The Floating Piers by Christo and Jeanne-Claude

10 October 2016

The Floating Piers by Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Johnny Tucker realises a boyhood dream when he gets to experience first-hand a Christo and Jeanne-Claude installation, and takes a walk on the artwork Floating Piers on Lake Iseo — along with 75,000 other people

Words and Finished Installation Photography Johnny Tucker

As a very young lad my imagination was fired by the exploits of what I thought of as a mad artist with a crazy name, who had taken to wrapping things up in material on an almost unimaginable scale.

From the Australian coastline to the Reichstag, via a 25 mile-long material fence and a curtain stretched across a valley, the mysteriously named Christo has fashioned a unique oeuvre of large-scale, manpower-heavy, fabric-centred Grands Projets.

The shade of the convent provided a small respite from the sun on cloudless day

The shimmering, orangey-yellow fabric was made from polypropylene but felt silk-like under foot

Just to put the record straight, it always used to be Christo that was credited for these installations, but in 1994 it emerged that they were the work of Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude — she more involved in the realisation and him in the creative conceptualisation, it would appear. Prejudice against women in the art world and the fact that Christo had started working before Jeanne-Claude as an artist, made them decide on this course of accreditation. Now the projects are jointly credited.

Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, but she is still co-credited on the very latest project - The Floating Piers in Lake Iseo, Italy, which saw another monumental installation for 16 days from mid-June.

Not content with just wrapping the piers, the material continues on into the villages on the shore

In all, 1.2 million people visited the art installation, which was particularly busy on calm, sunny days

Lake Iseo — one along from Lake Garda — is one of those idyllic settings where steep, lush-green mountain sides dip down to the invitingly deep, green-blue water, and terracotta-roofed towns huddle together in little groups along the lake’s shore.

Despite the numbers, there was plenty of room for people to huddle in groups or lie down to take that all important selfie...

Two of the three walkways that stretched for over 2 miles. The third is out of sight around the corner of the island on the left

It was within this setting that Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s installation took place, and, like all of the previous works, was entirely self-funded, mostly from the sale of drawings of completed pieces, preparatory sketches and collages. There was also no admission fee charged — it was all completely open and free.

The warning system telling potential pier walkers how choppy the water was and hence how lively the experience

Sketches and artworks for the project. Christon and Jeanne-Claude never accept donation, but self-fund everything by selling artworks. Image credit: Drawing 2014 in two parts, 15 x 96" and 42 x 96" (38 x 244cm and 106.6 x 244 cm), pencil, charcoal, pastel, wax crayon, enamel paint, hand-drawn map, cut-out, photographs by Wolfgang Volz, fabric sample and tape, photo: Andre Grossmann, copyright 2014 Christo

Prosaically, The Floating Piers were a series of walkways that stretched out across Lake Iseo for two miles, connecting the mainland village of Sulzano to the large island of Monte Isola and out from there around a disused Franciscan convent on the much smaller island of San Paolo. The walkways themselves were a floating pontoon made of 200,000 polyethylene cubes of around 0.5m x 0.5m (covering 70,000 sq m). These were then wrapped — naturally — in a shimmering, orangey-yellow polypropylene fabric. Where the piers met the land, the material continued on to terra firma, insinuating itself around the streets of the towns of Sulzano and Peschiera Maraglio.

Sketches and artworks for the project. Christon and Jeanne-Claude never accept donation, but self-fund everything by selling artworks. Image credit: Drawing 2015 in two parts, 65 x 42" and 65 x 15" (165 x 106.6cm and 165 x 38cm), pencil, charcoal, enamel paint, cut-out photographs by Wolfgang Volz, map, fabric sample, and tape. Photo: Andre Grossmann, copyright 2015 Christo

Sketches and artworks for the project. Christon and Jeanne-Claude never accept donation, but self-fund everything by selling artworks. Image credit: Collage 2014. 17 x 22" (43.2 x 55.9cm), pencil, wax crayon, enamel paint, photograph by Wolfgang Volz, map, fabric sample and tape, collection Ingrid and Thomas Joccheim, Germany, photo: Andre Grossmann, copyright 2014 Christo.

The Floating Piers had clear echoes of a previous piece entitled Surrounded Islands, which saw 11 islands, in Biscayne Bay near Miami, surrounded by bright-pink fabric in the early Eighties.

Sketches and artworks for the project. Christon and Jeanne-Claude never accept donation, but self-fund everything by selling artworks. Image credit: Artwork details not available at time of going to press, copyright 2014 Christo

Map showing how the wrapped piers insinuated their way onto the shore and into the town of Sulzano. Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

The essential difference is that no one could walk on the fabric there, but for The Floating Piers that was essential to its existence. The work of Christo and Jeannne-Claude is very much about the personal experience and individual reaction to these pieces of installation/land art/environmental art. The sheer accessibility of this piece made it even more exciting. The work is also about experiencing given situations in a completely new way, and this it facilitated perfectly.

The polypropylene fabric being woven. Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

The material being stretched out prior to wrapping. Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

In my mind’s eye, I had a vision of myself walking on the piers that was not dissimilar to those idealised cars in the city ads — that is, me and hardly anyone else at all, maybe someone off in the distance. The reality was something altogether different. Although it was only in place for 16 days, some 1.2 million people descended upon the artwork during that period — that’s 75,000 people a day, a large football crowd. Given that some days the weather was not great (there was a colour code warning system in place to show you how choppy the water was and hence how lively the piers) the crowds were naturally larger on some days than others, including that sunny day I visited. If you had viewed the piers from above on that day, they would have looked like some strips of flypaper that had performed their job well and had not been changed for some little while.

Manufacturing the 200,000 polyethylene cubes that made up the piers. Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

Despite not being exactly what I’d envisaged, with the exception of a few pressure points of people, the experience was still exuberant. The walkways varied in width but were always wide enough to allow plenty of space, and if you timed your walking and pacing just right you could bounce moon-landing like from one air-filled pontoon unit to the next. Underfoot — and it begged to walked on barefoot — the fabric felt more like damask than some industrial material. And this is without any of the higher, more-miraculous notions of walking on water towards a convent. It also played out so well with the Italian culture of promenading, and the atmosphere was universally upbeat.

Moving the cubes into position prior to wrapping. Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

That said, another part of the experience was endeavour and endurance — again somewhat religious in nature — walking two miles in full sun with no hint of shade until you reached the walls of the convent proved a little too much for some. Launches were on hand with medical staff and there was a steady sound of ambulance sirens back on the mainland all-day long. Seeking a more meditative experience of the artwork, I returned very early the next morning when the sun was not very high — but the visitor number already were…

The installation has now gone, leaving not a trace behind other than a memory, particularly among the locals. Christo and Jeannne-Claude have always been very ecologically minded about their works and make sure there is no long-term impact. Lake Iseo itself, has gone back to being a beautiful, bustling holiday destination, rather than a seething Glastonbury minus the music.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Moving the cubes into position prior to wrapping

Though both naturalised Americans, Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was born in Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude Marie Denat, in Morocco. What’s more, they were both born on the same day - 13 June 1935.

Christo testing out his creation on what looks like one of the more choppy days... Image credit: Wolfgang Volz, copyright: 2014 Christo

They met in 1958 and married the following year. The couple always travelled separately so that if one plane crashed the other could continue their work. During their particular heyday in the late Sixties and early Seventies, it was not unusual for two projects to be running simultaneously and for the pair to separate, to work on different artworks. Christo never saw the Wrapped Medieval Tower and the Wrapped Fountain in Spoleto, while Jeanne-Claude never saw the Wrapped Kunsthalle in Bern.

In the names of their pieces they often include a period, that can cover many years. This is the time from when the idea was conceived until when it was realised.

The Over The River project will cover the Arkansas River with almost 6 miles of silver fabric. Image credit: Drawing 2007, 35.2cm x 38.7cm (13 7/8" x 15 1/4") pencil, pastel, charcoal and wax crayon, photo: Wolfgang Volz, copyright 2010 Christo.

In some cases, due to the huge nature of the projects, the realisation is a lengthy process of seeking permissions and even fighting off legal challenges. The wrapping of the Reichstag took 24 years from conception to realisation, while the Pont Neuf took 10.

The Over The River project will cover the Arkansas River with almost 6 miles of silver fabric. Image credit: Drawing 2010, 13 7/8" x 15 1/4" (35.2cm x 38/7cm), pencil, pastel, charcoal, and wax crayon. Photo: Andre Grossmann, copyright 2010 Christo

There are two more Christo and Jeanne-Claude projects currently in progress, Over The River and The Mastaba. Over The River, which has been in gestation since 1992, involves 5.9 miles of silvery, luminous fabric panels high above a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, between Salida and Cañon City in south-central Colorado. It is still the subject of legal battles.

The planned Mastaba project in Abu Dhabi will be made from 410,000 brightly coloured barrels. Image credit: Scale model 1979, 32 1/2 x 96 x 96" (82.5 x 244 x 244cm), enamel paint, wood, paint, sand and cardboard, photo: Wolfgang Volz, copyright 1979 Christo

The concept for The Mastaba in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates was created in 1977. If realised, ‘It will be the largest sculpture in the world, made from 410,000 multicoloured barrels to form a mosaic of bright, sparkling colours, echoing Islamic architecture,’ Christo says.