Valley Curtain
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Valley Curtain (1972) is an artwork by Christo and Jeanne-Claude project.
Production
At the end of 1970 Christo and Jeanne-Claude began their preparations for the Valley Curtain project. A 400-meter-long curtain was to be stretched across Rifle Gap, a valley in the Rocky Mountains near Rifle, Colorado. The project required 14,000 m2 of cloth to be hung on four steel cables, fastened with iron bars fixed in concrete on each slope, and 200 tons of concrete.
The budget increased to $400,000, causing Christo and Jeanne-Claude additional problems with the financing. Finally enough works of art were sold to raise the money and, on 10 October 1971, the orange-coloured curtain was ready for hanging, but was torn to shreds by wind and rock. While a second curtain was being manufactured, Christo received a request from a Berlin art historian to wrap the Reichstag in response to the 1961 "Project for Wrapping a Public Building". On 10 August 1972, the second attempt to hang the cloth succeeded, but only 28 hours later it was destroyed by a storm gale in excess of 60 miles per hour.
The project was shown in the documentary film Christo's Valley Curtain, by David and Albert Maysles, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
