CHRIS FREMANTLE

You walk up from Green Park past the Ferrari and Lamborghini dealerships to get to the Gagosian where Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s unrealised proposal for a work wrapping air has now been made by one of the premium commercial galleries. Do you buy the car or the art? The storage and maintenance handbooks are probably equally thick.

Air Package on a Ceiling fills the first gallery space. It is a suspended form lit internally by the gallery lighting (the blurb says “internally illuminated”). It was originally conceived in 1968 for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (see maquette below).

Christo and Jeanne-Claude basically funded all their always temporary installations by creating multiple versions and multiples of the proposal materials. When the Mastaba was in the Serpentine, two different commercial galleries in London had exhibitions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposal pieces. It was a jamboree. I remember being confused at first, thinking I had seen the commercial show and seeing a listing for a different gallery. I couldn’t believe two normally competing commercial galleries had both programmed basically similar shows on the basis that the Serpentine piece would create so much interest that they would all make money.

In the second gallery at Gagosian is a wrapped Volvo from the early 80s which further complicates our understanding. It’s not a Ferrari but…

Wrapped Automobile—Volvo, Model PV-544 (1981), which has not been exhibited for thirty years. Before it was wrapped, the car belonged to Serge De Bloe, an art dealer and friend of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who was acquiring a new vehicle but didn’t want to see the old one—about which he felt sentimental—destroyed. He asked Christo to wrap the car as an artwork, which the artist did in a Brussels body shop prior to exhibiting the work in Berlin.

We know Christo and Jeanne-Claude for the temporary installations, but the drawing and collage, the engineering calculations and proposals are also so engaging and part of the aesthetic.

I resent the writing out of Jeanne Claude. She is in the actual work credits but the title at the entrance leaves her out… It suggests the gallery thinks the audience wants the brand rather than the actual artists… tragic.

But regardless of cars, dealerships, the art market, this work and this practice is so significant in what it does to the possibilities of contemporary art. As a public art practice, as an environmental art practice, as an artists’ approach to the art economy, as an exercise in control… So many reasons to pay attention.