It’s a wrap: Christo’s final art project follows Paris triumph | Christo

Before his death last year, the artist Christo had not just one but two dreams: to wrap the Arc de Triomphe and build a massive structure out of oil barrels in the desert sands of Abu Dhabi. L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped was completed last month and today visitors to Paris have one last chance to see the arch wrapped in silver-blue fabric before it is dismantled tomorrow.

Once Christo’s nephew Vladimir Yavachev oversees the restoration of the monument to its original glory in time for next month’s armistice commemoration, he will turn his attention east to create the final monumental project, which – when finished – will be the only one will be the artist’s permanent large-scale sculpture and the greatest work of art in the world.

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Originally conceived by Christo and his wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude in 1977, the Abu Dhabi Mastaba is a simple but massive construction made from 410,000 multicolored 55-gallon steel barrels.

Detailed drawings by Christo show the geometrically arranged barrels, inspired by the old mastabas – or “mud bank” for tired desert travelers – with two vertical sides, two sloping sides and a flat top, which come from the first urban civilizations of Mesopotamia. The colored runners form a mosaic that reflects Islamic designs.

The mastaba will be 150m high – 12m higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and higher than the St Dunes. In an interview with the Observer in 2012, Christo outlined his vision: “When the sun rises, the vertical wall becomes almost full of gold.”

He said he wanted to create a sculpture that was “deeply rooted” in the great tradition of Islamic architecture: “When Louis XIV built the kitschy Palace of Versailles, the greatest architecture in the Middle East was incredibly simple.” delayed the Iran-Iraq war, but Christo revived it after being inspired by Abu Dhabi’s drive to transform itself into a cultural oasis in the Middle East, and in particular by the Louvre Museum’s decision to open an outpost there.

Christo estimated that the Abu Dhabi Mastaba would take up to 30 months to build and create hundreds of jobs. But human rights groups are already concerned about what they consider to be an emirate state, which is using cultural projects to whitewash its violations against migrant workers. The United Arab Emirates state announced in June that it would pump US $ 6 billion into cultural and creative projects over the next five years to shift its economy from oil to tourism.

Christo in his New York studio with plans for the mastaba in 2012. The artist died in 2020 at the age of 84. Photo: Wolfgang Volz / © 2012 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation

Human Rights Watch said the Louvre Abu Dhabi, officially inaugurated in 2017 by French President Emmanuel Macron, was “corrupted” and “done at the expense of human suffering in a country whose rulers still largely despise and suppress human rights” . critical voice ”.

There are also concerns about the treatment of workers at the Frank Gehry-designed satellite museum at the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, which was slated to open in 2012 but not expected to be completed before 2025.

Born in Bulgaria as Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, the artist studied in Sofia, but fled in 1957 and stowed away on a train from Prague to Vienna and on via Geneva to Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, his partner until her death in 2009 . The couple moved to New York in 1964 and spent the first three years there as illegal immigrants.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude began working with steel oil drums in Paris in the 1950s because the material was cheap. From 1958 onwards, many of the couple’s works of art were created with barrels, packed and unpacked. Photos of Christo in the storage room in the basement of Jeanne-Claude’s Paris apartment from 1960 show him surrounded by barrel sculptures. His best-known works included the wrapping of the entire Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 and the Pont-Neuf in Paris in 1985.

Yavachev, who oversaw the packaging of the Arc de Triomphe, told the Observer, “It was Christo’s desire to complete these two projects. Now it is my mission to get the mastaba for Abu Dhabi.

“I am very optimistic that we can do it. It may take some time – three, five, 10, even 15 years – but the vision is there and we will make it. “

Yavachev said the mastaba was designed and drawn in detail by Christ and is ready to go as soon as the Abu Dhabi authorities approve: “This will be the only permanent large Christo work of art – well, as permanent as anything on this one Planets – and it will be the last, so it’s very symbolic. “