Christo and Jeanne-Claude

CHRISTO is the artists’ name of the couple Christo Vladimiroff Javacheff (born June 1935 in Gabrovo Bulgaria) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (also born 13 June 1935 in Casablanca Morocco). The couple met in Paris in 1958 and settled in New York in 1964.
Having adopted US citizenship, Christo and Jeanne-Claude executed a number of highly-visible projects in America (packaging of the Chicago MOCA in 1968-1969, Valley Curtain in Colorado, 1970-1972, Running Fence in California 1972-1976, Surrounded Islands in Miami, 1980-1983 and The Gates in Central Park, New York, 1979-2005). Today, the largest market for CHRISTO’s works is the United States with 24% of their total auction transactions. Their works are also sold all over Europe (18% in the UK, 15% in Germany, 10% in France and Sweden, 7% in Italy).

Considering that Christo and Jeanne-Claude have essentially created transient works on buildings and urban or natural locations, we may well ask: what works are collected?Their installations are the fruit of mammoth projects and years of hard negotiations with authorities (24 years for the wrapping of the Berlin Reichstag!). The self-financing of these projects comes from the direct sale to museums, galleries and collectors of a multitude of sketches, drawings, paintings, models and prints.
At the same time, between 150 and 200 works reach the secondary market each year including packaged objects from the 1960s when the couple was flirting with New Realism (4% of auction transactions), drawings, paintings and photos (30% of transactions). The bulk of the transactions (51%) involve prints with most simple selling for a hundred or so dollars and the most complex (embellished with collages and/or photographs) fetching over $15,000.

Demand for their works began to accelerate sharply in 2005 when they inaugurated The Gates in Central Park, New York (a project that was started in 1975) giving the couple exceptionally strong media and press coverage. The same year, art prices started to inflate the bubble that recently burst. The combined impact pushed CHRISTO prices up 180% between 2005 and 2008 and their best auction results occurred during this 3-year period. The first big record was $400,000 on 10 May 2006 at Christie’s NY for a drawing for The Gates project; then on 12 December 2007 a historic piece Bicyclette Empaquetée Sur Galerie de Voiture (1962) fetched €320,000 ($470,656) at Sotheby’s Paris.

Since the death of Jeanne-Claude on 18 November 2009, Christo Javacheff is pursuing their latest project Over the River (Colorado) alone. The project was begun in 1992. Its inauguration is scheduled for the summer of 2012 and it will stand for just 2 weeks. Before we actually see 60 km of the Arkansas river covered by a succession de fabric panels, works on the theme regularly appear at auction sales for prices starting at $200 for the first lithographs and reaching $200,000 for the museum dimensioned canvasses.