International artists Christo and wife Jeanne-Claude wowed students at the Denver School of the Arts on Wednesday, explaining their large-scale art installations that involve wrapping buildings and trees or creating giant fabric objects like fences and umbrellas.
The students besieged the couple with questions, lining up at two microphones, sometimes 20 deep. At one point, school administrators offered to end the questioning to let the jet-lagged couple, both 73, take a break. But the two enjoyed it as much as the students and kept answering every question until the school day ended.
Here, in the flesh, was the quirky couple who surrounded 11 islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay with enormous pieces of fabric and who wrapped the German legislative building, the Reichstag, in Berlin in 1985.
In 1972, they draped an orange curtain over the Colorado River near Rifle. One of their smaller projects, the enormous curtain required 142,000 square feet of fabric (enough to cover more than three football fields), 110,000 pounds of steel cables and 800 tons of concrete.
One of their larger projects was building 7,503 orange fabric “gates” along walkways in New York’s Central Park, requiring two-thirds of the amount of steel used in the Eiffel Tower, Jeanne-Claude said.
The pair have proposed a second project in Colorado, placing 7 miles of fabric panels stretched sporadically over 40 miles of the Arkansas River, dubbed the “Over the River” project. They first proposed this project in 1992 and were in town for two days to meet with state and Bureau of Land Management officials about the project.
It would be built “at the earliest in 2012,” Christo said, adding that some of their projects have taken 30 years to complete.
The students loved the eccentric pair, who circle the globe but refuse to fly together on the same plane.
Over the years, they have developed a routine for handling adoring crowds: no autographs (they hand out pre-signed postcards), no gifts, no suggestions for new projects and no photographs while she’s smoking.
Together for 50 years, including three years as illegal immigrants in New York City, the couple still hold hands frequently while walking.
Christo told the wide-eyed audience of 200 that in his native Bulgaria, he never played baseball or engaged in any activity other than drawing classes, which he started when he was 6. He said fabric has been used in various forms, either cloth, marble or metal, by artists for 5,000 years. One of his inspirations came from the 13th century artist Giotto, of Padua, Italy.
“Painting is on a flat surface, and sculptures have space around them,” he told the budding artists. “But our art incorporates the space around it. We are borrowing our space.”
French-born Jeanne-Claude, who met Christo in Paris in 1958 when he painted her mother’s portrait, said their goal is “to create joy and beauty. Some artists, like Hieronymus Bosch, are great artists whose works have no joy. But we are joyous and we love beauty,” she said to applause.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
