The Umbrellas

The denunciations of Christo’s umbrellas (letters, Oct. 18) display a woeful misunderstanding of Christo’s artistic premise. He is not a sculptor in the traditional sense, but a process sculptor: one who shapes the temporal frame of an artwork’s “life” and where the artwork itself--the object--plays only a part. Christo’s actual “sculpture” encompasses its entire creation and destruction: its concept and planning, the acquisition of capital for its execution, legal transactions to prepare its placement, environmental studies, community and social relations, labor organization and hiring, installation, its display, dismantlement and recycling of its parts, and--yes--even the critical reactions.

It is only a conservative and traditional allegiance to the object which blinds people to the umbrellas’ (and to other Christo projects’) richer scope.

DAVID J. RUSSELL

Los Angeles