80 Esquire — June 2018
Christo doesn’t have assistants and will not allow anyone into his stu-
dio — “It is not cleaned since 1964!” — so he receives visitors in a gallery
space-cum-reception room on the first floor, which is hot as Hades thanks
to boxy heaters against the walls that groan and creak as they pump out
hot air supplied by the enormous generator in the basement that powers
the whole building. he room has high ceilings and a tired, greenish-grey
carpet which is starting to rumple in places, as though it were one of
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works. here are sculptures doted about:
swaddled tin cans, stacked oil barrels, a plastic-wrapped “package” that
looks like a pregnant belly. he walls are covered with Christo’s drawings
for projects, made and framed by his own hand: some completed, some
abandoned, one still possible.
Images of Jeanne-Claude are strikingly apparent around the room, in
photographs and on the cover of books on the bookcase and cofee table.
Here she is in a photo taken in her later years, holding her husband’s
hands, smiling, with her trademark flame-red hair. Here, a picture of an
early work of Christo’s from 1963, a painting of Jeanne-Claude he
wrapped in plastic, now yellowing, though her parted red lips and feline
eyes still burn through.
hey met in Paris when he was hired to paint several portraits of her
mother, ater he had escaped Communist Bulgaria for Prague and Vienna,
coming to the French capital in 1958. heir romance was a lively one. He
first became involved with her half-sister, Joyce; Jeanne-Claude mean-
while got engaged to another man but became pregnant with Christo’s
child (legend has it their first kiss was so passionate that he broke a tooth).
She went through with the marriage, but later said that even during her
honeymoon she knew she had to end it: “I’m sure that instinctively my
entire body called out to Christo.” heir son, Cyril, was born in 1960, and
they married in 1962.
Jeanne-Claude’s nephew, Jonathan Henery, vice-president of Christo’s
company, CVJ Corporation, goes to fetch him from upstairs. (here is
a fair amount of family involvement: Vladimir Yavachev, director of oper-
ations who is overseeing construction of the London Mastaba, is Christo’s
own nephew, son of his elder brother, Anani.)
Christo, when he arrives, has the energy of a coiled spring. Small, with
a cumulonimbus of white hair around his ears, he wears glasses, a striped
shirt, black trainers and jeans with a hole in the knee, cinched tight with
a woven belt; clothes perhaps roomier than they once were. He chooses a
harder chair over the sofa, and does not hesitate to detail his vigorous
habits. “I’m living in this building you know since when? Fity-four years.
he same building. No elevators. I’m climbing 90 stairs every day. And I’m
working standing. No stool in my studio.” (here are stair-lits installed on
the narrow flights of stairs, which Henery assures are only for transport-
ing heavy boxes and suitcases.)
Christo became an American citizen in 1973, but his English still tum-
bles out in fragments. He also spoke French with Jeanne-Claude, and it
occasionally peppers his speech and has melded with his still-heavy
Bulgarian accent. He likes to answer questions with “No!” or sometimes,
“No! No no no no!” which is alarming at first until you realise it is a reflex
of sorts, perhaps the result of a lifetime of explaining, or justiying. And
that he enjoys being challenged, something at which Jeanne-Claude was
particularly adept: “his is mostly I’m missing,” he’ll say later. “She was the
most critical person and I miss her all the time.”
Right now, his mind is fully absorbed by the project in London, and he
is keen to convey quite what the people of Britain are in for. “You know
how much it is? 500 tonnes! Floating!” he says, with evident delight. And
later, of the sculpture’s height: “You know what that means, 20 metres?
Go outside, walk on the next sidewalk — it’s the height of our building.
hey don’t understand how big it is! Ha!”
he London Mastaba will sit in the middle of the Serpentine Lake, so
unlike many other of their projects, those who come will be encouraged
to look but not touch. It will, however, be only about 15–20m from theIn 1985, after nine years of waiting for government approval, Christo and Jeanne-Claude
wrapped the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 41,800sq m of golden polyamide fabric
With over 1.2m visitors, ‘The Floating Piers’ on Lake Iseo, Lombardy,
was Italy’s most popular art event of 2016