We Have Lost Jeanne-Claude
Terribly sad news that Jeanne-Claude, the artist and longtime collaborator and partner of Christo, passed away on November 18. In recent years, the husband-wife team achieved incredible critical and popular success with their “The Gates” project in Central Park, yet that statement seems to undercut what “The Gates” was able to achieve: its elegance and simple beauty, its transformation of space and movement, its gentle consideration of society, life, leisure, nature, and beauty - and achieving these ends on such a grand scale. Heck, my parents, who rarely step inside a gallery save the annual pilgrimage to the Met’s old masters and medieval collections, even went to it. My favorite story about Jeanne-Claude, though, comes from the documentary about another art couple, collectors Herb and Dorothy Vogel. A number of decades ago, the Vogels wanted to buy a Christo rendering, but the artist’s recent success had priced-out the Vogels. Hearing the Vogels were cat lovers, Jeanne-Claude came up with a solution: cat-sit Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s cat for the summer, and they would give the Vogels the piece. The AP obit is here.
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