Christo

(American, Bulgaria 1935-2020)

Store Front (Project)
1964

Footnotes

This work is registered in the Christo & Jeanne-Claude archive.

Provenance
Private Collection, Europe (acquired directly from the artist)
Sale: Dorotheum, Vienna, Contemporary Art, 25 November 2009, Lot 3
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner



On the same day in June 1935, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born into very different worlds – Christo Valdimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria and Jeanne-Claude Guillebon in French Morocco. Meeting in Paris in 1958, their personal and professional lives would be forever intertwined, eventually becoming the most important artist-duo of the second half of the 20th century. Their unique vision would bring their wrapped works and large-scale installations to cities and landscapes across the globe, including a final work to be presented in Paris in September 2021, L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, posthumously in accordance with the artists' wishes. It is however in the artists' earlier Store Fronts and Store Front Projects where we can really begin to see this initial scaling-up of their unique aesthetic. A series of works that were initiated after their move to New York City in 1964, the present work Store Front (Project) from the same year is a delicate and thoughtful example of his preparatory works from this landmark series.

After fleeing communist Bulgaria via Czechoslovakia and Vienna, Christo made his way to the French capital, where his quintessential style of wrapping cans, bottles and everyday domestic items was immediately established. In Paris, Christo gravitated towards the Nouveau Réalisme movement, joining the ranks of Yves Klein, Martial Raysse and Niki de Saint Phalle however soon after his marriage to Jeanne-Claude and the birth of their son, the young family decide to emigrate to New York. Initially installing themselves at the Chelsea Hotel, renown home-from-home for many artists, they would eventually move to a loft in downtown Manhattan, gifting the Chelsea Hotel owner with one of his Store Front Projects as collateral for the bill.

To-scale shop façades created from wood and painted in a variety of colours, each Store Front was preceded by detailed architectural maquette-like sketches, typical of Christo's lifelong working process. The present work is a rare and intricate example of these preparatory works, with every detail of the eventual Store Front replicated: from the precise to scale measurements to the metal grill on the windows and the internal lights illuminating the colourful interior. Born from the Show Cases Christo was already creating from found medicine cabinets in Paris in 1963, the Store Fronts should be understood as their scaling-up. Similar to the evolution of the early Wrapped Cans or Packages, which would eventually evolve into projects such as The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1979), the Store Fronts recall the imposing architecture of New York City. "The result was enigmatic, architectonically elusive, evocative: Store Fronts were of great beauty, possessed of quiet melancholy and a sense of loneliness that recalled the work of American painter Edward Hopper or the boxes of Joseph Cornell. The pervasive sense of mystery [leaving] the observer wondering what was behind the façades" (Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, New York 2001, p. 27).

If the Show Cases are understood as the precursor to the Store Fronts, the Store Fronts are understood by the artist as precursors to the Valley Curtains in Colorado (1972) and the Running Fence in California (1976). It is in the Store Fronts that the concept of internal and external space is initially explored, "the store fronts radiate a kind of suspense, as if the blocked windows or the closed door might admit one if you only knew the hours of opening. However, our perceptual and physical links are arrested as the invitation stays unfulfilled. What Christo [and Jeanne-Claude have] done is to turn physical space into psychological response, as the façade becomes a wall, absolutely cancelling the inside... [They] cancel the internal space that we anticipate and define space as what is between us and the glass. The spectator's investigative, voyeuristic impulse is converted into an experience of himself, as an object in space" (Lawrence Alloway, Christo, New York 1969, p. VII). The Store Fronts act as a vehicle for our conceptual understanding of space in direct relation to our surroundings. Diverging from the work of the Minimalists, Christo's approach to space is specifically architectural, addressing our every-day interactions to the world around us and how we manipulate and manoeuvre within that space daily. Like the wrapping of the Pont Neuf or the Valley Curtain, the Store Fronts force the viewer to renegotiate their relationship to that space both physically and psychologically. The familiarity of these buildings and spaces is ruptured by the artist's intervention forcing us to confront our own physicality.

While as much technical drawings as they are works of art in their own right, the preparatory works represent a lasting testament to the fleeting nature of their monumental culminations. The present work is a rare example within the Store Front Projects in its inclusion of internal light-fittings, its internal illumination bringing the potential of this project to life. The precise architectural nature of the Store Front Projects is evidence of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's unique vision as sculptors but also as visionaries who have made the world's cities and landscape their canvas.

Christo's work has been celebrated in the world's most important museums with his Store Fronts and Store Front Projects found in some prominent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirsshorn Museum, Washington D.C., the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His work can also be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, where the artist's work is currently being exhibited in a landmark retrospective, where an entire room has been dedicated to the extraordinary Store Fronts and Store Front Projects.