Roll out the Barrel:An afternoon in the shadow of the London Mastaba.

"The work of art is a scream of freedom" - Christo.

The London Mastaba (2018)

What is art for these days? What was it ever for? Is it meant to speak deeper truths to our souls? To ask questions? To provide answers? Or just for something interesting to look at? Something to whack up on your Instagram account and watch the 'likes' mount up?

When I visited Hyde Park to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's London Mastaba (and not for the first time) there were enough people with their cameras out to suggest that, in the case of this work, it's very much for the Instagram generation. Hordes of art pilgrims and tourists mingled in with the Egyptian geese, swans, squirrels, and herons to get a view of the Mastaba and it's clearly large enough that nobody left disappointed on that score.

Having watched last night's BBC4 documentary, Christo and Jeanne-Claude:Monumental Art I get the impression that Christo (Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 but her name still graces all the work in an admirable act of both love and respect) would be perfectly content with that assessment. In an interview the refreshingly sprightly and cynicism free octogenarian opined that the world had no need for his art, nobody else had any need for his art, but he, Christo, had a need for the art.

The London Mastaba (2018)

Of course we don't need art like we need food, shelter, medicine, and, ideally, love and companionship but, like music and cinema, it makes life more interesting, more fun. Our success as homo sapiens is said to be down to the fact that we're essentially social beings and at a time when our working lives, our social lives, and even our love lives are being conducted both online and often in solitude then these big art events should be applauded. Bring everyone together to look at a thing, ideally an unusual thing in some way, and then get them chatting, get them exchanging ideas. It's about telling stories and if that's not a basic human need it is very much a primal human desire.

I'd visited alone which was my chief regret of the day. I was envious of those out in the rowing boats taking a closer look at the 7,506 oil barrels (none of which have had, nor ever will have, oil in them) that have been fashioned into the shape of an ancient Egyptian tomb. It seemed to me like going to visit the London Mastaba would be best enjoyed as a communal experience. Take a picnic.

The London Mastaba (2018)

The London Mastaba (2018)

As a solitary visitor I had to fight hard to not develop an over-analytical approach to the installation (that will only float on the Serpentine for four months this summer) and just enjoy the day. I had an ice cream, I did the crossword, I did the sudoku, I watched couples strolling hand in hand in the late afternoon sunshine, and, from elsewhere in the park, I could hear one of the bands playing at a Radio 2 festival which featured the unlikely line up of Kylie Minogue, Boyzone, and The Manic Street Preachers. A line up one could only previously imagine gracing a 1996 edition of Top of the Pops. As the muffled music blared away in the background I tried to compose various photographs that did justice to both the London Mastaba and Basil Spence's Brutalist Hyde Park Barracks just south of Rotten Row.

For those, like myself, who wish to delve a little further into the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude the Serpentine Gallery itself, just across the road in Kensington Gardens, have some of their back story, at least the history of their work with barrels (if nothing about the time they wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin, did the same to the Pont Neuf in Paris, or created a series of fantastic looking 'floating piers' on and around Lake Iseo in Lombardy).

Oil Barrel Columns (1962)

Christo was born Christo Vladimirov Javachef in central Bulgaria on the 13th June 1935 and his future wife, collaborator, and business partner Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon was born the exact same day in Casablanca, Morocco into a French army family who were stationed there. It's, of course, sweet that those two kindred spirits, and birthday buddies, came together to become two of the biggest names in the art world but when you watch the documentary you see that the dynamic between them is very much that of equals.

Christo seems to be the ideas man, beavering away on designs and projects, while Jeanne-Claude seems to be a bit more hard-edged, the one who won't take no for answer when embarking upon one of these projects. They may, essentially, run a business together but it's almost impossible not to notice the deep love between them. Perhaps that's why their art is so popular. Maybe people can just tell when things are made with, and from, love. After all it's how most of us came to be.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been using barrels, less monumentally it has to be said, for over sixty years now. There's little about why, and it seems Christo doesn't like to give too much away preferring to just put the art out there and let others do the talking, but it could be for many reasons.

Some have posited political commentary about oil and the various wars that have been fought over it (either explicitly or not) and while there's possibility an element of that I found myself more convinced by Christo telling a story about growing up in poverty stricken Bulgaria before, after, and during the war (before moving to Prague, Vienna, Paris, and finally, New York) where there was no interest, no passion, and no knowledge whatsoever of modern art.

It almost seems as if by using these basic, everyday, materials to make his contribution to the world of abstract, installation, or conceptual art that Christo was getting to both join the club and stand, with Jeanne-Claude (they met in 1958 and got together in somewhat complicated circumstances), to one side of it, proclaiming some kind of independence, an aloofness that was grandiose but somehow managed to lack arrogance.

If anything Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art could be seen almost as an act of philanthropy. They pay the entire cost of the artworks themselves. Money is earned through the sale of Christo's preparatory studies and early works from the fifties and sixties and they refuse to accept grants, sponsorship, donated labour, or money for posters, postcards, books, films, t-shirts, mugs or any other merchandise. They do this because they want to. Because, in some way, they need to.

Wrapped Oil Barrels (1958-59)

Wrapped Barrels (1958-59)

Wrapped Oil Barrels (1958)

Wall of Oil Barrels on West 53rd Street, Project for The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1968)

1,032 Barrels Structure, Project for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (1968)

28 Barrels Structure (1968)

In some of the works you can see a nod to the assemblage of Robert Rauschenberg or Marcel Duchamp (Pablo Picasso even, if you squint) but elsewhere you can see the flowerings of the kind of installation art that people like Carsten Holler and Rachel Whiteread later developed (or pared down, it's hard to 'develop' a Christo and Jeanne-Claude so immense is the scale). You could quite easily make a case for Christo and Jeanne-Claude belonging with Robert Smithson and Richard Long in the field of land, or environmental, art. 

But the truth is that Christo and Jeanne-Claude, despite being two people, make up one very singular, and one very eye catching artist. I'm glad I took another trip down to the Serpentine to take in this spectacle (for that is surely what is), I'm glad the sun was out, I wish I'd taken a friend or three, and, despite never having had much interest in visiting the United Arab Emirates there's a big part of me that'd love to go and see the Mastaba recreated, if Christo gets the permission, in Abu Dhabi. The plan is for it to sit in the desert but for it to be more than 50 (FIFTY) times the size. 

Just because you're an eighty-three year old widower no reason you can't still think big.

The London Mastaba (2018)