To Jeanne-Claude – Let’s Celebrate a Life Well Lived

Jeanne-Claude is dead.  She was the lesser-known partner to Christo.  And though their website specifically refers to “Christo and Jeanne-Claude,” it is Christo’s name that for years stood for their works.

I celebrate her mostly because she was able to do it.  To have an entire career in the arts without resorting to distracting days jobs.  If that sounds like damning with faint praise, I don’t mean it that way.  For me, although the art is important, just being able to make a career in the arts is enough for a place of honor.  That’s right.  An earnest commercial artist is every bit as admirable as the lucky fine artist.  And one more thing – I make an exception for Thomas Kinkade!  Even though he has made a successful career for himself, he and his works are abhorrent – ok, I’m inconsistent!

Jeanne-Claude’s death came from a ruptured brain aneurysm, and was completely unexpected.  At age 74, maybe she didn’t live long enough, but with some 50 years as a working artist, she did pretty well.  She met Christo in the late 1950s and by the 1970s, the two had settled into a career doing large environmental works.  Please view their website.

For me, until I saw the Gates, I thought of Christo as an art con-man.  Well, I was wrong (and note, I didn’t have a clue that there was a collaborator).

To those who saw the Gates, or who have seen any of the works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, then I hope you too remember the exquisite joy that their works brought.  To those who didn’t – sadly, it’s not the same on film.

*A footnote on Thomas Kinkade.  He shamelessly covers himself in the same sort of patriotic and Christian imagery that we see in conservative Republican politics.  Take a look, read the text on his website.  Then vomit him away.