Paris (AFP)

A month after his death, Christo is entitled to a tribute exhibition that confinement had delayed: it covers the Parisian period of the artist and his wife Jeanne-Claude, telling how they had prepared the "packaging" in 1985 of the Bridge -New to the delight of Parisians.

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Paris!" marks the reopening of the large national museum of contemporary art in the heart of the Marais on Wednesday, after a financially painful closure. The death, on May 31 in New York at 84, of the great media plastic artist, could contribute to boost attendance.

A fascinating visit is proposed through all the preparatory works, collages, studies, models of the Pont-Neuf project, and what had led the artist to want to "pack" the great symbolic monuments, from the Reichstag to the Arc de Triomphe (soon). The Pont-Neuf, it was 40,000 m2 of beige fabric, kilometers of ropes, divers, rope access technicians, all kinds of trades under the dumbfounded eye of Parisians ...

Materials, engineering elements are also present in the exhibition, with beautiful vintage photos.

The upcoming packaging of the Arc de Triomphe still retains the agreement of the Center des monuments nationaux and the Elysée despite the artist's death: it will therefore be well done in autumn 2021, a year late because of the coronavirus.

Designed at the outset as an introductory exhibition to the Arc de Triomphe project, the Beaubourg exhibition reveals the preparatory work ...

- Two inseparable names -

It was in 1958 that, fleeing Communism, the young Bulgarian Christo Vladimiroff Javacheff, born in 1935, arrived in Paris.

He remained there until 1964. He was to unite his destiny with Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, daughter of a close friend of General de Gaulle, born exactly the same day as him ... They formed one of these couples of artists whose art has the secret.

"This exhibition is called Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the two names must remain inseparable", underlines AFP Sophie Duplaix, curator of the exhibition, who evokes a duo "very in love". "They seemed to be one", Jeanne-Claude playing a leading role in communication and the implementation of artistic projects.

"Ten years is the time for the work!" even if the Pont-Neuf was only packed for two weeks, from September 22 to October 7, 1985, said the commissioner.

"The project, she said, began in 1975 and will be declined with all the negotiations carried out with politicians," she explains.

The mayor of Paris from 1977, Jacques Chirac, was "favorable to the idea" but "extremely reserved in relation to his electorate". Jeanne-Claude will be able to play with her entries into Gaullist circles.

- Change of scale -

At the start, "Christo worked on pleated surfaces, stiffened with lacquer. And gradually this work will develop with the packaging of objects: he observes the fabric playing on an object and how the strings create lines of force. .. ", says Sophie Duplaix.

"What he has done on a small scale, he has only one desire: to project it on urban public space", according to the commissioner. "From his origins, he had a very strong political conscience. It was important for him to make an intervention in the public space".

"Pack": this is the term he preferred to "pack" which reminded him of the consumer society he denounced.

"Christo loves the work of conviction: he likes to apostrophize people, to scrap literally and figuratively. At the limit sometimes, we say that he is a little disappointed when he has the impression that things happen a little easily ", commented in March Serge Lasvignes, president of the Center Georges-Pompidou, reviewing his some 42 projects of which about twenty have been realized: from the Reichstag to the Gates from Central Park to New York via the Floating Piers of Lake Iseo in Italy.

- "Christo and Jeanne-Claude Paris!", Center Pompidou, from July 1 to October 19

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