Object number2012.23.16

Study for Colorodo Curtain (Project for Colorado)

Date1970

Artist Christo (Christo Vladimiroy Javacheff) (American, 1935-)

CultureAmerican

MediumMixed media

DimensionsImage: 17 × 14 in. (43.2 × 35.6 cm)
Framed: 17 1/4 × 14 1/4 × 1 1/4 in. (43.8 × 36.2 × 3.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of Dorothy Seiberling, class of 1943

Period20th c

Classification(s)

SignedSigned and dated (LLC): Christo 1970

Vassar Exhibitions

Splitting the Horizon: Frederic Church Between Border and Bridge

Label TextAfter twenty-eight months of planning, the Valley Curtain at Rifle Gap only stood for twenty-eight hours, suspended between two mountains above Colorado State Highway 325. With a team of ninety-nine tying down 200,200 square feet of orange nylon fabric weighing over sixty tons, the project made a wall of a mountain range, catching wind through stationary sails. Known for monumental artworks, such as wrapping buildings in fabric, Christo and his wife-collaborator Jeanne-Claude denaturalized the built environment through the absence of a landscape. Blocking the traditional visual projection Frederic Church employed in his paintings, the curtain negates the speculative space of the horizon by starkly placing the participant-observer in the present. Inverting the kind of expansionist logics that led to the Panama Canal, the border-curtain fills in rather than digs up.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu