Editorial Reviews

Take two intertwined lives marked by childhood turmoil, geographic displacement, fierce ambition, and total dedication to a quixotic form of art, add a lively narrative style and you have Christo and Jeanne-Claude by Burt Chernow. In 1959, French socialite Jeanne-Claude fell in love with a penniless Bulgarian portrait artist just beginning to wrap small objects in canvas. She had no way of knowing that her life would one day involve a constant round of negotiations with politicians, government agencies, fabricators, factory owners, truckers, laborers, farmers, and everyone else whose good will, expertise, or elbow grease were needed to make Christo's gigantic projects happen. Chernow seasons this cheerfully uncritical authorized biography of the masterminds of such projects as "Running Fence" and the "Wrapped Reichstag" with evocative sketches of the '60s art world. An epilogue by Wolfgang Volz, a photographer close to the couple, engrossingly recounts their struggles and triumphs in the '80s and '90s. --Cathy Curtis