Artist Christo has died at 84

Bulgarian-born artist Christo, best known for wrapping buildings and famous landmarks in fabric or plastic, has died at his home in New York, aged 84.

Shakespeare told us 'all the world's a stage', Christo showed us all the world's an art gallery.
The Bulgarian-born artist wasn't interested in the sterile white walls of the modern museum where objects exist apart from everyday life. He wanted to turn everyday life into art, to make people look again and think again about their surroundings. He did this by way of intervention - either by wrapping a building such as the Reichstag in Berlin in blue material, or a section of the Australian coastline in one million square feet of fabric - in both cases turning cold, hard structures into sensuous, fragile sculptures. He worked in collaboration with his wife Jeanne-Claude, whom he met in Paris in 1958. They made their first major outdoor work three years later in Germany, covering oil barrels stacked in Cologne harbour with material. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 leaving Christo to continue alone, which he did, with a plan to wrap the L'Arc de Triomphe in Paris next year - a project that will probably still be realised.

By Will Gompertz
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