Christo by Maysles marathon at the Clark

Wow, that could not have gone better! Several hundred people joined me in celebrating two pairs of artists, and the art of collaboration in itself. The five films in succession created just the epic I had in mind, growing and deepening as they went, charting the evolution of both the Christo projects and the art of direct cinema. In my intro I highlighted two words the artists attach to their own work, which apply to both: for Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the work is all about freedom, and for Albert and David Maysles, the work is all about faith. I’ve taken to describing the Christo projects as “titanic whimsies” -- capricious acts of beauty notable not just for the scale of the engineering marvel, but because their maiden voyage is always their final voyage, they sail into memory on waves of romance. I could wax rhapsodic for paragraphs on end, but will simply refer you to my op-ed piece in the Eagle last week, “Enter ‘The Gates’.” Link to it here: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/Stories/0,1413,101%257E9694%257E2717284,00.html