1968 "Christo Wraps the Museum" Scale Models, Photomontages, and Drawings for The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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The entry from the exhibition catalog written by the Director of the Museum:

Scale models, photomontages, and drawings for a … Read more The entry from the exhibition catalog written by the Director of the Museum:

Scale models, photomontages, and drawings for a non-event June 5-25, 1968, the museum of modern art, new york

With the advent of Dada, artists began to employ objects in order to challenge the conventions of sculpture. Man Ray, a pioneer Dada artist, was the first to wrap an object. But his gesture remained unique in the history of Dada. Neither he nor the other artists of the movement seemed to realize the possibilities inherent in the enigma of "packaging," although, in retrospect, it seems a logical concomitant of the emergence of the object. Since then, packaging has itself become a crucial— and potentially insidious—aspect of the way in which the world is presented to us. The exploration of its implications has been taken in hand by Christo (Javacheff). By the range and scale of what he wraps (girls, buildings—nothing is beyond his reach), Christo draws attention to various ironies that exist in the relationship between the packager, the package, and the thing packaged. As an artist function ing more in the realm of "events" than in that of painting and sculpture, it is not surprising that he should have dreamed that it was time to wrap up the Museum— and for that matter the trees, the sculptures, and even some of the spectators in its garden. The Museum staff found this a potentially lively and poetically strange project. But the more practical heads of the fire department, police department, and insurance agencies prevailed. Nevertheless, we felt that our public would enjoy seeing the models, photomontages, and drawings that Christo had prepared as sketches for this event, an event that was to have signaled the closing of the exhibition Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage. William S. Rubin See less