CHRISTO'S RUNNING FENCE: POLITICS TO POETRYAuthor(s): j.a.h.Source: ARLIS/NA Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 6 (OCTOBER 1976), p. 161Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27945706 .

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CHRISTO S RUNNING FENCE: POLITICS TO POETRY

It was a beautiful, sunny day?the pilot at San Carlos was

young and excited, just as we were-loaded with video equip ment, still camera and movie camera, I thought we were a camera crew-and yet we were not. Just trying to live the

history that was being made in Petaluma. What a day it was in a Cessna 2 plane. "This is real flying" is what Carl kept telling me-and I knew I was going to say that too, when the afternoon was over.

We entered the plane-a four-seater with very comfortable seats-instructions from the control tower came over the radio. We strapped ourselves in; the motor turned over; and we were moving, moving into the anticipation which was to be our mood for the first twenty minutes. We waited on the

ground for air traffic, turned, and then up we went-easy, gentle-and aloft, we climbed quickly, yet measured against the cars on the ground we were like toads. Instead we read 180 air miles an hour, and we couldn't believe it. We flew

over airports, water, Marine World, over beaches and ocean

side-up over the watershed, even saw hang ghding-and then the little houses on the hillside of Daly City, the density of

population, and then San Francisco, the capital of the beau tiful world-glistening in the sunlight, a joy to behold-and the anticipation built, and built, and built. Over the city, edging toward the Golden Gate, bright red in the sunshine and then the pilot asked for directions.

Luckily, I had studied the map which Marin County had

printed just for the occasion, and told him to head toward

Bodega Bay. We were all a little nervous, spaced out, anti

cipating, waiting anxiously for our first glimpse, and then it was there-over cliffs, the rocks, the bay, we saw the white silken ribbon winding its way through the landscape, shifting with the wind, picking up light as it moved, back and forth across the rolling hillside. A cloud bank seemed to cloak the

beginning of the fence which rose from the sea, a gray cloud bank hid it from us and so we started to descend toward the fence; it bent in the wind as if to greet us and the pilot was

excited, as the cameras whirred, and we bent for angle shots and we oohed and aahed, and gasped with wonder and

delight; every inch of the fence was being photographed with video, and as we looked back through the tail, we could see the scale of this artist, the monumental scale of this crazy

man who moved the people down there. It was astounding, and we were awed by the poetic nature of the piece, a 24-mile fence invading the landscape, and yet becoming part of it. Its curves and turns were as exciting as the country side; cows chewed their cud oblivious of us, and the fence

stopped at roads, stopped at trees, sometimes incorporated a grove of trees, embraced trees to allow only the shadow to show, played with the hillside and sometimes didn't follow it but turned-a white ribbon for my lady and for my gent and for the people of the valley. They understood, grew to under stand and loved it, as we did. How much politics he had to

play to get permission to create that poetry, a very special poetry that the artist was writing in a winding white fence which was more fugitive than grafitti, more ephemeral than wall art. It would be gone in a few days, etched only on film, or on tape, but moreso in the hearts of those who experi enced it.

When we reached Petaluma, and it ended-abruptly as it

had appeared under the cloudbank-we were sad, our voices seemed to become still, we were emotionally tired-but happy-and after making a turn over the last of the fence in Petaluma, we headed home.

As we listened to the drone of the control tower, and then looked around in silence, the landscape on the right was like an Ansel Adams photograph while the landscape on the left was urban, densely populated, and now it seemed as if the plane were split in two-and so was the landscape. We remained quiet over the city of San Francisco, quietly pleased with ourselves, overwhelmed with Christo, and so very, very happy to have been a part of it. The Running Fence is not only stored on film, but impressed in our spirits, our imaginations, our hearts; it was a tribute to a great artist whose imagination and genius saw it to its natural end, and we knew that it was right.

ja.h.

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