Bridge to the past: JR to wrap Pont Neuf again, 40 years after artistic forebears

The enigmatic French artist JR will undertake what he says is his biggest ever challenge next year when he “wraps” Pont Neuf, the oldest standing bridge across the Seine River in Paris, in a tribute to a monumental art project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.For three weeks next June, the 232-metre (761ft) long bridge will be wrapped in fabric, 40 years after the married artists known for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations did the same thing.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in his Paris studio, JR said the project – titled the Pont Neuf Cavern – was “100% the most challenging thing I’ve ever done”.“I love a challenge,” the photographer and street artist said. “I realised this was an opportunity for me to do something that I needed to do and hadn’t been able to do before.Christo poses in 1981 with a model of his project to wrap the Pont Neuf. Photograph: Michel Clement/AFP/Getty Images“Suddenly, I realised I could actually wrap this bridge and create a real cave in it.“You’re going to see this big rock formation in the middle of the city. It will be really disruptive.”Since the mid-2000s, JR, who is never seen publicly without his aviator sunglasses and black fedora, has brought large-scale photographic projects to cities around the world.His collaborative installations range from trompe l’œil illusions to portraits of people to raise awareness of the marginalised and oppressed.JR’s career began as a teenage graffiti artist and street “tagger” who worked with one eye on the lookout for police. In 2010 the Guardian described him as the “hippest street artist since Banksy”.The Pont Neuf Wrapped, by Christo and Jeanne Claude, pictured on 22 September 1985. Photograph: Photo 12/AlamyHis work was collected in the 2015 book Can Art Change the World, revised and republished last year with a forward by film director George Lucas.Though no longer entirely anonymous – we know JR stands for Jean-René and he is 42 – he retains an air of mystery despite achieving global fame.Growing up in one of Paris’s banlieue housing estates, JR was only two when Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped Pont Neuf in 1985.“Obviously, I didn’t know about it at the time, and art really came late into my life,” he said. “You have to understand, I really didn’t come from this art world. I was not familiar with it at all.“Much later, when I discovered the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, I realised what I had missed. I knew the [Pont Neuf] project had had a major impact on my city and it made me wish I’d been there.A woman poses in a trompe l’oeil art installation by JR, set up at the Trocadero in front of the Eiffel Tower, in May 2021. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA“To be asked to do something 40 years later on the same bridge is a huge responsibility but also an incredible moment for me to create something truly mesmerising, to push myself into creating a piece that will also, I hope, make a mark on the city of Paris – and maybe the world – like Christo and Jeanne-Claude did.”Christo was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria in 1935, and arrived in Paris in 1957. There he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, his partner and artistic collaborator until her death in 2009. Among their most famous projects was wrapping the Berlin Reichstag in 1995.Christo’s nephew Vladimir Yavachev, director of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, said he approached JR to mark the anniversary of the original Pont Neuf wrap and has given him an artistic carte blanche on the project.“I was looking for an artist who had been influenced by Christo to have the inspiration for another project and thought of JR. When I called him and asked if he’d be interested, he loved the idea,” Yavachev said.Yavachev oversaw the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in 2021, a work Christo had been planning at the time of his death in 2020.Unlike the struggle Christo had to obtain permission from the then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, to wrap the bridge in 1985, the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, agreed immediately – as did the city police chief and the French president, Emmanuel Macron.The Pont Neuf cavern will be open from 6 June to 28 June next year. The bridge will remain open.An onlooker takes a picture as technicians work on L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped in 2021. Photograph: François Mori/APJR said the technical details of the project, which involves dozens of engineers and hundreds of workers, are still being worked out.“The the critical thing about doing public art is that you can literally see the whole process,” said JR.“So people will be able to see every single step. There’ll be nothing hidden from them. Everything will be in the open.”As for how much the project, which is being paid from private funds, will cost, Yavachev said: “Jeanne-Claude used to say it will cost what it has to cost.”“That’s good man. That’s a great answer,” JC said.