The artistic collaboration between husband and wife team Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibits a transition from traditional individual artistic identity to a more manifold effacement of individual collaborators and to the identification of the collaboration itself as an artwork.

The artistic collaboration between husband and wife team Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibits a transition from traditional individual artistic identity to a more manifold effacement of individual collaborators and to the identification of the collaboration itself as an artwork. Their temporary works of art survive sole through documentation such as photographs, films and volumes This is no accident for disappearance is crucial to the works' integrity. The couple's photo-documentations exist at the intersection of photography and early 1970 conceptual art. They are inscribed within shifting ideas of artwork and the part of the artist.

In 1969 Sydney art collector and patron John Kaldor invited Christo and Jeanne-Claude to give a series of censures in Australia. There, Christo and Jeanne-Claude complet the first of Kaldor's "Art Projects" Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, individual Million Square Feet, Sydney, Australia, 1969 [1] The piece attracted enormous local media coverage and considerable international attention. The London art magazine Studio International ran the following description:

Christo's latest package, 1000000 sq ft of the Australian coastline at Little Bay, near Sydney covering a frontage of approximately united mile, was realized for the period 1 to 28 November. Using a poly-propylene fabric, 35 miles of pull two-way radios and an estimated 17000 man-hours, and despite southerly gales and pyromaniac hooligans, Christo wrapped up asylums to a height of 84 feet Sponsors were the Aspen middle of Contemporary Art, Colorado, and Christo himself. [2]

These bare facts hide several stories that typify Christo and Jeanne-Claude's temporary artworks of the nearest three decades, and that cast reproach their nomadic, mobile artistic identity. Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, undivided Million Square Feet, Sydney, Australia was the couple's first major environmental cut Even though Christo alone was credited for the work at the time, he and Jeanne-Claude worked as a team forward the piece and shared responsibility for its completion. Jeanne-Claude was responsible for all of the cast administration. Beginning in the 1980 Christo and Jeanne-Claude rigorously and sternly insisted forward retrospective joint reattribution of all works from the late 1960 onward, including Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, single Million Square Feet, Sydney, Australia, unruffled though Christo's interviews continued to carry little intimation to his partner Jeanne-Claude's part in the works. At first present the appearances surprising given the couple's determined insistence forward joint attribution of "Christo's" works when negotiations with magazines and researchers for exhibition participation, copyright clearance or caption checking took place. [3] unless I believe Christo and Jeanne-Claude altered their attitudes and opinions about the public acknowledgement of their collaboration without wishing this shift to be solidly pinned down. As signs of intense individuality the work was recognized in critical commentary and newspaper cartoons and gained a of the same height of trademark recognition achieved according to very few other artists (eg Jackson Pollock's drips, Joseph Beuys's hat and Andy Warhol's Campbell's broth cans). [4] But the work was the outcome of two artists:

Nous approchons d'un espace plein de ressources. Au depart, nous empruntons l'espace et subitement nous essayons de creer de obstacles, de divisions, de difficultes. (We be derived to a space and create a artful disturbance. Basically, we borrow a space and all of a unexpected we make obstacles, divisions, and difficulties.) [5]

In a joint 1994 interview with Christo, Jeanne-Claude said, "I'm not solitary an administrator of Christo's beautiful ideas. For instance, The environed Islands was my idea. most numerous of the people don't know that." [6] If, in a 1989 interview, Christo be seened to deny this, it have the appearances more likely that he was distinguishing between his authorial name--the name "Christo" for which he had become famous--and the names of the brace artists behind that brand name. He said:

[The work] is the idea of common man. I make the point in discussion of my art that I do not do commissions; I decide my throws and how to do them. The frames continually translate this great individualism, this creative freedom. [7]

In 1990 Christo was quot as saying "the work is a herculean individualistic gesture that is entirely through me." [8] Although his emphasis forward "individuality" seemed to contradict his collaborative working [i]modus operandi[/i] by the 1980s the name "Christo" had originate I believe, to denote a corporation, a trademark idea and

copyright ownership as well as a single man and unruffled the collaboration between Christo and Jeanne-Claude itself. calm their insistence on financing each work themselves was an artistic decision as well as a pragmatic choice. It was part of their creation of a corporate (and transnational) artistic identity. It appears clear that individuality was instrumental and iconic rather than subjective and reflective of single artistic authorship. Eliminating his surname Javacheff in favor of "Christo" was a ensue of the same process. Christo's statements and interviews were consistent with this scenario if it was understood that his use of the pronoun "I" was equivalent to "we": I think that from "I" he meant "Christo" the artist, not Christo Javacheff the one allowing himself to be subsum by way of his doppelganger, the Christo corporation, which includes the work of Jeanne-Claude.