In new York on 85-m to year of life has died the great muralist Kristo (Hristo Yavashev).Triumph without Arkiv the Centre Pompidou in March waiting for the opening of his retrospective, and the main exhibit was to be Packed in blue cloth the real arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees. Came the epidemic, the exhibition is not opened. It will begin in July, but will now be posthumous. Well the Arch with triumph back in may was postponed for a year — who knows now, if not forever.To the Arch was on the doorstep, as in the days when he looked at her from the window of his room in the attic, where he, the immigrant is allowed to live in Paris friends.Yavashev Christo grew up in Bulgaria, died in America, but became famous in France. In 1958 I arrived in Paris, showed there their first “Packed objects” and met Jeanne-Claude, who soon became his wife and co-author, and managerial talent which he obliged a triumphant success for the most crazy ideas.Both were born June 13, 1935. He is in the Bulgarian town of Gabrovo, it is in French Casablanca. Hristo Yavashev studied at the Sofia Academy of arts (where it is still revered no less than Cyril Methodius). Jeanne-Claude Dan de Gibon studied philosophy at Tunis University. Their first successful joint project called the Paris barricade of barrels in 1961, but it is more correct to consider those of their son Cyril, born in 1960. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009. “For 50 years, we have brought to an end only 22 works. Another 37 are waiting for implementation”, said Christo, stressing that without his wife would never have become myself. Her role in the Duo is often underestimated, attributing it only managerial functions. Of course, without her Hristo Yavashev wouldn’t Cristo. But part of Christo, not less than half, she was. Negotiation, clarification, communication with critics and gallery owners, management team Jeanne-Claude took over. An important part of their exhibitions — the art of negotiations. They constantly had to persuade all the chiefs to be allowed to create a miracle, to invest in projects that cost millions. Their work they have funded themselves — for example, to pay millions for the packing of the Reichstag, laid his art collection. And still they were denied three times before the Germans surrendered and did not allow packaging in 1995, gray cloth symbol of German statehood, burned down by Hitler and Stalin conquered.Photo: ReutersКогда they 1992 prepared “Over the river” to “pack” the river in Colorado, the hardest part was the design, although the patterns blown in the wind tunnel, and the steel ropes and anchors, deeply scored in the ground, developed a special design Bureau. The main concern was to persuade all the inhabitants of the state until the last of the Colorado potato beetle. The exhibition, dedicated toconstant to this project, a whole room held photos: Governor, Senator, members of the Commission on natural resources, leaders of the Committee of Geology and Mineralogy, specialists in the protection of snakes and Scorpions — and just the people living in these places. The artists traveled around to local schools and houses of culture, as if it were an electoral campaign.In the end, refused the project itself Cristo. In 2017, he said that “new owner” of the White house Donald trump is not satisfied: “I’m paying for the projects myself, I work myself to be completely free, and I don’t want my work to serve the glory of his government.”Shadow iskusstvennost and Jeanne-Claude Packed items, objects, and landscapes. Starting with jars, statues, shop Windows and cars, they went from the hands of the human to the divine works — shores, cliffs and Islands. Their fantastic scale projects reminded them of the eternal claim of the artist to the divine and demiurgic power of genuine creativity. But in fact in his early works the motive of the packaging was no less radical than the later. Packed women, motorcycles, or trees struck by no less than the fabric wrapped rocks or Islands in Florida.In the masterpieces Cristo there is always the temptation to read them through relevance. Supposedly, the Reichstag (1971-1995) is about the attempts to kill democracy and its rebirth from the ashes. Packaged in a gold fabric Pont-Neuf (1975-1985) — about the Golden calf, was overcome tourist Paris. “Running the wall” (1972-1976) was sent to the great Chinese, but, unlike the prototype, did not create a real barrier to people and animals and dissolved into nothingness. Well, the early “Wall of oil barrels” (1961-1962), also known as the “Iron curtain” that blocked the narrow street Visconti in Paris— it seems to be generally beats swinging in politics. It is possible and so. The more he Cristo said of himself that he is a Marxist, but “educated Marxist” using capitalism for their own purposes.Packaging (wrap, wrap) — it’s always time to hide the purpose of the landscape or building. Looking at the Packed object, we can only guess about its contents. So a child looking at the presents under the tree, based on the size of the box wonders what he will receive on Christmas morning. Ambiguity, anticipation, erasing unnecessary detail (clear to us how very few people of “architectural excesses”) bring to the surface the very idea, the image, from which the architect blinded his creation.Yes, the Reichstag was brought here with the wedding cake, the Pont Neuf is not just a bridge, but a necklace between the two banks of the Seine. Wrapped a piece of the Roman wall Aurelianus at Villa Borghese (1973-1974) — the idea of ruins, flowing through our fingers time. And even accused of being too entertaining, atraktivnosti “Gates” in Central Park in new York city (1979-2005) equiacuautla pure idea of movement, of passage, of transience of our presence in this place.Pure form — the top of art images. Cristo is a magnificent draughtsman, a real academician. It is amazing to see how his free architectural graphics out in nature. Packed with the bridge resembled a loose sketch with charcoal, sanguine or soft stylus. It was the sketch of the architect in physical, real value. Mountains, canyons, rivers, seas — all were perceived as a field for the image. In the carried out projects have a special method of exposure, an opportunity that neither is a literal “life in art”. The artist recalled that “look” on his “the Umbrellas” (Japan—USA, 1984-1991) came a group of blind. And one of them praised the scale, which he understood and felt the size of the shade and the temperature difference in the sun and under an umbrella. Shadow work became a shadow of art.And as freedom financial (no wonder in every formal description of its projects is mandatory “artists do not accept sponsorship in any form”), and freedom to think in any scale. Financial independence was ensured by selling preparatory materials for the project. Sometimes a preliminary stage left and is 20 years old artists never bothered. Freedom of ideas was the very essence of this art, no limits but their own, not suffering.Every time after work it seemed that they had reached the maximum, anything more interesting from them will not wait, and each time we were deceived. They apparently repeated itself, but this is not important, because it showed in the end that idea, of course, wonderful, but the implementation and sverrisson affect the imagination, and the great extent only unworthy of the great artist.They were an example of the “titans of modern art”, combining three main qualities: unique style, brilliant in its simplicity idea, which everyone will say “why didn’t I think”, plus the incredible scale of the effort and expense. Art Cristo — almost the nesuetnoy the art of our time. He was like a triumphal arch, a symbol of the vanity of this world that kill their children hurl. He had no time. But it is his will — if only for two weeks, spring or fall, to divine the Paris season, in the Elysian Fields would have grown the blue arch with red strokes-ropes. As a reminder of the return of soldiers home, how a clean idea of the arch of triumph and pain, like the passage in the sky that left Christo and Jeanne-Claude.Kira Dolinina; Alexei Tarkhanov, Paris
