• 20th Century American Mixed Media

• Surrounded Islands, Project for Biscayne Bay , 1987
• diptych screenprint with collage on two sheets
• 15 in. x 30 in. (38.1 cm x 76.2 cm)

• Christo  (1935 - )
• American

• Museum Purchase: Print Collection Fund, 2000.3

• Not on View

For over thirty years Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude have been creating large-scale installations in which the natural or architectural landscape is temporarily transformed by the addition of vast sheets of synthetic fabric.  Their projects, which rank among the largest works of contemporary art, have included the construction of a 25-mile fence in California’s Sonoma and Marin counties, the wrapping of such landmarks as the Reichstag in Berlin, and most recently, the installation of 7,503 saffron gates in New York’s Central Park.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s projects are massive and complex undertakings, and they consider the planning process to be equally as important as the actual installation.  While the planning can take as long as twenty years, the artworks themselves last for only a few weeks.  In May 1983, using over six million square feet of hot-pink fabric, Christo, Jeanne-Claude, and an army of trained volunteers wrapped the shores of eleven man-made islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay.  The work on view here is one of the many sketches done by Christo documenting the Surrounded Islands project.  His drawings function as more than simple studies for a finished product, and are significant not only because they record an otherwise ephemeral work of art, but because they provide the sole source of income to fund these tremendous efforts.  Rather than accepting corporate or other private financial support, a project’s costs are covered entirely by the sale of the prints and drawings.