mastaba-tory or mastaba-mazing?
June 18, 2018 7:49 AM   Subscribe

7,506 oil barrels floating in Hyde Park. Christo has unveiled his latest piece of art: a mastaba in the middle of the Serpentine in London. "Based on the trapezoid shapes of traditional Islamic mastabas – a type of tomb – the temporary sculpture is the realisation of the artistic duo's shared dream of creating a floating version of the form that has fascinated them for half a century." Entirely self-funded, free to view (obviously enough), and difficult to miss if you're wandering through the park.
posted by humuhumu (25 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
That is fantastic. I hope I end up with an errand in London before it's gone, to give me a chance to see it in person.
posted by Dysk at 7:59 AM on June 18, 2018


Mastabas are properly Egyptian, though. Like, pre-pyramid Old Kingdom.
posted by emmet at 8:01 AM on June 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


It took me a minute to be convinced that those photos weren't just photoshopped. Christo and Jean-Claude are a huge talent. Sometimes I think they miss the mark (I still don't get the Reichstag thing), but the color choice/etc of this piece really shows that they've got a vision that works even in translation to the "web" medium. I'm quite impressed.
posted by tclark at 8:07 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Wonderful. I wish I could see it. I've only ever seen The Gates in person, and that was absolutely one of the best artistic experiences I've ever known. I wonder if the lack of interactivity changes the experience of J&JC? Perhaps, but I'm sure it's still fantastic.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:08 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


What emmet said. Mastabas are proto-pyramids.
posted by snwod at 8:09 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


mastaba-tory or mastaba-mazing?

Leave the conservatives out of this.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:11 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


From the article: "There are no assistants; all the pieces are made by the artist."

Obviously this piece was not installed by one person, so I'm curious about the boundaries of this statement. Honestly, even painting all the barrels, building the framework and assembling it is a physically demanding task for an 83 year old.

I'm not asking this to take away anything from Christo. I would have no problem if he had a whole crew of assistants. I'm just wondering, since they mentioned it, what they mean by that.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 8:21 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Christo was the butt of a lot of jokes when I first heard of his, and Jean-Claude's, work, so it took me a while to really just look at them without letting the hahas obscure things. I grew to appreciate them quite a bit, even if only via photos and video, for their scale and flamboyance. The works seem to almost welcome the remarks made against them as added material in their construction. The mockery just further highlighting the lightness of the pieces as they float free of from the mundane prescriptions of the views expressed.

I just hope this piece is secure against people trying to climb it or otherwise be put in harm's way since that was a mark against one of the past works.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:23 AM on June 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


> Obviously this piece was not installed by one person, so I'm curious about the boundaries of this statement. Honestly, even painting all the barrels, building the framework and assembling it is a physically demanding task for an 83 year old.

I think the “no assistants” thing refers to the original art that Christo sells to fund the sitepiece. The blog entry doesn’t elaborate, but in the past these have usually been the concept art and design work, and small-edition serigraphs based on the concept drawings.
posted by ardgedee at 8:37 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I flew into LHR on Friday and I could see this red thing floating in the Serpentine from the plane... I had no idea what it was until today, thankyou
posted by el_presidente at 8:38 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I was a bit dubious about it as a work of art for Hyde Park specifically, like why this art in this particular setting, then I got to the shot of the reflections in the water, and now I'm like, okay, I get it maybe.
posted by Eleven at 8:38 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I went to New York to see The Gates; it was impressive and beautiful. The artists are very good at promoting their work and thereby being able to create more. It takes a certain imagination and ego to create art on a massive scale. The artists are the sole creators of the concept and design; they obviously have a massive amount of help with the execution, some of that help is from volunteers. cool post, thanks.
posted by theora55 at 8:40 AM on June 18, 2018


I can't see the hidden picture. Perhaps if I squint!!!
posted by Burn_IT at 8:46 AM on June 18, 2018


This, like most of their projects, makes me happy to know it's there. So nicely realized! Such a nifty thing.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:49 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Obviously this piece was not installed by one person, so I'm curious about the boundaries of this statement. Honestly, even painting all the barrels, building the framework and assembling it is a physically demanding task for an 83 year old.

By "assistant" he means artists under his employ in his studio. He (and Jean Claude) make all of the art pieces they sell, which go toward realizing his large projects. Christo sources and contracts with manufacturers and contractors to handle the construction of the large projects himself.

This is a really cool project. It looks like some gigantic piece of pixel art plopped-down into an urban setting. The colors are so gorgeous.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:33 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Part of me is just happy there is this wonderful, outrageously colorful piece of art.

The other part is wondering if there's a secret message in the pattern of dots.
posted by happyroach at 10:14 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Actual construction was a team effort and is credited in the article:
Construction began on 3 April 2018 by a team drawn from JK Basel, Deep Dive Systems, and Coventry Scaffolding, with engineering help from Schlaich Bergermann Partner.
posted by clew at 10:41 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


> The other part is wondering if there's a secret message in the pattern of dots.

It could be Microsoft Tag.
posted by ardgedee at 10:41 AM on June 18, 2018


> The other part is wondering if there's a secret message in the pattern of dots.

F-o-o-t-b-a-l-l-s-c-o-m-i-n-g-h-o-me.
posted by humuhumu at 10:44 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thanks for posting this - I love Cristo's works; they (generally) unify people and democratise space in quite direct ways, using understandable processes, materials and techniques - all these make Cristo installations approachable.

Understandable? Who (without a lot of guidance) really 'understands' Constable, Leonardo, Klee, Lissitsky, Emin? Some Cristo piece's meanings are tied up in the thing, the act itself, and no other thing - like Andy Goldsworthy's throw works, whch are in a similar vein.
posted by unearthed at 1:47 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm not a big fan of Christo, but this looks pretty cool.
posted by ovvl at 3:42 PM on June 18, 2018


Poking around on Christo's site, I note two things:

1) This isn't the first time he's used oil barrels in his work. Here's one from 1961 in a Paris alleyway. And here's a smaller mastaba he did in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Penn. And here's a wall of 13,000 multi-colored barrels he put into a giant gas tank in Germany in 1998. Pretty interesting stuff I wasn't aware of before.

2) Christo has had an even larger mastaba project in mind since 1977. It would be the same height as the Great Pyramid at Giza but filled out to the trapezoid-y mastaba shape. Truly staggering in scale.

I don't know much about art but I'm a real sucker for large-scale artworks, so Christo's stuff is almost always appealing to me.
posted by mhum at 5:31 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


I wonder if it will make it up to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at some time. They've got a decent lake as well approximately the same size as the Serpentine. That lake though is nestled in a valley of rolling green hills (or yellow if the rape is in bloom). There is a wood on one side of the lake as well, so in autumn the leaves would provide a different contrast.
posted by koolkat at 12:32 AM on June 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


That's pretty cool
posted by trif at 3:09 AM on June 19, 2018


I was speaking with a friend here at work, and trying to articulate why Christo's art appeals to me. I love the unexpectedness, the way the work interacts with and "lives" in the surrounding landscape, etc. I've followed him since his "Running Fence" ran through my "backyard". But as we were speaking I realized, since working for a bureaucracy for 18+ years, what really impresses me is how he gets local bureaucrats to allow the work to exist at all. After observing that one of the hard and fast rules here is that no one gets in trouble for saying, "no," and that getting to "yes" on anything out of the norm is almost impossible, the opportunity for Christo's work (and I include Jeanne Claude in that) to be placed in any urban/suburban setting successfully is a monumental work of artistry all by itself.
posted by agatha_magatha at 12:29 PM on June 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


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