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And What Does That Mean?
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It's become a popular sentiment that modern art has become too vague,
too deliberately abstract for ordinary people to understand.
Certainly this has become obvious with the recent budget cuts that the
National Endowment for the Arts.  Yet some of this abstruse art has
deep content that cannot be expressed in simpler form.  Christo has
earned a position as one of the most abstract artists in the world,
yet is also one of the better known, an unusual combination.  For
although people may not undestand the exact meaning of his works, they
still flock to observe the spectacle.

And often spectacles are what Christo's art works seem to be.  While
in Germany this summer, I visited the Reichstag and saw the confusion
on people's faces as they tried to decipher the meaning of the cloth
wrapped building.  It was the exact same confusion that I had seen on
the faces of Americans when I visited his The Umbrellas near my
hometown in California.  It was the same look that had been on my own
face until I had a chance to listen to Christo explain his ideas to
me.  

I lived near a major arts college in California, and thus was able to
listen to Christo describe his ideas on art and in particular the
Umbrellas Project, part of which was being erected near by.  My
parent's stories of happening across his Running Fence project in
Northern California shortly before I was born had initially sparked my
interest in Christo, which was furthered raised when he began a local
project.  

The first tenet of Christo's art is to make it noticeable.  This often
takes the form of large scale projects, both in size and money.  But
beyond this showmanship, there is always a real point that Christo
wants to get across.  In his Umbrella's project, Christo took two
different natural landscapes (California and Japan), and placed human
artifacts of different colors in each.  The dry California desert
recieved yellow, the moist Japanese climate blue, but both colors
contrasted with their background, and left an impression on the
landscape around them.  Not only was the unnaturalness of the
Umbrellas highlighted, but the similarity between the humanness of
each, despite differing locations.  

Likewise, the Reichstag building in Berlin was wrapped in white cloth,
transformed from an old and unused building to another shining
monument in the center of the city.  For over 40 years the Reichstag
has remained unused for it's primary goal, that of holding the German
parliamnet, and was ignored by the inhabitants of the city.  Then
Christo wrapped it, and millions of natives and tourist flocked to
this new center of attention, and now couldn't see what they had
ignored seeing before.  And the building was unwrapped, ready to begin
life anew, with the parliament ready to move back in.

Perhaps modern art may be vague, but that in no way prevents it from
having an easily understandable meaning.  Although I must admit that
I've been lost when first presented with many exhibits, many have a
strong meaning that is not easily discernible.  Sometimes a bit of
explanation is all that is needed to make the work understandable and
interesting.  Seeking that explanation can be worth the effort.

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