"Now, there is no way to say how long some projects take, that's our principle"
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Deadlines are for people who think art is an appointment. Christo, who spent decades persuading bureaucracies, landowners, engineers, and the public to temporarily remake whole landscapes, is smuggling a radical idea into a plainspoken sentence: the timeline is not a logistical detail, it is the artwork's moral spine.
"Now" sets a conversational, almost managerial tone, as if he's offering a practical update. Then he pulls the rug: "there is no way to say how long some projects take". Not "I won't say" but "there is no way" - the impossibility is structural. With Christo and Jeanne-Claude's practice, years of negotiation, permits, and fundraising weren't obstacles to the real work; they were the real work, part of the sculpture's invisible mass. The public sees fabric unfurling over a bridge or a coastline for two weeks. The artists lived inside the prelude for years.
The kicker is "that's our principle". Principle sounds ethical, even constitutional. He's not romanticizing chaos; he's defending a discipline of patience. In a culture that treats speed as competence and certainty as professionalism, Christo flips the prestige hierarchy. Unpredictability becomes a form of integrity: you don't force a project into a schedule that flatters institutions, sponsors, or news cycles. You let the scale of persuasion - political, environmental, human - dictate the tempo.
Subtext: temporary art is only as free as the process that births it. Refusing to promise a finish date is Christo's way of keeping the work unowned, un-rushed, and uncompromised.
"Now" sets a conversational, almost managerial tone, as if he's offering a practical update. Then he pulls the rug: "there is no way to say how long some projects take". Not "I won't say" but "there is no way" - the impossibility is structural. With Christo and Jeanne-Claude's practice, years of negotiation, permits, and fundraising weren't obstacles to the real work; they were the real work, part of the sculpture's invisible mass. The public sees fabric unfurling over a bridge or a coastline for two weeks. The artists lived inside the prelude for years.
The kicker is "that's our principle". Principle sounds ethical, even constitutional. He's not romanticizing chaos; he's defending a discipline of patience. In a culture that treats speed as competence and certainty as professionalism, Christo flips the prestige hierarchy. Unpredictability becomes a form of integrity: you don't force a project into a schedule that flatters institutions, sponsors, or news cycles. You let the scale of persuasion - political, environmental, human - dictate the tempo.
Subtext: temporary art is only as free as the process that births it. Refusing to promise a finish date is Christo's way of keeping the work unowned, un-rushed, and uncompromised.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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