Christo and the primacy of ideas – Arte.it

It takes courage to be an artist. I read this quote about something Christo E Jeanne-ClaudeThe famous artistic duo, serial packages that have covered half of the world with their huge installations. Yes, because in no time, in short, to become really famous and celebrated because of the courage and beauty of their crazy projects on a cyclopic scale, Christo (In the register Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, born in Sofia in Bulgaria on June 13, 1935) and Jeanne-Claude (Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, born in Casablanca, the same day and the same year) started with small things. An apartment and furniture, often used objects (a camera) .. a car.

The theme of hiddenFrom hiding behind a substance, the object or the place itself has long been discussed and not only among art historians. The duo enjoyed suspicions and offers public and expert ideas for reflection and interpretation. Certainly, there has always been an aesthetic theme, of pure beauty, in their packaging of the world. But also something conceptual, because as they then explained very authoritative critics, theirs of them was an art of revelationRevelation due to the concealment.

I think it is very topical to go back today about Christo and Jeanne-Claude. And it seems very contemporary to me as a choice that made this by New National Gallery Van Berlin who decided to combine an important birthday – the thirtieth anniversary of the packaged Reichstag (Wrapped reichstag1995) – With the RE -proposal within the wider exhibition Extreme tension. Art between politics and society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945-2000 (That is the key to the lecture with which she has been representing the collection for a few years now) of the famous beetle packed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

From June 11, 2025, De Neue Nationalgalerie van Berlin presents Wrap 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon: The Packed Beetle, an emblematic work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude who were “destroyed”, but which was then reinvented in 2014.

Yes, because the power of Christo and Jeanne-Claude was real The transience of their artistic procedure. Rita Gilbert in one of his books published more than twenty years ago, these words of Christo reported “Do you know that I have no existing artworks? They all disappear once. Only the preparatory designs and collages continue to exist, which give my works an almost legendary character“.

In the case of the beetle, well, the disappearance of the work it was somehow fun. Because the car was covered with that thick yellow and narrow canvas of those knots, not she. It was a friend’s car who had borrowed it to the two for a temporary performance and who then wanted to be reduced. Madness to reconsider us, but also understandable …

The history of the work was made a beetle available for the first time by the artist friend in 1963, when, on the occasion of a personal exhibition of the duo in Düsseldorf, Christo and Jeanne-Claude Claus Harden. At the time, the gesture was briefly built: the owner asked that the car would return to its original circumstances. Only fifty years later, in 2014, Christo decided to again create the work, to acquire an identical vehicle and repeat the action: the same model, the same transforming mind.

Nowadays, the car, fully packed, is part of the part of the exhibition in the Neue Nationalgalerie entitled A nicer lifededicated to the critical gaze of artists at the company divided in Germany of the 60s and 70s. A context dominated by political propaganda, by mass consumption and the growing influence of the media.

“Wrapped Volkswagen”, Christo and Jeanne-Claude pack a VW Beetle on the occasion of Christo’s solo exhibition in the Schmela Gallery, Düsseldorf. The place of the campaign is the back garden in Hüttenstraße 104 in Düsseldorf, February 19, 1963, © BPK / Charles Wilp, © 1963 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation

The presence of the chopped beetle in the Berlin gallery therefore represents a visual short circuit: the icon of the German car industry placed in the middle of a museum reflection on the power of images and collective memory.

With the addition of this work to its collection, the German museum underlines the value of an artistic practice that has been able to combine radically and delicacy. Wrappe Beetle is not only an object, but a suspended sign between the current and past, between what is shown and what is hidden, between what remains and what is transformed.

Immaterial art, which ultimately takes shape, becomes legendary. Arte in propagandaFor those who believe in the primacy of ideas about economic materialism. Ideas, the first engine in the world. This is the message for posterity. Past and future that meet to remember – exactly in the paradox of an immediate work – that the world is not alone “struck“Instantaneis.