Letter from Eldon Rush
Arts – March 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Editor,
“The Christos have created some of the most breathtaking works of the 20th century using fabric in, over, through, and around natural and constructed forms” according to Earl A. Powell, Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In this great national treasure will be exhibited, February 3 through June 23, 2002, the first comprehensive survey in the United States of four decades of the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
This show, entitled Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Vogel Collection, will present 61 works, including preparatory drawings, collages, scale models, and photographs of the artists’ large-scale projects, as well as several of Christo’s early packages and wrapped objects. The show draws its contents from the collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel at the National Gallery of Art, an important collection of contemporary art acquired in 1991. The show also includes works given and promised to the nation in honor of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel.
Last year Christo and Jeanne-Claude had showings in France and Germany, the latter being opened by the President of the German Bundestag and the Mayor of Berlin.
All of these exhibits include the artists’ proposed masterpiece entitled “Over the River” for Colorado’s Arkansas River. This project will, if all necessary permits can be obtained, suspend seven miles of translucent fabric panels over a 40-mile section of the Arkansas River, with interruptions for natural and esthetic reasons, between Cañon City and Salida. The artists pay all costs associated with their projects, all are free to the public, and all sites are restored afterward.
How fortunate we Coloradans are to have had Christo and Jeanne-Claude select our Arkansas River for their project from the 89 rivers they surveyed in the nation. The eyes of the world will be focused on Colorado during the 14-day presentation, and it will be remembered thereafter in memories, photographs, books, and exhibits. Let us hope we will not let provincialism ruin our opportunity to host this world-class event.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude temporarily alter, using fabric, vast spaces of our familiar world, then unveil it to expose something new and different in the way we see it. They maintain that their art has no purpose other than being art. They give us the gift of finding our own meaning in it, or of just enjoying it for its uniqueness and beauty. Their art, like life, is mysterious, undefinable, beautiful, glorious, and excruciatingly temporary. And like love, it makes all things new again.
May these bold, daring, brilliant artists continue to grace our battered, hurting, weary world with megatons of beautiful fabric, lifting our spirits and nurturing our dreams that, one day it will be lifted to reveal a world at peace, with goodwill and mutual respect amongst all its inhabitants, and that will be the most beautiful thing our old world has ever seen!
Eldon L. Rush
Pueblo
P.S.: I contacted the Christos, and they say that on account of complications with the Environmental Impact Statement, the “Over the River” project can’t possibly happen until 2004 or ’05.
