‘The Gates’ was a great sense of art 20 years ago and it wasn’t the only vision Christo and Jeanne-Claude had for NYC

In February. 12, 2005, the duet of man-Grruas artist Christo and Jeanne-Claude revealed the largest, most sprinkled and talked about public art project, New York City had ever seen.

“Gates” caused an immediate sensation. It represented 7,503 steel structures decorated with leaking saffron-colored banners and traversed 23 miles of winding in Central Park.

Four million visitors gathered to see the monumental installation during its 16-day running. The spectacle generated about $ 254 million for NYC economy. (Christo and Jeanne-Claude pays $ 21 million they had to raise it).

However, most importantly, it brought a colorful blow and a wonder in a city that was still mourning after the September terrorist attacks. 11, 2001. Gates gathered the gray sky of February with a warm glow and appeared against the snowy landscape of the park.

It is difficult to imagine 20 years later, but Christo and Jeanne-Claude fought for decades to make one of their large-scale installations in New York City, and face a lot of resistance. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Gates and unrealized projects for the New York City”-an anniversary retrospective that passes by March 23 with an exhibition in The SHED and an increased experience of reality in the central park-demonstment of their insistence on extraordinary.

The Coupleifi not only spent more than 20 years trying to bring the “gates” to life, but also had a dozen other ideas for Apple Big that were never realized. These include wrapping the Whitney Museum in packaging materials, covering the robe on the fabric and raising a 441 barrel of oil in the middle of the 53rd road.

“New York was their city,” said Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew who began working for the couple in 1990 when he was 17 years old. He is now the director of the project at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. (Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, and Christo in 2020.)

“They came here in 1964 and they didn’t want to live anywhere else,” he told the post. “Maybe it happened because it was their hometown of their native, but they had a lot of ideas for New York City. It was important to them.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same day, June 13, 1935. They met in Paris in 1958, when Christo-i had left the Communist Bulgaria to pursue art-commissioned to paint a portrait of Jeanne’s mother -Claude. The two fell in love and came to New York City in February 1964. They lived briefly at the legendary chelsea hotel before they were settled in 48 Howard St. In Soho, where they would stay until their death.

“At that time, the art world was moving to New York,” Yavachev said. “It was the place to be.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposed their first public art project for Manhattan the same year they landed in the city. They wanted to wrap the two skyscrapers in the city center in the fabric. They proposed wrapping buildings and other statues. In 1968, they drafted some ideas for Moma installations that never materialized.

In 1979, Christo had a vision to place the gates at Central Park. New Yorkers mainly opposed the plan. Residents write to the Park department, arguing that “gates” will destroy the Central Park, which at that time was in severe disorder. The city denied artists a project for the project in 1981. But, in 2003, then President Michael Bloomberg approved the project. The rest was history.

“They didn’t want to be defeated in their hometown,” Yavachev said. “It was very important to them, and they really believe it would be beautiful.”

Here, a look at some of their other visions about the city.

Lower Manhattan Packaged Building (Project for 20 EXCHANGE Countries)1964
Stuffed building (project for 1 time Square, Allied Chemical Tower, New York)1968
Whitney Museum of American art wrapped (New York project), 1967

Christo and Jeanne-Claude arrived in New York City in February 1964, on board SS France. Seeing the tall buildings in the lower Manhattan from the vessel of the ship inspired them. They decided they wanted to wrap a pair of skyscrapers in the fabric.

Christo had wrapped cans, oil barrels and other objects before, but looking at the degree of structures in the Big Apple inspired him to dream bigger. “Support is a way to discover something through its concealment,” Yavachev said. “It reveals the shape. It cleans all the details, so it looks like the building took a small breath, but the fabric also moves with the wind, so the building looks vibrant.”

Also, when it would be given a large staircase, “a way to include the public that cannot normally be pierced in art and aesthetics and beautiful in any way, be included in this.”

The Pairift selected various NYC buildings to finish, including the former Museum Whitney and 1 time Square, but were never able to move forward with any of them.

Projects for Museum of Modern Art, 1968

In 1968, Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposed various projects for Moma, and worked with the curator chief there to make it happen. These include wrapping the museum building, wrapping trees in the outdoor sculpture garden of the museum, and creating a barrel of oil gathered in one of the museum galleries.

However, the museum insurance company warned the museum that it would no longer cover the building if the artists were trying to finish the museum. On the contrary, the museum displayed some of Christo’s preparatory sketches and scale models for their unrealized projects. The exhibition, which opened in June 1968, was called “Christo finishes museums: staircase models, photomontations and drawings for a non-event”.

Wall of Petroleum Barrels on Street 53 (Project for Museum of Modern Art, New York)1968

Christo and Jeanne-Claude had an obsession with oil barrels. “They were so easy to accumulate and you can pain all these different colors,” Yavachev said. “You can use them almost as pixels.”

Coupleifi raised their first wall all barrels on a very narrow road in 1962. Yavachev said. “They tried to get permission, and they never got it, and they did it anyway. It was ready for 24 hours, and the police left them to go and said, ‘Never do it again.’

After that they try to get permission for several oil structures in New York, including a wall of 1200 then in Brooklyn’s Prospective Park in 1967. But the most crazy was a proposal to block traffic in the middle of the city by raising a On the 53th road between the fifth and the sixth and the sixth, the sixth roads, from Moma. The “wall”, as it was called, would make up 441 barrels in Modrian-Esque colors and extend the entire width of the road.

“They really thought they could get permission,” Yavachev said. “They thought that with all their projects, that’s why they proposed. I mean, you wouldn’t think you would get permission to set up 7,503 gates at Central Park. But they took it. It took years. but they got it. “