Artist Jeanne-Claude dies; Christo vows to continue with Arkansas River project

World-renowned artist Jeanne-Claude lived life large.

She and her husband, Christo, spent half a century placing fabric art installations on or around really big things: islands off the coast of Miami, a Colorado valley, a bridge in Paris,  the Reichstag in Germany.

And Jeanne-Claude’s enormous presence, with her wild, flame-red hair and theatrical flair, was on that same scale.

She died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm. She was 74.

A statement released from the family said Christo was deeply saddened by his wife’s death but was “committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue.”

 That includes installing “Over The River,” a typically massive and controversial project that would suspend nearly six miles of translucent fabric panels in sections above a 34-mile stretch of the Arkansas River between Salida and Cañon City.

But, even with Christo’s determination to complete the $50 million project, it’s far from a done deal. The Bureau of Land Management is still reviewing the artists’ proposal and has hired a contractor to analyze the possible environmental impacts.

 The Cañon City-based group Rags Over the Arkansas River, which lodged its opposition with the BLM, had mixed reactions to Jeanne-Claude's death.

“I’m not happy that she’s died, of course,” said R.O.A.R. president Dan Ainsworth. “But I’m hoping it might dampen his spirit a little bit and he’ll find it’s not nearly as much fun without her. ... It would be just a total disruption of the lives of so many people who live and work in this area. It would be devastating.”

 The BLM’s decision on the project is expected in 2011, and the soonest the project would be built would be 2013, according to the artists’ Web site.

Jeanne-Claude was accustomed to the red tape. In fact, she reveled in it.

“The process of getting the permit is part of the work of art,” Jeanne-Claude told the Associated Press in 2008. “To put it in human terms, the process is a little a bit like the nine-month pregnancy. It’s part of having the baby.”

To grease the wheels on the project, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have spent the past three years giving a series of lectures/slide shows throughout the Front Range and the Arkansas River valley.

Jeanne-Claude did almost all the talking. She relished the limelight.

In fact, in the middle of a presentation at Colorado College in 2008, Jeanne-Claude noticed a photographer off-stage shooting Christo by himself. She stopped her talk and went over to pose with him.

“He hates being photographed without me,” she told the crowd. “It’s like Romeo and Juliet.”

Her flamboyant and dogged personality became part of their work. Both have made lasting impressions. Although Jeanne-Claude wasn’t an artist when she met Christo in Paris in 1958, after several decades together they would insist on being referred to as “artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.”

 “Jeanne-Claude was an incredible force in the art world,” said Sam Gappmayer, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. “The few times I met her, I found her to be both warm and incredibly intense in her approach to life.  She will be deeply missed by many people.”

Together, the couple have developed international renown for their monumental installation pieces, though there have been some rough patches. In 1991, “The Umbrellas,” a piece that involved giant umbrellas on hillsides in Japan and California, led to two deaths.

 “Over the River” would be their second Colorado project. “Valley Curtain,” an orange, 250,000-square-foot curtain over Rifle Gap in western Colorado in the early ‘70s, took 28 months to install and lasted only 28 hours before winds ripped it down.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s latest major project was “The Gates” in 2006, which lined 23 miles of Central Park’s footpaths with saffron drapes. An estimated 5 million people saw it, and it was credited for infusing about $254 million into the local economy. New York officials hailed it as an astounding success, enchanting visitors and giving New Yorkers another view of the city and themselves.

The artists have financed their projects through the sales of their drawings, models, collages and original lithographs, and Christo has vowed to continue those projects without Jeanne-Claude. In addition to “Over the River,” Christo plans to move forward on “The Mastaba” a project involving oil drums in the United Arab Emirates.

Plans for Jeanne-Claude’s memorial will be announced at a later date. The family said they will donate her body to science, as was her wish.

Gazette wire services contributed to this report