ENTERING AN ARTWORK by
Of course we'd read about the artwork of Christo and Jeanne-Claude appearing in the countryside, and we really didn't know what to make of it, but, as it didn't invade our countryside, we had no opinion about it. Then suddenly umbrellas were in southern California and simultaneously in Japan -- a Christo and Jeanne-Claude artwork. What was it all about? We drove out to take a look and a stranger took our picture under an umbrella, in the middle of an artwork.
It was a Saturday morning in the autumn of 1991, and on an impulse we decided to drive out and see for ourselves. The 1,760 umbrellas were set up in the area known as "the grapevine," on the main north-south freeway going through the state. Beauty in the grapevine was hard to imagine, it was either so hot in the summer that radiators steamed or so icy in the winter that cars crashed. It was not a well-loved area. The umbrellas were blue in Japan but they were yellow in California.
The first encounter with the umbrellas was a surprise; it had not been possible to understand what they were like until you saw them, and the first thing you wanted to do was to get out of the car and take a picture. Another thing you wanted to do was to get up close and touch one of them, maybe sit under it and have a picnic; they were very inviting.
And they were everywhere, not only alongside the highway, but also on the mountaintop and on the way to the mountaintop. They were in fields and under trees, in ponds, in a mini-mall and next to a gas station. There was a little store where you could purchase postcards, artwork and swatches of the blue and yellow fabric (seen here as a background), and there was a long line waiting to purchase a souvenir cancellation from the post office at Tejon Pass. School children, bikers, seniors, family groups and dating teenagers all found something different to enjoy in and around the umbrellas.
They were with us for only eighteen days. They say the folks who missed them the most after they were gone were the truckers who traveled the highway. We can understand that. We found it sad saying goodbye to the last umbrella we saw on our way home.
The photos you see above were taken with throw-away cameras we purchased in Gorman in the grapevine, under the shadow of some yellow umbrellas. We'd forgotten to take our own camera but just couldn't leave the umbrellas without some pictures of having been there, done that.
However, the Internet has some exquisite photographs and drawings of the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the home page maintained by Jok Church and Adam Ciesielski. There you can see the elegant Running Fence in northern California, the Valley Curtain in Colorado, the Surrounded Islands in Florida, the Wrapped Coast in Australia, the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris, and the Reichstag building in Berlin. The most recent project utilizes 13,000 oil barrels for a wall in Oberhausen, Germany. There are drawings in preparation for a project at The Arkansas River in Colorado, as well as a project for a walk through The Gates planned for Central Park, New York. For more photographs and an overview of the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude visit the web site of the Christos long-time friend, photographer Wolfgang Volz.
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