Christo's Plan to Wrap the Arc de Triomphe
L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle) collage by Christo, 2019
Photo by André Grossmann, © 2019 Christo
L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle) collage by Christo, 2018
Photo by André Grossmann, © 2018 Christo
L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris - Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle) collage by Christo, 2018
Photo by André Grossmann, © 2018 Christo
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Editor's note: Christo's l’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped project has been postponed until 2021. Instead of opening in September 2020, it is now scheduled to run from September 18 to October 3, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For two weeks next year, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris will look a bit more colorful than usual. Collaborating with the Pompidou Center and the Center for National Monuments, the New York–based artist Christo will wrap the structure with some 270,000 square feet of silvery blue fabric and 23,000 feet of red rope, for his temporary work entitled l’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Étoile-Charles de Gaulle).
The installation will precede a major exhibition at the Pompidou surveying the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his late wife and artistic partner, created while the couple lived in the French capital in the late 1950s and mid ‘60s. The show will also tell the story of the duo’s 1985 piece The Pont-Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris.
“Thirty-five years after Jeanne-Claude and I wrapped the Pont-Neuf, I am eager to work in Paris again to realize our project for the Arc de Triomphe,” said Christo, in a statement.
Over the course of several decades, Christo and Jean-Claude created a number of monumental works of art, famously wrapping 1.5 miles of Australian coastline and Berlin’s Reichstag building. For their 2005 piece The Gates, they installed 7,503 16-foot high frames with panels of saffron-colored fabric over pathways in New York City’s Central Park.
French architect Jean Chalgrin designed the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in 1806 and completed in 1836. Christo’s installation will be on view from April 6 – 19, 2020, and the exhibition “Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Paris” (working title) at the Pompidou Center will run from March 18 – June 15, 2020.
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