Kurt Schwitters, formally known as Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters, was a German painter who worked on various elements of what would become installation art.
This took place very gradually; work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933, and Schwitters subsequently extended the Merzbau to other areas of the house until he fled to Norway in early 1937. Most of the house was let to tenants, so that the final extent of the Merzbau was less than is normally assumed. On the evidence of Schwitters’ correspondence, by 1937 it had spread to two rooms of his parents’ apartment on ground floor, the adjoining balcony, the space below the balcony, one or two rooms of the attic and possibly part of the cellar. (via Wikipedia)
Via hcimmi.
Jeanne-Claude passed away at age 74
Jeanne-Claude, one half of the famed duo, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, passed away today at the age of 74. Notable works include The Umbrellas, from Japan to the United States, in 1984:
Various draping installation pieces such as the Reichstag in Germany and Surrounding Islands off the coast of Miami:
And then there was the Running Fence, made entirely of fabric, that ran through Sonoma and Marin counties, in California, directly into the coast:
There’s also a great video documenting the controversy that surrounded their efforts to build a fabric fence across various farmlands and properties in the Sonoma and Marin county.
Their most recent work might have had the largest audience to date. It was The Gates, a temporal art installation of over 7,000 gates spanning 23 miles of Central Park.
The Gates was an experience I was fortunate enough to experience while attending New York University in 2005. I remember the hoopla from the surrounding project, the initial unveilings of saffron fabric (in dedication to Jeanne-Claude’s saffron colored hair) from each gate in the park, and the late night sledding through the gates during the first snowfall of the winter. A 21 year endeavor, conceived in 1979, the $21 million project was said to have brought in $254 million in additional revenue from tourists who came from around the world to witness the temporal art installation.
Update: Upcoming installations include Over The River, a 5.9 mile stretch of fabric that is meant to be viewed from below while the movement of the material is affected by the weather, light, and vegetation, and The Mastaba, a massive structure made of 710,000 shiny oil barrels similar to the color of The Gates.
(images via google images and christojeanneclaude.net)