the cost will run into many millions of dollars.
Christo says that he has already spent US$10 million (Dh36.7m), but that the final cost is unknown.
“Jeanne-Claude would always say ‘it costs what it costs’. Do you have a child? Do you have a budget for your child? This is our child.”
The general explanation for Christo and Jeanne-Claude projects is that they are funded by the sale of designs and preparatory drawings to museums and private collectors. The reality is slightly more complex, with a network of sympathetic banks loaning the finance, using the artist’s substantial collection of his own work as collateral.
For communities hosting a Christo project, the financial impact can be enormous. The Gates is estimated to have brought four million visitors and $250m for New York, while the Wrapped Reichstag attracted five million visitors and $500m for Germany.
A study commissioned by Christo for the Mastaba claims it would bring in $390m alone during the Dubai Expo 2020.
Iseo is one of Italy’s lesser known lakes, free of distracting celebrities such as George Clooney on Lake Como. As Christo toured the site last week on a chartered ferry, it was clear that local politicians see the Floating Piers as a once in a lifetime opportunity to get on the map. With Milan barely 90 minutes drive away, the number of visitors could almost be overwhelming.
What meaning Christo’s work has beyond its commercial potential is always up for debate. During Jeanne-Claude’s life, the couple deflected any attempts to give their work deeper meaning.
At a Rome press conference, a reporter from Vatican radio speculates that the Floating Piers has religious connotations, referencing the Biblical story of Jesus walking on the waters of Galilee.
“Well my name is Christo,” the artist jokes, but then adds: “Our project is free of interpretation. All is legitimate. Jeanne-Claude and I think it will be beautiful and exciting.”
Afterwords, Christo admits that he did not realise the questioner was from the Vatican. “I said that this would be very sexy with the movement of the water. I hope she wasn’t offended.”
plangton@thenational.ae