Cultured Magazine

there at the time. I wasn't thinking "Ah let's do something because the Berlin Wall's happened." I don't do commissions because I cannot imagine other things than what I am. FS: So, you met curator and museum director Jan van der Marck right after getting your green card! He later invited you to Miami for the New World Festival and introduced you to Beth Dunlop. He was our founding director and opened the museum a year after Surrounded Islands. How did you meet him? C: Oh, much later. I was living in Paris as a refugee with very little, trying to sell my modern Christo works. In 1961, before Rue Visconti, the new art dealers started to come from New York to Paris and started to see the new European artists. This is how I met the important dealer Leo Castelli. He saw my work and told me that if I went to New York, he would put me in a group show in his gallery on 77th Street. He became a good friend, and Jeanne-Claude and I started to dream about going to New York as soon as possible. To put money aside we started to sell works, and finally in February 1964, we arrived in Manhattan. Leo was organizing a spring exhibition for four young artists. He had one big room in his 77th Street location that was like a box without windows, just four white walls. He invited four artists: me, Richard Artschwager, Robert Watts and Alex Hay. Each artist had one wall and for my wall, I decided to do storefronts. I only had to do the show window. I built a little storefront façade, with materials I found on the street in Manhattan and in my little room in the Chelsea Hotel. I put together doors, two parts of the glass and the storefront. I even wrapped an air conditioner above the door, and that storefront was exhibited by Leo in 1964. FS: Wow, so is this how van der Marck saw the work? C: Yes, it was a spectacular storefront. It is one of those rare pieces I did between 1963 and 1967. That storefront period is very important because it was when I started moving away from the architectural façades. Two years later in 1966, I did a personal exhibition for Leo, where I built four corner storefronts, which is a very important piece I own. Unlike other artists, I don't have exclusivity with any gallery. I worked with many galleries originally, but no one was willing to take care of our, my, things, and then, Jeanne-Claude and me, we had a big collection—thousands of pieces, like 3,000 pieces or more that we own. This is an enormous treasure that is mostly in Basel, but there's a big storage in New York, too. FS: Yeah, I saw so much in Basel. C: I was in New York in the spring of '64, living with Jeanne-Claude in the Chelsea Hotel, and we came back to our little boy who was four years old with his grandparents in Paris. We returned to Paris and after seeing what was new, I told Jeanne-Claude, "We should go to America." We came with our Rietveld chair and all of these little things to America, like tourists, but after three months we became illegal aliens. For three years we were illegal aliens, but finally I got a green card in 1967. In 1973, I became an American citizen. FS: And this was when you met van der Marck? C: We had a call from Jan van der Marck, who was the curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He was organizing an exhibition there where Martin Friedman was the director. They were trying to do an exhibition titled "Eight Artists/Bigger Image," and I lent them plenty of pieces. The exhibition started in '67 or '68 in Minneapolis and traveled to St. Louis, where Emily Rauh was the curator. Meanwhile, my first solo exhibition in a museum was in Holland. While we were living in Paris, we became friendly with the great Dutch collectors Martin and Mia Visser who lived in Eindhoven, Holland. We also became friendly with the director of the Van Abbemuseum, Jean Leering, who was very eager to make my first personal exhibition happen of the storefronts, wrapped trees and all the packages in the spring, April '66. It included the great storefront that was done here in one big room in the Van Abbemuseum. Another room was the wrapped trees and many new other pieces. In 1961, still living in Paris, I tried to install the Iron Curtain. I also tried to wrap big brick buildings. I photographed little scale model packages and cut out people with cars and bicycles to make a photomontage called Wrapped Public Building, and a little text explaining what I was doing, how it should be wrapped, and how the ideal building to be wrapped should be a real public building, prison or parliament. Of course, there was no chance to do a prison or parliament. But the idea was known to a number of museum people and when we arrived here, Bill Rubin was the chief curator of MoMA. We were rotating the wrapped packages and the wheelbarrow and Bill was organizing a landmark 1968 exhibition at MoMA called "Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage." It was a huge exhibition; he emptied the entire MoMA to hold it. Knowing that I did Rue Visconti, we tried to do a temporary transformation of the museum while it was closed, using that two weeks' time—when nobody went—to wrap the museum and install Iron Curtain on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, called Barrels. Of course I did scale models and drawings, but the insurance company and the museum never gave permission. Then, in 1967 or 1968, I became friendly with a young Swiss curator who was very interested in my work: Harold Szeemann. FS: Ah, my friend, yes. C: He was preparing a show for the 50th anniversary of Kunsthalle Bern and he worked very hard to get the permission from the trustees and fire department. The first public building was wrapped, the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, in 1968, which was also the year I proposed wrapping the coastline in California. I was very close to Maurice Tuchman and we were working to wrap the coastline in California. We then had a visit from a young Australian art collector and businessman, John Kaldor, who wanted us to come to Australia to give a lecture. I said to him, "Mr. Kaldor, you have the longest coastline in the world, help us to wrap the coastline." This is why in 1968, John found the coastline and in 1969, we wrapped the coastline near Sydney, Australia. FS: The momentum was picking up. C: Yes, and meanwhile, we started to sell more and we made many important friends including the publisher Harry Abrams, who was crazy over our works. He bought works or did trades with us. Because we were speaking French, we also became very friendly with the de Menils, who were then trustees of MoMA. FS: How did you end up in Miami? C: We arrived in Miami when I was involved in an exhibition around Dade County. FS: The New World Festival. C: They invited us to do something. They said, "You're with the architectural writer of the Miami Herald, Beth Dunlop. You have a car, and she will drive you around Miami-Dade County to see what you'd like to do." I'd never been driven over the causeway, this big bridge—we asked Beth to drive us over it several times, crossing back and forth. Initially, we wanted to wrap the bridge on the causeway because we'd tried to wrap the Pont Neuf, but couldn't get permission. Before Miami, in 1974, there was another art historian who became a good friend, Sam Hunter, who was organizing an exhibition in Newport, Rhode Island called "Monumenta." He invited artists to do something outside in Newport's surroundings, the harbor, etc. We covered the beach area of the coast with fabric in the summer of '74. That was the prelude for the floating fabric in the water. Then in Miami, Jeanne-Claude saw all these islands, and said, "Look, this is the perfect space to surround the islands—there aren't any problems with the coast." She said, "There are so many," and this was how the thing started. FS: Why pink? 212 culturedmag.com

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