Copyright %C2%A9 Christo. All rights reserved.
Gift of Joan and Gary Capenexpand_more 2019.124.1
Christo is best known for wrapping objects large and small, simultaneously obscuring them and focusing attention on them. In 1966, while he was a visiting artist at the Minneapolis School of Art (now Minneapolis College of Art and Design), he, his wife Jeanne-Claude, and student assistants created "14,130 Cubic Feet Empaquetage" (also known as "Balloon Ascension") on the school's lawn. It was a large inflated parcel, 32 by 64 feet, made from giant research balloons filled with 2,804 colored balloons, all wrapped in plastic and bound with 3,200 feet of manila rope. A helicopter raised it 20 feet above the ground and hovered for half an hour.
To finance this 1960s performance piece, Christo and the students wrapped 100 cardboard boxes in brown kraft paper bound with twine and sent them to subscribing members of the Walker Art Center’s Contemporary Arts Group. Fortunately, Joan and Gary Capen did not open their box, because inside they would have found a serially numbered card telling them that they had just destroyed a work of art.
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Copyright © Christo. All rights reserved.