During the inaugural weekend of its veiling, September 18 and 19, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped attracted teeming crowds in Paris who flocked to the Place de l’Étoile, at one end of the Champs-Élysées, which was open only to pedestrians and will be car-free every weekend until unwrapping begins, on October 4. Fifty-nine years after he first drew up the concept, in 1962, this is a posthumous triumph for Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and his wife and partner in crime, Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), realized by the artists’ estate under the direction of their nephew, Vladimir Yavachev.
The world’s largest triumphal arch has been dissimulated under 270,000 square feet of recyclable powdered-aluminum-coated polypropylene fabric that has been dressed with 9,850 feet of red polypropylene rope to give the illusion that it has been tied up like a shimmering parcel waiting to be mailed. “The particular challenge with any Christo project is that it’s always a first time,” Vince Davenport, an engineering consultant who worked with the Christos for 35 years, told The Guardian. “It’s never been done before and it will never be done again.”
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