ISTA 301 Blog #2: Conceptual Art: "THE IRON CURTAIN"

On the topic of Conceptual Art, defined by Sol Lewitt as occuring when "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art", I found a piece by Jeanne-Claude and Christo, French artists of the 1960s on, who devised many ideas together with this principle in mind. One such idea ended in what became "The Iron Curtain".

Up for 8 hours on June 27th, 1962, the "curtain" was a pile of horizontally placed oil barrels set to block a small side street in Paris, "Rue Visconti", which used the following confusion, stopped traffic and blocked communication as the true art of the temporary installation (proper permits were apparently obtained for this through the city).

The wall was constructed specifically using 50L oil barrels of various brand names, such as BP, SHELL, and ESSO, with no alteration to the barrels whatsoever, leaving rust, leftover oil and original paint with brand names visible to make up a massive blockade of rust and worn color.  This style was closest to the works of the followers of Dadaism, taking average things and displaying them in a manner which participation from those who see the "piece" are the ones who truly can classify it as art, such as Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, the urinal taken off of the production line and placed in the middle of an art exhibit.

While not as biting nor questioning of what "art" is, the "iron curtain" was part of a protesting movement against events such as the Berlin Wall and joined protests of the Algerian War that were echoing throughout Paris, with the common interest of demonstrating the kind of disconnect and confusion that erecting simple walls to block small streets could cause, as what was happening in Germany at the time. The name itself is a direct reference to events at the time with the rise of Russia in conquering its neighbors and forming the real "Iron Curtain" as a buffer zone between the western world and itself, making the piece a fairly heavy political statement for the time period connected to the state of Europe during the 1960s. The use of oil barrels in particular aludes partly to the Algerian War for independence from colonial France, where a major perk of France owning the country was the oil present, but also relates to the large pushes against oil companies in the 60s seen mostly in the United States with environmental concerns rising. Then again, Christo and Jeanne-Claude also seemed to have an affinity with oil barrels as building materials as seen in other much larger pieces done throughout their careers, thus it could be that oil barrels were just their preferred medium.

Officially though, to get the project approved by the city of Paris, a use for the wall was listed as a manner of creating dead end roads and blocking off streets for construction work (not very practical or safe solutions to say the least).

In the original project description submitted to the city of Paris to authorize the installation of such a wall, it was stated that the concept of the curtain could easily be applied to the rest of the city. In various renditions, the "iron curtain" could have relatively high entropy, while always being a wall of oil barrels, the original plans by Christo and Jeanne-Claude also included the possibility of using 200L oil barrels rather than 50L ones, and had no specific requirements beyond volume for the barrels.  Beyond that, the differences between streets would contribute to the entropy by not allowing for uniformity of stacking the barrels in order to cut off the street.  Thus, every subsequent "Iron Curtian" could vary greatly from the original based on where the barrels were obtained, what they looked like, how they were stacked, and the place the wall existed as an installation.

In the end though, any rendition would be a piece of Conceptual Art, relying on the reactions drawn to it to truly create the "Art", and give it a meaning.



Sources (only one): www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wall-of-oil-barrels---the-iron-curtain