November 19, 2009
Artist Jeanne-Claude Dies
Installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Photo courtesy of Wolfgang Volz/LAIF/Redux
The artist Jeanne-Claude passed away last night at a New York hospital of a brain aneurysm, according to the Associated Press. She was 74.
Jeanne-Claude, also known as Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1935. She was the wife and life-long partner of the artist Christo, and their world-famous installations have delighted a generation of followers.
The pair’s 1972-1976 epic project, Running Fence—which the Smithsonian American Art Museum calls “the most lyrical and spectacular” of the artists’ works—was a white fabric and steel-pole fence that ran 24.5 miles long and stood 18 feet high. The fence ran across the properties of 59 ranchers in Sonoma and Marin Counties north of San Francisco. While the fence was just a fleeting installation that stood for a mere two weeks, its memory and its impact is still writ large across the landscape of American artistic endeavors.
Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-1976. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Recently, in a Q&A with Smithsonian magazine’s Anika Gupta, Jeanne-Claude related the difficulty of coaxing all of the land owners into participating in the project. “I was standing in this kitchen and the rancher kept saying to me, ‘The fence has no purpose.’ So I told him, ‘A work of art needs no purpose, it is beautiful.’”
Coming next April 2 and running through September 26, the Smithsonian American Art Museum will present the exhibition, “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76. A Documentation Exhibition.” The exhibition features all of the documentation by the artists—drawings, collages, photographs, film and other components—for the Running Fence project. According to the museum, the project required 18 public hearings, three sessions in the Superior Court of California and the first environmental impact report ever done for a work of art.
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mi más sentido pésame y condolencias por su pérdida, siempre estará en mi mente como alma de tan maravillosos proyectos
Wonderful !
Sad to hear this. I remember the artwork as a kid (esp the yellow umbrellas) and always thought it was so cool.
With heartfelt condolences to the family.
This is sad news. I remember working in a ship chandlery in Newport RI in 1974, when who should walk in but Christo and Jeanne-Claude, asking about buying about 12 anchors, thousands of feet of rope, and hundreds more of chain. Lucky for me they needed someone with a motorboat to help them rig the fabric when they wrapped Mackerel Cove as part of the Monumenta exhibit. All I can say is WOW! I’ll never forget what it was like to work with them.
[...] islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay to the Reichstag in Germany. (Some of you may remember that Jeanne-Claude passed away late last year.) The film tells the story of the making of Running Fence, a 24.5-mile [...]