Christo Javacheff and his wife and partner-in-art, Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon, unveiled The Gates over the weekend in New York's Central Park, their latest piece of public art and media engineering on a massive scale. (The New York Times' coverage was superb.)
The "public art" is breathtaking, but the "media engineering" is just as important-- Christo and Jeanne-Claude pay for their projects ("The Gates" cost $20 million) not with government funds or foundation grants but through the sale of photographs, prints and other artifacts, the demand for which is spurred by media coverage of their works. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's unique brilliance stems from the fact that they are simultaneously visionary artists, masters of PR, and savvy entrepreneurs. (Photo of "The Gates" by djwhelan.)
In 1983, I'd never heard of Jeanne-Claude; I only knew that some one-named European artist was surrounding islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with pink plastic, and it had somehow turned into a major media event. (It pretty much had to be to reach me as a high-school sophomore in the suburbs of Harrisburg, PA.) The predominant attitude in the media was, "What a crackpot!" but I noticed that, like me, they couldn't turn away.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude still take a few shots (Jeff Jarvis, I'm disappointed in you), but by and large, the media coverage of "The Gates" has been respectful, even awe-struck. I think three factors are responsible (above and beyond the artists' mastery of PR):
- It's accessible to everyone, but it never panders. It invites us to think about significant issues--political, cultural, environmental--while never demanding that we think at all, allowing us to simply experience it, if we choose.
- It's temporary, and like a vacation, like springtime flowers or autumn foliage, like all ephemeral things, we appreciate it all the more.
- And it's paid for--privately. There are few things more satisfying than arguing with a philistine about Christo and Jeanne-Claude--they always object to the use of public money, and they always look disappointed when you tell them there wasn't any.
From the work itself to the way it's presented and shared with the public, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's oeuvre is a paragon of good design, and all of us--marketers, advocates, businesspeople, not just artists--have something to learn from them.
Although I've enjoyed all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work, two other pieces that made a major impression on me were Wrapped Reichstag in 1995 and Running Fence, in Sonoma and Marin Counties, in 1976.
The power of "Reichstag" was rooted in its potency as a political metaphor, coming on the 50th anniversary of the defeat of Naziism and just a few years after German unification, at a time when the nation was struggling to define itself (again). A brilliant 1996 essay in Harper's (which I can find no trace of at the moment) discussed the sense of giddiness and good feeling that flowed through the thousands of people who gathered before the building. It was as if Christo and Jeanne-Claude's act gave the Germans an opportunity not to forget (never to forget), but to move forward in some way. (Photo of "Wrapped Reichstag" by Michael Zepter.)
I've only witnessed "Running Fence" retrospectively--I didn't even know where Sonoma and Marin Counties were in 1976. But it remains vivid to me even today, through photos, because I know that landscape so well. Many of my best experiences in the past decade have come while hiking or on a motorcyle, in the distant reaches of those two counties, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude's temporary intervention sets off the land, makes me even more aware of its beauty.
