Double Show Window
Artist
Christo
(American, 1935 – 2020)
Date1972
MediumPlexiglas
Dimensions91.4 x 86.4 x 7.6 cm (36 x 34 x 3 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineTheodore T. and Mary G. Ellis Fund
Object number1973.8
Label TextChristo is most familiar for wrapped buildings, bridges, and vast acres of land made in collaboration with his late wife Jeanne-Claude, including the 1995 wrapping of Berlin’s Reichstag in a million square feet of aluminum colored fabric. His interest in the relationship between what is visible and what is concealed can be traced back to the late 1950s when, living in Paris, he sought to create a relevant form of social realism amidst the prevalent postwar abstraction. He began wrapping found objects—bottles, tin cans, boxes, stacks of magazines, furniture—in fabric and rope, thus altering their contexts and letting their shrouded abstract contours dominate their previous functions and meanings in everyday reality. After moving to New York in 1964, Christo began working on an architectural scale starting with a series of life-sized store fronts, the view through their plate-glass windows partially blocked by hanging fabrics or sheets of paper. In this related sculpture, Double Show Window, the rectangular structure and white-washed surface straddle the worlds of geometric abstraction and architectural detail.
ProvenanceTanglewood Press, New York, NYOn View
On view
