For 16 days, from September 18 to October 3, 2021 Paris had featured a temporary attraction: the famous Arc de Triomphe, wrapped by Christo and Jeanne Claude, posthumously.
60 years earlier, in 1961, the two artists had conceived the original idea of wrapping this historic monument designed by Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin in 1806 for Napoléon, based on the Arch of Titus in Rome. The construction began on Napoleon’s birthday in 1806.
From 1814 until 1823 due to Napoleon’s defeat, the work on the Arc stopped for nine years. But it was not until December 1832, when Adolphe Thiers, historian and art expert, became Minister of Public Works, that the Arc de Triomphe project came really back to life. On July 29, 1836 the Arc was completed. King Louis-Philippe did not attend the opening ceremony.
Back to our couple of contemporary artists. It was in Paris that Christo had made his first wrapped pieces and his first barrel sculptures. Paris was where Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s life together began. In 1961, three years after they had met in the “City of Love”, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began creating works of art in public spaces and they made their first proposal for wrapping a public building. The French capital saw their first urban project in 1962, The Iron Curtain in rue Visconti. The same year, Christo created a photomontage with the Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, seen from Avenue Foch.
In 1985, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Pont-Neuf in Paris. Three years later, Christo made a collage showing a night view of the Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped. But Christo only began actively developing this project (catalogue: Christo and Jeanne Claude: L’Arc de Triomphe, wrapped. Paris 1961-2021. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr) in 2017 and, in 2018, it was submitted to the Centre des Monuments Nationaux by the Centre Pompidou, which organized the exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Paris!, which opened in July 2020.
Per Christo’s request, the project was completed by his team in partnership with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), the government institution that manages the Arc de Triomphe, and the support of the city of Paris. During the entire duration of Christo and Jeanne Claude: L’Arc de Triomphe, wrapped, the monument and its terrace remained accessible to the public.
In 2021, for only 16 days, the Arc de Triomphe was wrapped in 25,000 square meters of recyclable silvery blue polypropylene fabric and 3,000 meters of recyclable red polypropylene rope.
Read also our article Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Projetcs 1963-2020.
Christo and Jeanne Claude: L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped. Paris 1961-2021. Photographs by Wolfgang Volz (he has worked with the artist couple since 1971). Picture Commentary by Lorenza Giovanelli and Jonathan Henery. Consulting historian: Michael S. Cullen, Berlin. Order the book, Taschen Verlag, 2021, trilingual edition in English, German and French, from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr.
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations in this book review are not put between quotation marks.
Book review added on November 3, 2021 at 10:59 French time.
