82 Esquire — June 2018
say. “It’s simply a mater of human decisions: my project, I don’t like to be
involved anymore.” He estimates the cost of the unrealised “Over the
River” project to be around $14m.
he other project remains. If Christo realises it, it could prove to be his
— or rather, their — greatest work. “Abu Dhabi Mastaba (Project for United
Arab Emirates)” will be a scaled-up version of the London Mastaba. You
might even say the Serpentine project is something of a run-through,
a proof of concept; showing not only how majestic a stack of oil barrels
can look, but also the kind of cultural impact it can have, and visitor num-
bers it can atract. “he UAE Mastaba project is one of the most ambitious,
not to say audacious, projects Christo and Jeanne-Claude conceived in
a career of ambitious and audacious projects,” says Paul Goldberger, former
architecture critic for he New Yorker. “If it is ever realised I think it would
have to rank among their most stunning achievements.”
he UAE Mastaba, which has been planned since 1977, making it the
longest running unaltered project of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s partner-
ship, will rest on sand, not water. Rather than the London Mastaba’s 7,506
barrels, it will be covered in 410,000 — more than 50 times as many.
It will be 150m high, making it the largest sculpture ever made, a few
metres taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza and with a footprint that, as
Christo and his team like to tell you, would fit snugly into Saint Peter’s
Square in the Vatican. Christo has estimated that it will cost £300m.
It will be Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s only permanent large-scale work.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude first visited the UAE in 1979, ater they
managed to secure permission through the French foreign minister, Louis
de Guiringaud, himself an art collector. hey had been looking for a site
for their Mastaba idea, which they had tried and failed to get permission
to build in both Texas and Holland, and he suggested that the newly
formed federation, which had only been established in 1971, might be
receptive. hey have been on a charm ofensive ever since: before Jeanne-
Claude’s death, they made numerous further trips to Abu Dhabi together,
talking to rulers, dignitaries, students and school children. In 2012,
Christo established “he Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award” to nurture
artistic talent in the region, and show general goodwill. He still visits sev-
eral times a year, and is due to return again in November.
he decision is currently in the hands of the Abu Dhabi Government. But
Christo has mentioned in the past that Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al
Nahyan, wife of Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, ruler of
the western region of Abu Dhabi, is particularly keen, having been greatly
moved by a memorial film about Jeanne-Claude that Christo had made in
2010 (she is also the patron of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award). Since
2013, Christo has employed Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy
firm set up by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to keep the
negotiations ticking along. “All these projects, the same thing: we need to
find people who know these people,” he says. “We’re nobody.”
Christo says he doesn’t want to discuss its status, saying only that is
“very advanced,” because “it is delicate things. It is very volatile situation.
You know very well the Middle East is very volatile, generally.” (he Iran–
Iraq War between 1980 and 1988 was one of the contributing factors to
the protracted planning.)
he Mastaba for the UAE is also an astounding undertaking. It will
take 30 months to build, and despite four decades of planning, negotiating
and ingratiating, and rumours that a green light is imminent, it has still
not been lit. In June of this year, Christo will turn 83. If he is going to
make his and Jeanne-Claude’s masterwork happen in his own life time, he
cannot waste a minute.
Christo’s dogged pursuit of his singular artistic impulses — all the
glorious-yet-fleeting successes, all the maddening, agonising failures —
place him, in character, somewhere between Sisyphus and Kubla Khan.
So, too, have they placed him somewhat outside the conventional art
world. He has never been represented by a gallery — “when I was very
young probably I was happy to have gallery, but nobody was interested
in my stuf!” — and as a result has found himself in possession of a huge