“I was so poor and I had no studio,” says Christo. “I started working with little tin cans of paint” by Marcus Fairs from Dezeen

“I was so poor and I had no studio” says Christo. “I started working with little tin cans of paint”

In the first of two exclusive video interviews with Christo, the artist explains how the giant London Mastaba installation on the Serpentine lake is the culmination of over 60 years of working with stacked barrels.

The temporary London project, which is 20 metres high and consists of 7,506 barrels, was unveiled last month. But the artwork has its genesis in experiments made by Christo, 83, and his late partner Jeanne-Claude in the fifties and sixties.

“I was born in Bulgaria and I escaped from the communist country to the west on 10 January 1957,” Christo explains in the movie, which Dezeen filmed in London. “I met Jeanne-Claude in November 1958 and we together fell in love.”

“We lived in Paris in between 58 and 64,” he continues. “I was so poor, I had no studio and I was living in one room. I started working with little cans, tin cans of industrial paint. From the cans of the smaller size, I moved to the smaller sized barrels. I rented a garage outside of Paris when I started working with real barrels.”

In 1962 he blocked a Paris street with stacked barrels in a reference to the Berlin Wall that was erected the previous year.

“I was worried the third world war would start,” Christo says. “The Soviets took over Budapest during the revolution [in 1956] but I escaped and there was a big turmoil. I remember I was very scared that they would run over West Germany and come back to Paris and I proposed to do my artistic Iron Curtain in the smallest street, in the Rue Visconti, of the left bank of Paris.”

More: https://www.dezeen.com/2018/08/08/video-interview-christo-jeanne-claude-london-mastaba-serpentine-lake-installation-movie/“I was so poor and I had no studio” says Christo. “I started working with little tin cans of paint”

Artists Create a Mural Honoring George Floyd at the Site of His Murder by Hakim Bishara from Hyperallergic

The colourful painting has become a memorial site for Minneapolis residents to honour Floyd and mourn his death.

As protests against the murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd continue, a group of local artists created a mural to commemorate the slain 46-year-old at the street corner where he was choked to death by a police officer on Monday, May 25.

“I can’t breathe,” Floyd pleaded with the four officers who arrested him on Monday morning as he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, was recorded on camera pressing his knee over Floyd’s neck until the unarmed man stopped moving and needed to be delivered to a hospital.

Floyd was declared dead at 9:25pm that day. The four officers who were involved in his arrest were fired on Tuesday. Since mass protests have erupted in Minneapolis and across the country as protesters demand the court system and government bring Chauvin to justice and address the issue of police brutality against Black citizens. But it wasn’t until today, March 29, that Chauvin was arrested and charged with murder.

The mural, located on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis, is the work of artists Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, and Greta McLain. The group started working on the mural on Thursday morning and finished it within 12 hours with the help of artists Niko Alexander and Pablo Hernandez.

More: https://hyperallergic.com/567663/george-floyd-mural-minneapolis/