Christo + New AT&T Commercial

For those of you that were astounded as me to see AT&T wrapping things with bright orange fabric in their latest commercial, you'll be disappointed to know that this wrapping was not done by artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude.  They just, pretty much, stole the idea.  But I can't be too upset, in fact I appreciate this new marketing campaign.  For those who haven't seen the commercial, here it is.

If you love Christo's work like I do you might be pleasantly surprised by the new creative things they wrapped in the commercial!  For example, the Hollywood sign and the St. Louis arch.  Both excellent choices for wrapping I thought.
I had the unexpected fortune of seeing his work The Gates when I was in New York City in 2005.  I say unexpected because we weren't expecting to get to see it.  The installation was to end a week before we were in town, but thankfully for us, it took them about 2 weeks to tear everything down, hooray!  I even got one of the swatches they were giving out!

His work in central park was, a really nice way to 'wrap' the park.  His work is typically more literal, like this (pictured below, my personal favorite) when he wrapped the pont neuf in Paris, but I liked the play on wrapping he came up with for The Gates.

I first learned about Christo's work when watching the documentary film made about his piece Running Fence. A lot of what the documentary shows is the struggle he went through to get permission to build this fence.  It's really fascinating, I've never seen such an uproar over art before, it's pretty incredible. (If you want to watch part of it, check it out here).

This fence ran the length of 24.5 miles, across the property of 59 ranchers in Sonoma and Marin counties in northern California.  Talk about ahead of his time, he created this piece in 1976.  I appreciate and really love his vision.  And of course Jeanne-Claude, his perfect help-meet and her brilliantly bright red hair.