Christo Quotes
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In 1964, Jeanne-Claude and I became illegal aliens. That's when we moved here from Paris. And for three years, we were illegal aliens living in an illegal building. At that time, some artists started to move to SoHo, and they put A.I.R. - artists-in-residence - up on their windows.
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The work of art is a scream of freedom.
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The other work we started in 1992, it is called Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River in the state of Colorado, we haven't got the permit yet. And, we are working at both of those, trying to get the permit. Therefore, we do not know which one will be realized next.
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Therefore we have to go over the fact that all human beings are afraid by what is new. It is our work to convince them that they will enjoy it, and even if they don't, to allow us just for 14 days to create that work of art.
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People think our work is monumental because it's art, but human beings do much bigger things: they build giant airports, highways for thousands of miles, much, much bigger than what we create.
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You see, we are not machines and we do not have lots of ideas in a drawer.
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New York is our home.
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Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.
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It is not only one person's work, it's really a partnership and collaboration during all these years.
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In 1964, when we first arrived in New York City, I remember vividly seeing the skyline of Manhattan, and our first proposal of 1964 was to wrap two lower Manhattan buildings. We never got permission.
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Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think.
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The freedom of every artist is essential.
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We don't sell technical drawings except when they are incorporated into a drawing or a collage.
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If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
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Some of the projects we've proposed over the years have been refused. But we never do other people's ideas; our ideas come out of our two hearts and our two heads.
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But the drawings are not created only to be sold.
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I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.