Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrapped Payphone, 1988
Anne Schneider-Wilson: Good afternoon Christo, thank you so much, I really appreciate you talking to me about Fifty Are Better Than One.
Christo: Very good. Tell me, what would you like to know?
ASW: In this auction, to commemorate 50 years of Edition Schellmann, we are offering some of your works published by Edition Schellmann, including Wrapped Payphone and Show Window. We would like to know how the collaboration between you and Jörg came about.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude Show Window, 2012-2013
Christo: Jörg has been a very dear friend of mine for many years and he also knew Jeanne-Claude very well. I knew about him for some time but met him probably in the early eighties or late seventies, and after that we became very close friends and made many editions together. We know each other like a family, everything we have been discussing for so many years together – you cannot invent that, the special relationship that we have. Jörg did not only publish editions for me but also made them, because you know, sometimes my works are not very easy to produce and are very elaborate and intricate. Many editions are made with fabric and rope, into collages. Jörg is very devoted and resourceful.
ASW: Yes, Jörg is a publisher who has always pushed boundaries.
Christo: Yes, and of course he enjoys that very much – to find a way to realize how I want to have a project done. Sometimes, it involves very ordinary paper other times fabric and glue, paper, and twine, and a variety of other things. I am very stubborn and often I like to have an edition that no other maker could do, except him.
ASW: So is Jörg personally involved in the process of making your editions?
Christo: Yes of course; this is really how we do it. I do a very elaborate prototype, as an original work, like a collage, and after that the work is taken apart into small pieces which need to be handmade by people only he can find. I remember he had a great team of craftsmen and architectural designers who sometimes helped him to glue, cut out, and twine, and glue again all of these things. He also did not use normal printing techniques but rather would tweak things to a different way of being printed, or sometimes printing needed to be done by hand. There are many editions I did with him and of course the objects, like real sculptures, turned into 3-dimensional sculptures, very interesting work, like the old-fashioned Payphone.
Christo and Jörg Schellmann in his studio with another variant of Wrapped Payphone, New York, © Christo and Jeanne-Claude ©Schellmann Art
ASW: We are very excited to be offering the Payphone and Show Window in this auction.
Christo: The Show Window and the Payphone - they are almost like unique pieces, done in a very small edition because they need to be done by hand. The Payphone took several pieces of heavy fabric and polyethylene to be mounted over that phone and bound with different kinds of rope, and that gives the freshness and the clumsiness of the work. Editions today, they’re really clean and very hygienically done and don’t have this really handmade dimension. Show Window was done to help finance the updated third edition of the Catalogue Raisonnée of all my works in editions that Jörg kept doing since the 1980s - it is a sculpture, there are only a very small number of them.
ASW: They definitely have a very unique and personal character. Please can you tell us more about works published in larger editions and Jörg’s commitment to making them available to a wider audience in a very democratic way.
Christo: All of my editions are related to projects that were not realized. In over 50 years we realized 23 projects but we failed to get permission for 47. Once a project was refused, we would lose interest, but Jörg made these into editions. He did several projects in editions that never happened in reality. Projects like the Reichstag and Pont Neuf take a long time and they are financed through the selling of the drawings and collages. But the not realized works, were very unusual works I did - very unusual, very incredible stories – like a project we would have liked to do in ‘62, which was a dream project, which involved the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe.
ASW: Yes, we are very excited for you that this project has finally been authorized and will be realized next year. Thank you very much for your time, it was a pleasure talking with you.