The work of Christo challenged viewers to reconsider the fundamental question of what art is—regardless of whether one views his practice positively or not.
His projects ranged from wrapping entire buildings to monumental interventions in the landscape. One such example is Wrapped Coast (1969), in which he enveloped a 2-kilometer stretch of coastline in Australia, reaching heights of up to 15 meters. Beyond his “wrapping” works, he also realized projects such as Valley Curtain (1970–72), where a massive curtain was suspended across a 400-meter-wide valley in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Today, many of these works can only be experienced through documentary photographs.
The enormous costs associated with each project were never funded by museums, governments, or corporations. Instead, Christo financed them entirely through the sale of his own original artworks, including preparatory drawings and collages that anticipated the completed installations.
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