When Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the German Reichstag in the summer of 1995, it was the completion of a 24-year-long artistic process. The first work of art to be debated and voted on by an elected government before it could exist, Wrapped Reichstag involved endless negotiations, years of technical preparation, and a staggering 1,076,390 square feet (100,000 square meters) of thick woven polypropylene fabric and 9.7 miles (15.6 kilometers) of blue polypropylene rope. On the 20th anniversary of this major cultural event, and coinciding with the Wrapped Reichstag Documentation exhibition in Berlin, this book traces the project’s complete story.
Through original documents, photographs, drawings, collages, and real objects from the wrapping, we follow Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s commitment to process as much as product, while celebrating one of their most ambitious projects, and a symbol-laden event in the emergence of the new, unified Germany. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: “For a period of two weeks in summer 1995, the richness of the silvery fabric, shaped by the blue ropes, creates a sumptuous flow of vertical folds highlighting the features and proportions of the imposing structure, revealing the essence of the Reichstag.
