Artworks Created
with Oil Barrels

Barrels

In 1958, Christo began working with oil barrels, because they were the largest containers he could find that were both unbreakable and cheap. Since then, he has stacked numerous barrel structures sometimes with the intent to create massive, freestanding forms, and sometimes with the intent to create environmental obstructions. At the beginning, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were living on the Ile Saint-Louis and Christo was doing most of his work in a tiny studio, a former maid’s room, on Rue Saint-Sénoch. Buying used oil barrels from drum yards, he carried the dirty barrels one by one to his seventh-floor studio. There, he cleaned and wrapped them, then carried them down seven flights and over to Avenue Raymond-Poincaré, where he stored them in a cellar that had been put at his disposal by Jeanne-Claude’s parents. Over the months, the cellar accumulated stacks of wrapped and unwrapped barrels, plywood boxes, and packed bottles, becoming the environmental collection of containers that Christo called Inventory. His laborious journeys across Paris must have looked especially furtive on the days he walked out with Wrapped Chairs, stolen from his “stingy” landlord on the Ile Saint-Louis, and a wrapped wooden table, stolen from the maid’s room. Later, when he had to vacate part of the cellar, he moved everything to a garage in Gentilly that he rented for storage and working space. When he was unable to pay rent for the garage, he was forced to abandon the work that was stored there, and much of it was subsequently destroyed.

Barrels in Public Places

In conjunction with his first personal exhibition in 1961 at the Haro Lauhus Gallery in Cologne, Christo exhibited his first outdoor barrel structures. The gallery was very near the Cologne waterfront where Christo sighted several stacks of oil drums, cardboard barrels, and paper rolls. Viewing them as familiar art materials, he instantly recognized their sculptural possibilities and set about “borrowing” them. Rearranging the piles of cardboard barrels and rolls of paper, he proceeded to shroud them in tarpaulin, which he secured with cord. The tarpaulin, which served to protect the paper and cardboard against exposure, was borrowed from the dockworkers, who received a generous tip from the artist for their cooperation and patience.

The large assemblages of oil drums that they used along the Cologne waterfront were hardly distinguishable from the ordinary stockpiles that are ubiquitous harbor-side presences. Because of the visual similarity to longshoremen’s work, it almost appeared that the artists had merrily photographed “found” stockpiles, but this was not the case. All had been composed, rearranged, or at least altered by the artists, who, in order to manipulate these bulky materials, utilized a number of construction machines, including tractors, hoists, and cranes. The structures were an early indication of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s predilection for creating sculptures that almost pass for ordinary phenomena that one scarcely notices in everyday life. They prefer their work to be disturbingly ambiguous, ... and thereby causing the spectator to do a double take.

...In format, the oil drums were stacked in orderly symmetrical, and obviously manmade piles, suggesting mastabas, pyramids, and the earliest forms of anonymous architecture. For the visually acute, there were telltale signs that an artist had been at work. In one of the Cologne structures, a single barrel turned sideways functions as a grace note in an otherwise serial composition.

...This kind of compositional accent is more obvious in smaller works, such as the 56 Barrels in which only the top barrel is turned sideways. Another telling characteristic in the early barrel structures are the “frayed” edges; the articulation along the top and sides is deliberately uneven. The expressionistic hangover of misaligned and artfully askew barrels is completely absent in the recent barrel structures.

...Many of Christo’s barrel projects, however huge, are not environmental: they do not modify or alter the surroundings, but remain discreet masses in the landscape.

...Christo and Jeanne-Claude wanted to create an obstruction for New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 1968. To mark the closing of the Dada-Surrealism show on the evening of June 9 they proposed erecting a wall of 441 barrels that would have blockade West Fifty-third Street. However, city agencies refused to cooperate and so the wall was never built. ... If the city had granted permission, it would have denied the piece of its capacity for social disruption and turned the temporary street blockade into an art-for-art’s-sake event.

Perhaps the point of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s blockades is not to interrupt the functions of streets, but rather to question the identity and function of government agencies. If the city vetoes such a project, it appears hostile to art. And if it approves, it appears mindless and irresponsible.

The main focus of Christo and Jeanne-Claude activity is always the end result rather than on the process, and while the manifestation may be brief enough to qualify as an “event”, it is by no means a Happening. ...”All Happenings are make-believe situations,” Christo says. “Everything in our work is very strongly literal. If three hundred people are used, it is not because we want three hundred people to play roles, but because we have work for them. ... If we use cranes, it is to do real work, and the crane man must be conscientious or it will not work. Our work may look very theatrical, but it is a very professional activity.”

Excerpt from the book Christo by David Bourdon.
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, ©1970.
Edited and updated by Susan Astwood, June 2000.

Texts from this website may be used.

Some Artworks • Artworks in Progress • Collections • Bibliography • The Artists • FAQ • Contact