“L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped”  60 years in the making is now concretized

I flocked to the huge roundabout which is located at the western stretch of Avenue des Champs-Élysées to see this monumental artwork Friday evening before a dinner meeting.  “It was Quite Impressive!”

L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped was unveiled by President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.  The art installation is on view for sixteen days from September 18th to October 3, 2021. The project has been realized in partnership with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and in coordination with the City of Paris.

The Arc de Triomphe is wrapped in 25,000 square meters of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silvery blue along with 3,000 meters of red rope.

Visitors will not only be able to see the gleaming they can also touch it. Those who climb the 50 meters to the top will step on it when they reach the roof terrace.

France’s Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot has called the work “a formidable gift offered to Parisians, the French and beyond, to all art lovers.”

The backstory:

In 1961, three years after they met in Paris, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began creating works of art in public spaces. One of their projects was to wrap a public building. When he arrived in Paris, he rented a small room near the Arc de Triomphe and had been attracted by the monument ever since. In 1962, he made a photomontage of the Arc de Triomphe wrapped, seen from the Avenue Foch and, in 1988, a collage. 60 years later, the project will finally be concretized.

“It will be like a living object,” Christo had said, “which will come alive in the wind and reflect the light.

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