Christo

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1971

Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs - Amerikanische und Europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, 1983-84, no. 63

David Bourdon, Christo, New York 1970, pl. 255 & pl. 266 (detail), illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the cloth has slightly more cream tones in the original. The catalogue illustration fails to fully capture the texture and three-dimensional nature of the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is minor faint spots of staining in areas to the cloth. The nail on the top right back edge of the model is slightly sticking out.
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"The Wrapped Coast was one of the most extraordinary images and memorable art spectacles of the nineteen-sixties"  David Bourdon cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Early Works 1958-1969, 2001, p. 247

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's spectacular Wrapped Coast near Sydney, Australia was one of the most astounding and innovative artistic endeavours of the late 1960s and one of their earliest forays into environmental art.  Dramatically transforming the jagged cliffs and rocky shores of the South Pacific Ocean coastline, the artists sought to remove their work from the usual precincts of art and put it outdoors, executed on massive scale, in an attempt to harmoniously merge art with nature.  Employing one million square feet of erosion control fabric along a shore area extending approximately 2.4 kilometres long, 46 to 244 meters wide, and 26 meters high at the northern cliffs, and at sea level at the southern sandy beach, the artists created a spectacle unlike any other by physically 'wrapping' the coast with enormous sheaths of white which provided a striking contrast with the emerald sea below and blue sky above.  The duo had first entertained the idea of ground-wrapping in California, a state they had never visited, as a series of projects for a wrapped coast.  Christo recalls, "I picked the shoreline because the earth starts where the sea ends.  The sea gives the only real geological relief of the earth" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Early Works 1958-1969, 2001, p. 245).

The Wrapped Coast was erected on a stretch of shore line located on the idyllic Little Bay, property of Prince Henry Hospital, nine miles southeast of the centre of Sydney.  The coast remained wrapped for a period of ten weeks from October 28^th 1969.  The project received major media attention and was the most controversial art project in Australia since the Sydney Opera House.  Over 17,000 man-power hours, over a period of four weeks, were expended by 15 professional mountain climbers, 110 labourers, and architecture and art students.  It was the artists wish that the cloth-covered terrain provide a tactile as well as visual experience, with spectators being permitted to walk upon the wrapped ground.  The project was first conceived in the autumn of 1968 with an introduction to John Kaldor, a Hungarian-born textile man and art collector from Sydney who collaborated with Christo and Jeanne-Claude on the project for a wrapped coast in Australia. 

This model for the project is one of the earliest working pieces for this tremendous artistic victory.  Executed in miniature scale, it projects an image of the Australian coastline as Christo and Jeanne-Claude envisioned it.  Employing materials true to the project, the artists used actual fabric and twine pinned along their fabricated three-dimensional rocky coast.  Creating curving forms against the deep green-blue of the sea, the model was a key element in achieving their vision.  The site was documented so thoroughly by aerial photographs and contour maps that Christo was able to execute these scale models and various collages which closely approximated the final results without even leaving his home in New York.  These studies are objects of interest in their own right, tangible testaments to a remarkable work of art that is no longer in existence.  Another Wrapped Coast, Project for Australia scale model is in the permanent collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and one other in John Kaldor's personal collection.  One of the first and most important large-scale landscape art projects, the Australian Wrapped Coast would lead to other major wrapping projects around the world, including the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris realizing Christo and Jeanne-Claude's heroic and romantic ambitions.