Christo SOVA Assignment PART 1

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are husband and wife environmentalist-artists who are dedicated to their artistic cause. Together they have done numerous art projects, the most large-scale one being Wrapped Coast, 1968-1969.

Wrapped Coast, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude (1968-1969)

That brings us to the topic of this SoVA assignment. Here are my answers to the questions for the assignment.

1) Christo and Jean-Claude’s work is highly unique. How would you describe this artwork to one of your peers? Use art specific vocabulary, as well as adjectives to answer.

This work is unique in the sense of its scale and the idea behind it. To wrap a whole coast is a brave and bold thing to do, a tedious process which involves a lot of manpower and effort. The artwork is a special attempt at making an environmental statement about preservation of the environment.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have used white fabric to wrap the coast in Little Bay, Sydney, Australia. The collage of the many pieces of fabric, secured over each other, show influence from Cubism, in which art movement the collage was said to have been first invented. The artwork does not require any ink or paint or canvas; the coast is the canvas, the cloth provides colour to the canvas - only better.

The undulating form of the work results from the changing effects of light and natural forces on the white fabric as opposed to the staticity of a two-dimensional artwork like a painting. As the wind ripples through the cloth, a sense of fluidity is prevalent in the work. This fluidity is molded by nature, by the wind, with the shape and form of the coast accentuated by the light of the sun and moon and different times of the day. As the hours go by, shadows form in different crevices, bringing out different perspectives to the artwork. The artists have masterfully let nature be the medium through which they express their artwork.

Their use of cloth to wrap the coast emphasises a lot on preservation. When we wrap something, we want to protect it, to keep it. They are showing us that nature should be preserved and carefully kept, through the symbolic temporary wrapping of the coast.

The artists used linear perspective to bring out the incomprehensible scale of the artwork. As it is three-dimensional, linear perspective is inherent in the natural artwork. Based on where we view the artwork from, the shape and form of the artwork changes with linear perspective. As we view the work all around, watching its shape and form change, we can understand more about the complexity of nature. The coast, if viewed from a certain angle, because of linear perspective, also seems to be stretching on and on. This effectively gives the viewer a sense of being overwhelmed by nature.

The white fabric used was also a good colour. It stylised the artwork by eliminating unnecessary details such as craggy rocks and moss, emphasising the principle of simplifying art forms - by the suggested shape and form we can tell what it is. White also captures light effectively as it is a good reflector of light. Hence the artwork is sensitive to even subtle changes in light. This infuses the artwork with monochromatic colours - the shadows form darker tones, then there are mid-tones and the brightest tones where light shines directly on them.

The usage of white fabric in the artwork also employs the principle of arbitrary colour, famous with the Fauvists. As monochromatic white is not the natural colour of the cliff, which is usually made up of dark brown rocks and, sometimes, green moss, hence the artwork can be classified as one made up of arbitrary colours.

Bibemus Quarry, Paul Cezanne

The squarish geometric natural shapes which make out the outline of the coast are similar to the kind the Cubist Paul Cezanne used in some of his naturalistic landscape paintings. (See Bibemus Quarry) Overlapping geometric shapes, emphasised by the white fabric and the monochromatic colours, also bear resemblance to Analytical Cubist work. The natural shape of the coast forms vague triangular and rectangular shapes, which are accentuated by light and shadows, and also the minimalist use of plain white fabric. 

2) In your own words, what is the subject matter of the “Wrapped Coast”? What was the purpose of creating such a monumental work?

The subject matter of Wrapped Coast was the natural beauty of the coast. The white fabric which covered the details of the coast brought out its shape, allowing us to see past the usual craggy rocks and moss, into the beauty of the gargantuan coast as the light of the sun highlighted the different aspects of its beauty on the plain white cloth, details that we would otherwise not have seen as clearly due to the dark colour of the rocks.

Their allowance of nature to shape their artwork is all the more a powerful environmental statement - that nature is beauty, that we should preserve nature. Such a monumental artwork would leave a sure imprint upon the mind of the public that this part of nature was wrapped in 1968 to 1969, that we should all continue the painstaking efforts and legacy of the artists involved to preserve the environment.