The Arc de Triomphe Wrapped in Fabric
Decades in the making.
The Arc de Triomphe, famed Paris landmarked, has been concealed with 270,000 square feet of silver-blue polypropylene fabric and red ropes in an extravagant display.
Draping the Arc de Triomphe was a vision of the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who are known for their bold and fleeting fabric installations worldwide. Their large-scale pieces involved wrapping landmarks or creating structures from colorful barrels. This most recent project was completed on September 16, 2021, more than a decade after Jeanne-Claude’s death and just over a year since Christo passed last May.
This installation began this summer with a base of 400 tons of steel beams placed around the structure; these were then wrapped in the cloth by a team of climbers. The landmark will remain wrapped for 16 days and as reported by CNN “is poised to be a fleeting, sublime encounter with an environmental artwork that interrupts the experience of the everyday”.
Other key installations from Christo and Jeanne-Claude include Wrapped Coast Australia 1969, Valley Curtain Colorado 1972, and more recently the London Mastaba 2018.
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