As we had reported last June on the passing of the artist Christo at age 84, it was not unexpected that an auction sale might ensue offering art and other belongings from his estate. And sure enough such a sale took place this month at Sotheby’s with the alluring title “Unwrapped: The Hidden World of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.” As the auction houses love to brand them, here was truly an iconic collection.
For Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his wife and lifelong muse and creative partner, became famous for wrapping things, notably historic structures like the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris. These projects required herculean patience and persistence, as endless challenges and rejections always stood in their way. But Christo and Jeanne-Claude often prevailed; and when they did, a finished “project” might be on view for only two weeks before being disassembled and vanishing forever. All that remained were the original drawings. These were sold to pay the costs that Christo and Jean-Claude always absorbed in full. Christo, after all, had fled Communist Bulgaria in 1957 and preferred complete financial independence.
While Christo and Jean-Claude lived and worked in New York, the sale of their collection took place in Paris. This was a poetic choice of venue, for the couple had launched their careers there. Moreover, their collection had a distinctive European cast to it, with works by Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana highlighting it—not to mention Christo’s own remarkable art.
I recall another auction like this one that took place at Sotheby’s London in 1995. It offered the remaining contents of the studio of Man Ray (1890-1976), an American-born artist who made his name and career in Paris. When his widow and muse Juliet died in their cramped apartment at 2 bis rue Feron, everything there—some 600 paintings, drawings, sketches, prints and fascinating Surrealist “objects” (such as a hammer encased in a bottle)—was sold at auction. Preceding the sale were gala parties, receptions and dinners that transformed the staid Sotheby’s premises on New Bond Street into a silk-lined circus tent.
While this glamorous socializing aspect of a major auction is now on hold for the foreseeable future, the “Unwrapped” sale just concluded hardly suffered for lack of crowds. Instead, in the new virtual mode, the sale took you behind the scenes of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “hidden world” in ways that would have been unimaginable back in 1995. Indeed, the “Unwrapped” online catalogue gave one the sensation of entering and roaming about a dazzling multi-media scrapbook.
For example, there were video reminiscences by people who knew the artists; one-minute video studies of key works, such as Christo’s enormous and elaborate drawing for the Pont Neuf project; dreamy old black-and-white photographs that transported one back to the groovy 1960s; even pages from Christo’s “Week-at-a-Glance” diary from 1967 as well as a glimpse into an appointment book that showed his note about a dinner engagement with Lucio Fontana in Milan. The catalogue had the feel of a stirring documentary.
And while it would have been thrilling to be in Paris for the “Unwrapped” sale, drinking champagne in the glittering reception rooms with all those posh art world grandees as in the old days, one had to admit that the online catalogue was a potent substitute, a very effective, high-tech means of selling the collection. After all, the final total of $11.2 million for both the “live” (28 lots) and the “timed online” (347 lots) portions of the sale more than doubled pre-sale expectations.
The whole experience seemed an altogether vicarious one. Still, it left me thinking that Christo and Jeanne-Claude—those grandmasters of theatre and staging—would have been thrilled to see their collection “unwrapped” with such timely, cutting-edge showmanship.