The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (101 page)

(1935– ).
Bulgarian-born sculptor and experimental artist who settled in New York in 1964 and became an American citizen in 1973. After brief periods in Prague, Vienna (where he studied sculpture with
Wotruba
), and Geneva, he moved to Paris, where he lived from 1958 to 1964. Initially he earned his living there as a portrait painter, but soon after his arrival he invented ‘empaquetage’ (packaging), a form of expression he has made his own and for which he has become world-famous. It consists of wrapping objects in materials such as canvas or semitransparent plastic and dubbing the result art. He began with small objects such as paint tins from his studio (in this he had been anticipated by
Man Ray
), but they increased in size and ambitiousness through trees and motor cars to buildings and sections of landscape. He spends a great deal of time and effort negotiating permission to carry out such work and then (if negotiations are successful) in planning the operations, which can involve teams of professional rock-climbers as well as construction workers. He finances such massive enterprises through the sale of his smaller works. The buildings that he has succeeded in wrapping include the Pont Neuf in Paris (1985, after nine years of negotiations), and the Reichstag in Berlin (1995). Among the landscape projects he has carried out is Running Fence, something like a fabric equivalent of the Great Wall of China, undulating through 24 miles of Somona and Martin Counties, California (1976). Christo says of his work: ‘You can say it's about displacement. Basically even today I am a displaced person, and that is why I make art that does not last … Unlike steel, or stone, or wood, the fabric catches the physicality of the wind, the sun. They are refreshing. And then they are quickly gone.’

 
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(d. 1472/73).
Netherlandish painter. He is first documented at Bruges in 1444, and he is thought by some authorities to have been the pupil of Jan van
Eyck
and to have completed some of the works left unfinished by the master at his death in 1441 (e.g.
St Jerome
, Detroit Inst. of Arts). It is certainly true that he was overwhelmingly influenced by van Eyck , and his copies and variations of his work helped to spread the Eyckian style. Christus's work is more summary than van Eyck's, however, his figures sometimes rather doll-like and without van Eyck's feeling of inner life. The influence of Rogier van der
Weyden
is also evident in Christus's work; the
Lamentation
(Musées. Royaux, Brussels) is clearly based on van der Weyden's great Prado
Deposition
, but the figures have completely lost their dramatic impact. Christus's most personal works are his portraits, notably
Edward Grimston
(Earl of Verulam Coll., on loan to NG, London, 1446) in which he abandons the dark backgrounds of van Eyck and van der Weyden and places his sitter in a clearly defined interior. His interest in representing space comes out also in his
Virgin and Child with Sts Jerome and Francis
(Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, 1457), the earliest dated example in the north of the use of geometric
perspective
with a single vanishing point.

 
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chromolithography
.

The process of making coloured prints by
lithography
, using a separate stone or plate for each colour.

 
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chryselephantine
.

Term describing statues in which the drapery is made of gold (Greek
chrysos
) and the flesh of ivory (Greek
elephantinos
). The technique was used on a small scale in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete, and in colossal statues by the Greeks from the 6th cent. BC. Most famous of chryselephantine statues were the enormous cult images of Athena and Zeus that
Phidias
made respectively for the Parthenon at Athens and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

 
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(1826–1900).
American landscape painter. He was a pupil and close friend of
Cole
and continued the preoccupations of the
Hudson River School
with the most spectacular aspects of natural scenery. Church looked and travelled beyond his native country, however, painting not only the Niagara Falls, for example, but also the tropical forests of South America, icebergs, and exploding volcanoes, often on a huge scale. He was immensely popular in his day, and after a period of neglect is returning to favour again. His house, Olana, on the Hudson River, is now a museum.

 
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