Jérôme is beaming. The man in the orange overalls patiently explains his job, which journalists from all over the world are interested in today: black rope for working, red and yellow for belaying, it looks very simple. “Finally something other than just industrial things where nobody is looking.” He chats and laughs for a moment, then disappears up here behind the parapet of the Arc de Triomphe, we are 50 meters above the ground and he is now abseiling. For the people down on the Champs-Élysées, it can only be seen as a point. Today the facade climber makes art with the means of modern craft: He has to help to tension the thick, red cords around the Arc de Triomphe so that the old thing we are standing on looks like a brand new, wonderful gift.
The wrapping of the building by the men and women of the Christo project is almost complete, but not quite yet. For example, there is still this crease on top of the terrace. You want the fabric to be snug everywhere, but there is a corner bulging in this one spot. Anne Burghartz, the lead engineer at the German company Schlaich Bergermann Partner, and her colleague look at the stubborn corner, gather the material for a test, look for a solution. It’s like just before Christmas, just the other way round: This packaging should not hide, but make it visible. And the gift already belongs to the recipient, they just forgot it.
The Arc de Triomphe is a complicated structure. The triumphs that are to be celebrated here are no longer felt as such today. It stands in the midst of hellish traffic that has increased since Corona, because many people avoid the metro and buses. Nothing here invites you to linger. Usually a quick glance is enough and you are happy to be able to leave the monument behind. It’s also a grave: the corpse of an unidentified infantryman from the First World War has been resting here for a hundred years. At that time it was felt that not only generals and commanders should be honored monumentally. Every evening at half past six the flame on the grave is re-lit, an association takes care of that. The Christo construction site then had a break. It is a place that raises questions, the processing of which must be depressing.
The artist Christo died last May. He had prepared the covering of the triumphal arch in Paris himself.
(Photo: Britta Pedersen / dpa)
Today, during our visit, it is different. Due to the large surfaces of reflective, silver material, it is on the high building, which itself stands on a hill, like in the sun in the mountains: So bright, so warm – up here you are captured by an alpine madness, a euphoria in the middle of it Paris.
When Emmanuel Macron saw Christo’s sketch, he was immediately enthusiastic and urged everyone to hurry
The President of the National Works Center, Philippe Delaval, a serious man with a great responsibility, speaks frankly above of his first meeting with Christ to discuss this project. “I agreed right away. When he walked out of my office, he turned around again and asked, ‘Are you just going to give your okay?’ He was almost a little disappointed that it was going so quickly. ” President Delaval, who with his mouse-gray suit, white hair and mischievous smile looks as if drawn by the great Sempé, then tells a little bit about the next step. Because although he has a lot to say, he doesn’t have everything to say, not the famous last word, because after all it’s about the Arc de Triomphe. So President Delaval went to President Macron. “In my jacket pocket I had Christo’s sketch of the veiled Arc de Triomphe. I put it in front of him and knew now it’s heads or tails!” But Emmanuel Macron was also immediately enthusiastic and urged everyone involved to hurry. It was then due to Corona, but also to a nesting pair of hawks, that the opening was postponed so that Christo himself did not experience it anymore.
With Christo’s art it is like at Christmas, only the other way around: This packaging should not hide, but make it visible.
(Photo: Thomas Samson / AFP)
Christo’s nephew Wladimir heads the project, a man of impressive strength and energy. In the press conference he recalled that Paris was the city where his uncle found himself. Here he began to sign his works with “Christo” in the early 1960s, and it was here that he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, with whom he lived and worked until her death in 2009. Their first public art event also took place in Paris: in protest against the construction of the Berlin Wall, they set up 89 oil barrels in rue Visconti in June 1962. They did not have a permit for the more than four meter high wall, so the action at the police station ended. However, no charges were brought.
In 1985 Christo and Jeanne-Claude packed their first historical building in Paris: the Pont-Neuf, one of the oldest bridges in the city
Many years later, Christo landed the decisive coup of his career in Paris: it took ten years to get approval to cover the Pont-Neuf, one of the oldest bridges in Paris. In September 1985 the time had come: the bridge became the first historical structure packed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. At that time, large parts of politics, art criticism and the press were skeptical to negative, but people were much further ahead and took the whole thing up with enthusiasm. Three million people visited the packed Pont-Neuf, a new era of cultural modernity dawned in Paris. It culminated in the daringly modern celebrations staged by Jean-Paul Goude for the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 – until the fall of the Berlin Wall, Paris was again the undisputed capital of the cool world. The politicians in office today may wish that Christo’s genius would bring such a blessing this time too.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris. They lived and worked together until Jeanne-Claude’s death in 2009.
(Photo: Roland Schlager / dpa)
In its analog simplicity, the work is irresistibly inviting. You can touch it, admire the craftsmanship and enjoy the brightness and the silvery shimmer of color. Even children understand the message of being made visible through concealment. It is temporary art, a festival to which everyone is invited. And it comes full circle: What Christo solo has devised and drawn in his barren studio is now being enthusiastically implemented by more than a thousand people. Engineers, craftsmen, workers – all fairly paid – are working on transforming the project.
There are no tickets, no time slot. You come and stay and even get a small square of the tarpaulin as a gift
The magic has a well thought-out material basis, which has a special effect, especially in a city that is so mercilessly expensive for many of its residents like Paris: There are no tickets, no time windows, you come and stay and even get a small square of the tarpaulin as a gift. This economic constitution of the work of art makes it so special: everything is free for the visitors, and one is not bothered with an endless mosaic of sponsors. Rather, as on Christmas and birthday together, the whole money thing is settled behind the scenes.
How exactly does it work shows the documentary “Christo – Walking on Water” from 2018. The Bulgarian director Andrey Paounov accompanies another Christo project: The floating piers on the Italian lake Iseo, realized in 2016. In an astonishing scene you can see the skill with which Vladimir Jawaschew operates when it comes to selling his uncle’s works of art at a profit. An Italian art dealer is welcomed to purchase some of the forty works in the project. When he made inquiries by phone, he was told quite low prices for the large formats. But many pictures have already been sold and the prices have risen. Waldimir tries to explain this relentless market logic to the man, but he just can’t believe it. He calls his wife to get her permission to spend a lot more money on a much smaller Christ. He sweats, struggles to concentrate, puts A4-sized pictures next to each other when he had hoped for something the size of a tabletop. Wladimir walks with him outside the door, away from the camera, returns, touches his neck, builds up pressure and releases it again. Finally, the now completely pale suit-wearer agrees and pulls the end of his tie up as if he would have to hang himself because it is so expensive. The rich pay, the many are happy. With Christ, capitalism is upside down. It was important to him that his actions serve no purpose – totally useless is the motto of his art.
In Paris, where the air is even more politicized than it is already because of the approaching election campaign, people are still trying. The socialist mayor is happy that the square around the Arc de Triomphe becomes a pedestrian zone on weekends – and that is precisely why she is attacked. She replies gently, as if she had to enlighten the people of the past: “The use of the Place de l ‘Étoile dates back to a time when cities were built around cars. But that is long gone.”
Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot, a veteran of French politics, will speak at the press conference. Traditionally, figures with intellectual or cultural ambition hold the office, no one has attested that to her, but she is passionate about it. Bachelot delivers a well-crafted speech, then really gets into it. As if shouting it from the top of the Arc des Triomphe to the whole civilized world, she turns to the deceased Christo, who came to France as a penniless refugee from Bulgaria: “Thank you for your genius. Thank you for the madness. Thank you for her Poetry.” Ridiculous actually, but you can feel the tears welling up in your eyes because there is no shortage of madness, but of the wrong kind. Will it ever happen again? Probably not. But for now the party begins.