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48 C H R I S T O 1 9 3 5 -2 0 2 0 The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan & USA, 1989 Signed, titled, dated and annotated Signed and dated verso Enamel paint, wax crayon, pastel, charcoal, pastel, pencil and map on paper on board Part I: 30 ½ x 26 ¼ in, 77.5 x 66.7 cm Part II: 30 ½ x 12 ⅛ in, 77.5 x 30.5 cm Provenance Bobbie Greenfield Gallery, Santa Monica, California Private Collection, California Exhibitions Stanford, California, Stanford University Museum of Art, Christo: Four Works in Progress, Documentation Exhibition, 28 June - 20 August 1989 Literature This work is registered in the Christo and Jeanne-Claude archives Produced in 1989, two years before the monumentous installation work The Umbrellas officially opened, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's preparatory drawing for the Japanese element of this trans-Pacific project is a strikingly rich picture. Almost ten years in the making, The Umbrellas remains one of the couple's most accomplished and ambitious endeavours. On 9th October 1991, 1,340 umbrellas in Ibaraki, Japan, and 1,760 umbrellas in the Los Angeles metropolitan area opened simultaneously. The Californians umbrellas were yellow, making reference to the sunny hills of the American landscape whilst, as in the present work, the Japanese umbrellas were blue to symbolize the water on the banks of the Sato River which they bordered. The Japanese umbrellas were packed in tightly to suggest a harmony with the shape of the rice paddies. One of the principal considerations that the artists faced when producing these works was their response and responsibilities to the public space in which the works exist. As these spaces belong to the public, the large projects have to reflect a sensitivity to cultural considerations. The very image of the umbrella, as symbolic for the East as it is for the West, also expresses Christo's understanding of the subject matter. Indeed, the artist's choice of the parasol is not insignificant, and was in fact selected for its nomadic character – it can both be moved quickly and hide elements under its unfolded canvas. In exactly the same way as the installation itself, the present work invites one to stroll through the installation. Coupled with a map, the viewer is directly transported to the river bank and immersed in the surroundings. The preparatory sketches that Christo and Jeanne-Claude produced for their projects exist as remarkable tokens, representing the only remnants of these expansive undertakings. Given the nature of the building projects that their installations took, they were many years in the making and only very briefly in situ. Once brought down all that remained were the works on paper that the pair had produced. As Christo himself said, "I am an artist, and I have to have courage… Do you know that I don't have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they're finished. Only the preparatory drawings, and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain."