(The beauty is yours, the money is theirs, the public space is shared, and TIME is of the essence.)
The artist Christo and Jeanne-Claude is physically no more. The two bodies of the artist uninstalled themselves from life, just like the numerous projects they did together, which were deinstalled before you could even say 1-2-3 in terms of time. Jeanne-Claude passed away on November 18, 2009 and Christo on May 31, 2020. They proved yet again how ephemeral art and life are. Now we have to figure it all out by ourselves. And L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (2021) in Paris is of some help.
In a lecture from December 2010, a year after Jeanne-Claude’s death, Christo identified the most important things in their work as: beauty, their own money, and ecology. In other words, the artist’s eye, hand, and energy; the C.V.J. Corporation; and the process of negotiating the use of public space that at the end only leaves traces in the public mind.
In short, this is the substance of “The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Effect,” their contribution to contemporary art. That’s apart from the way they approached the category of time.
In their work time appears to be a fluctuating substance, both material and immaterial. The category of time in their work is compressed and decompressed in a similar way to how mummification happened with regard to eternity, but with an entirely opposite dynamic.