site.btaLIK Magazine's June Issue Titled "Christo and Jeanne-Claude at 90 in Eternity"

The June issue of BTA's LIK magazine for literature, art, and culture, is dedicated to Christo Javacheff (1935–2020), known around the world as Christo, and his wife Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009). June 13 marked their 90th birth anniversaries. 

This year also marks three major anniversaries related to their work - 40 years since The Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris, 30 years since Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, and 20 years since The Gates installation in New York’s Central Park. 

LIK's June issue is entitled "Christo and Jeanne-Claude at 90 in Eternity". It will be presented Wednesday at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Centre in Gabrovo (North Central Bulgaria). The event will also take place at the same time in the MaxiM Hall of the BTA in Sofia. The Agency's national press clubs in the country and abroad will also be involved by video link.

In the introduction of the issue, LIK Editor-in-Chief Georgi Lozanov points out that if the Nobel Prize for Visual Arts existed, the Bulgarian-born Christo Javacheff would certainly be among its winners. In the words of Assoc. Prof. Lozanov, four factors are at the heart of Christo's success. "The first, of course, is talent, which in his case is both that of a classical painter (witness his works from his student years in Sofia) and of an aesthetic visionary - to the extent of not only following but also challenging trends in the avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century," writes the LIK Editor-in-Chief. 

In his words, the second factor is freedom. "His unwavering attraction to freedom made him leave communist Bulgaria as soon as possible and go wherever his eyes could see in the free world. There he met his wife Jeanne-Claude", Lozanov points out. According to him, she is the third factor. "Javacheff  has found the 'ideal other' with whom they are building a whole - from the coincidence of their birth dates 90 years ago to their co-authorship through 50 of them, which has turned love from an intimate relationship into a creative method," Lozanov writes. 

He adds that the fourth factor was the persuasiveness with which the two managed to get governments, parliaments and town halls to allow them to pack landmark buildings or build mile-long installations.

Journalist Evgenia Atanasova-Teneva, who has established herself as an expert on Christo's work and biography, is among the authors in LIK's June issue. She has repeatedly met the creator of monumental projects in natural environments and is the author of documentaries about his life and art. "Whenever I have spoken to Christo, I have been convinced that his projects with Jeanne-Claude and their work are the ultimate meaning of their lives. 'We are obsessed,' he once told me," Atanasova-Teneva writes.

Artist Latchezar Boyadjiev describes Christo and Jeanne-Claude's ideas of beauty and freedom. On the pages of LIK, he also gives various examples of artists influenced by the themes and commitments of Javacheff and his wife. According to Boyadjiev, the influence and continuation of the themes and commitments of Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the work of other artists can best be commented in the words of Jeanne-Claude herself, who said, "Artists don't retire, they just die." Thus the place of an artist, let's say Christo and Jeanne-Claude, in world art is cemented in real life and artistic practices, not just in museum collections, anniversaries of projects," writes Boyadjiev. 

Among the contributors to the June issue is Margarita Dorovska, who has focused entirely on the project to create the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Centre since autumn 2023. She examines the art of the two artists and the art centre named after them in Jaavasheff's hometown of Gabrovo. In her words, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are needed in a country like Bulgaria, first of all as inspiration, "and if we take a pragmatic approach - as a model". Dorovska adds that Christo and Jeanne-Claude's projects are different from all other art of the 20th and 21st centuries, and are possible precisely because they created them together.

With a thematic chronology, LIK follows the story of Christo Javasheff and his wife - the way it has been presented in the news over the years. At the beginning of their careers, publications were hard to find, with information usually passing through the secret bulletins. Over the decades, however, journalists began to feel more and more comfortable covering and commenting on the work of Jean-Claude and Christo. Thus, one can read in the timeline accounts of some of their greatest projects. 

On the pages of BTA's magazine are also excerpts from interviews of Christo, given during different stages of his artistic development. In one of them he says the following: "Without art, I would stop breathing. I would just die!" 

LIK's June issue ends with a text - a kind of letter with three questions asked by journalist Daniel Nenchev to Christo. Nenchev asks him: why doesn't he speak Bulgarian? What is the meaning of this art and is it beautiful? The author conducts an extramural dialogue with the artist and searches for the answers through his works and his words, which have remained in time. "I know that with all your projects, supposedly temporary, you are packing your baggage of art for where you are now - in eternity", Nenchev addresses Christo. 

BTA's LIK magazine has been free to access since January 2024. All issues from 2022 to present day are available in electronic format at the BTA website.