Christo

Private Collection

During their travels throughout Southeast Asia in 1969, Christo and Jeanne-Claude became intrigued by the ceremonial use of gardens and the deep awareness that local garden inhabitants took towards their movement through the space and the surface on which they walked. The following year, the artists proposed a Wrapped Walk Ways Project for Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem in the Netherlands and Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan to be installed simultaneously, despite the 6,000 mile difference between the parks. Permission was denied from both the Dutch and Japanese authorities. In the ensuing years, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were likewise denied permits to realize their Wrapped Walk Ways proposals for a park near the Museum of Replica Handbags s in Boston, and St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, Ireland. In 1978, the Wrapped Walk Ways was ultimately actualized at Jacob Loose Park in Kansas City, Missouri with nylon cloth covering 104,836 square feet of the garden’s walkways.

Christo approached his prints and objects in a two fold manner—to serve as preparatory plans for future projects and to raise funds for them. Christo's sketches represent the anticipation of a project not yet realized, not the record of a project complete. This work in particular offers insight into the meticulous technical detail and planning that went into one of the many unrealized projects that Christo labored over, only to be met with insurmountable push back from authorities.