Understanding ‘L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped’
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, 1961–2021. Photo: Wilson Tarbox ©
Dancing between beautiful and moribund, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s mummified reimagining of Napoleon’s monument speaks as much to the present as it does to the past
Death and beauty go hand in hand. As paradoxical and macabre as that idea might seem, many anthropologists will tell you that ancestral burial rituals are a significant measure of human civilization. Many of the first objects shaped by human sensibilities, such as the Triangular Tombstones from Le Moustier in Peyzac-le-Moustier, Dordogne, France, were related to death and the afterlife. Ancient humans were entombed with their most precious possessions. Bones of ancestors conferred legitimacy upon rulers, proving royal descendance, giving birth to modern notions of cultural heritage or, in the case of relics, like the Byzantine Reliquary in the Shape of a Sarcophagus (400–600) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, an unbroken lineage with divine actors.
The current public art installation at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (1806–36) taps into this age-old affinity between the beautiful and the moribund. Sixty years after their plan for L’Arc de Triomphe: Wrapped was first conceived, the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude have finally managed to envelope Napoleon Bonaparte’s monument to his imperial armies (and his own megalomania) from beyond the grave.
