Many fences

This article is from the Wall Street Journal. An accompanying photo in the print version is not online. I have my own photos of the Central Park installation, February 2005.

When artists working outside gallery and museum walls in the 1960s and 1970s put down their tools, they often had only a handful of black-and-white photographs or a grainy video as evidence of their labor. Like postcards sent from a place that no longer exists, these images were meant to underscore the "purity" of the art—an ephemeral event or a construction not designed for the ages—and might also serve to attract funding for the next project or as the paltry things their dealers were supposed to sell.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose signature style became the wrapping or marking of a structure or area with fabrics, had a more ingenious approach. They funded their dreamy, supersize, transient creations—realized most recently in 2005's "The Gates" in Central Park—with the sale of preliminary drawings and models, leaving the documenting of the results to the acclaimed filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, and to the German photographer Wolfgang Volz. The Maysleses co-produced and co-directed five sumptuous color films about large-scale projects by the Bulgarian-born sculptor and his Moroccan-born artistic partner and wife, beginning with "Valley Curtain" in 1974 and ending with "Umbrellas" in 1990, while Mr. Volz has been their official photographer since 1972.

Christo And Jeanne-Claude: Remembering The Running Fence
Smithsonian American Art Museum Through Sept. 26

A remarkable example of this long, fruitful relationship can be seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence" is devoted to one of the couple's most ambitious and evocative works of art: the 18-foot-high white nylon fence that ran for 24½ miles across two rolling northern California counties and into the Pacific Ocean. It stood for two weeks in September 1976.

Along with nearly 50 drawings, a 58-foot-long scale model, and 250 photographs by Mr. Volz that recall the planning of the work and the miraculous result, the show features continuous screenings of the 1978 film "Running Fence," directed by the Maysleses and Charlotte Zwerin, as well as "The 'Running Fence' Revisited," a new film directed by Wolfram Hissen. Both documentaries convey, better than any set of objects could, the utopianism, nerve, luck, grass-roots organization, horse-trading and lawlessness that led to one of the few successful and popular works of American environment art.

Whether "Running Fence" would be impossible to accomplish in today's America is hard to gauge. Even in the mid-1970s, long before the age of terrorism, the odds were slim that a pair of New York artists with foreign accents could persuade 59 sheep ranchers and dairy farmers to allow an enormous fabric fence to snake across their property. As it was, convincing them and getting permits took four years. "You're a stranger here," one rancher tells Christo in the Maysles film. "You have to overcome that."

The intensity of the opposition is captured in an early scene in which a man shouts, "That's art? Some lousy curtain coming through here. Hell with it. I'm against it. I think it's stupid." And it wasn't only amateur art critics who initially hated the idea. Environmental groups also objected, especially to the component that called for the fence to spill down a cliff on the beach and disappear into the ocean. Some Sonoma and Marin county commissioners voted against its going up, too.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude never discuss on camera why they settled on this site. But the largely treeless contours of the golden hills are undeniably sensual. The mutations of the piece as it reacts to wind, fog, sun and ocean are captured beautifully in the Maysles film, which dwells more on the hour-by-hour construction—highlighted by the suspense of a last-minute injunction from the California Coastal Commission—than on the arduous process that eventually won over the doubters.

This is oddly modest of the Maysleses, who were instrumental in changing the minds of landowners. The artists had shown their honorable intentions by screening in local homes their previous collaborative film, "Valley Curtain," in which a 1,300-foot-long orange curtain was strung across a gap in the Colorado Rockies for 28 hours.

Mr. Hissen's film is better at revealing the uniquely American circumstances that allowed the project to succeed. As important as the $2,500 or $3,000 offered to each landowner was the promise by the artists to donate the construction materials when the piece was disassembled. Several recipients cut up the tall metal pipes that had supported the ad hoc fence, recycling them as permanent fence posts. "You give a farmer something free and they think they got the world by the tail," one local says.

County officials' disapproval also gave the project unexpected cachet. The government's telling the owners they couldn't do with their land as they wished angered a number of them, causing them to look more favorably on the outsiders. "Looking back, if the supervisors hadn't said no, Christo would have had a hard time getting this done," says another resident.

Most of all, the tenacity of the couple and their unshakable faith in their unusual ideas seem to have earned respect, trust and affection from people who had never heard of site-specific art. In a pivotal scene filmed by the Maysleses at one of 20 public meetings in which the project was argued about, Christo tells the crowd: "The art project is right now here. Everybody here is part of my work."

He wasn't kidding. Overcoming hostility and working within bureaucracies has been as integral to Christo's art as the structures he sketched and built. Early on, he and Jeanne-Claude (his invaluable and highly intelligible mediator) realized that the post office in Valley Ford was a hub for the sparsely populated area, and so they went about courting the support of the postmaster.

The lasting impact of "Running Fence" on this still-rural community is the focus of Mr. Hissen's documentary. He filmed a reunion last year between Christo and Jeanne-Claude (two months before she died) and the surviving participants and observers of the project. "There's no Rembrandts hanging in people's houses out here," says one man. And yet "Running Fence," then and now, ignited serious conversations about "what is art" among citizens who had never thought it was a question.

It is fitting that the Smithsonian American Art Museum bought the project archive for "Running Fence" in 2008. But to gain a deeper sense of its emotional scope, watch the Maysles-Zwerin film. The putting together of the artwork seems not unlike a barn-raising, demanding the same cooperation and, when the fence is secure and rippling in the breeze, evoking the same giddiness and pride. I can't be alone in feeling patriotic about a country that allowed such an unlikely and lovely thing to exist.

Mr. Woodward is an arts writer living in New York.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D9


* ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
* APRIL 6, 2010

A California Dream Come True. By RICHARD B. WOODWARD

Analog Soul

Brooklyn, N.Y.

The reasons for the satisfying success of the old-school soul unit Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings come together at this small, hand-built recording studio in a rickety brick row house in the Bushwick section. Nearby, chained guard dogs laze in the early spring sun. Next door to Daptone Records' headquarters, an auto-body shop quakes with industry. It's a likely location for a studio that's the opposite of state-of-the-art.

With its out-of-fashion tape-recording equipment, the House of Soul studio, as it's known, gives the Dap-Kings' music a resonance that recalls the delightfully greasy soul tracks cut some four decades ago at Stax or Royal Recording in Memphis, Tenn., the Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Ala., or Malaco's studio in Jackson, Miss. Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings built this studio by hand; she's proud to tell you she wired the electrical sockets. Under the floorboards in the isolation booth, where singers and soloists record their parts, are old tires stuffed with clothes to give the space vibrancy and warmth. Mark Ronson brought Amy Winehouse here to record tracks for her monster hit "Back to Black," with the Dap-Kings providing instrumental support. The framed platinum album the Dap-Kings received for their contributions is on the musty basement's floor, not far from what looks like a paint-by-numbers portrait of Stevie Wonder.

The studio reflects the spirit of the Dap-Kings, a self-contained unit dedicated to straight-to-the-gut soul, as their new album attests. Out next week, "I Learned the Hard Way" (Daptone) features the Dap-Kings laying down a solid foundation under Ms. Jones, who as a vocalist is somehow defiant yet vulnerable. To be sure, Gabriel Roth's arrangements and production celebrate classic soul recordings, but to call "I Learned the Hard Way" retro is to miss the point: This is the kind of American music whose commercial fortunes may ebb and flow, but as an art form it is everlasting. "There ain't nothing retro about me," Ms. Jones told me. "We're not hopping on anybody's band wagon."

The Dap-Kings comprise a three-piece horn section with a bone-rattling baritone sax, two guitars, Mr. Roth's bass, drums and Ms. Jones—a tiny dynamo with a big voice and bigger stage presence. In concert, they come out and hit hard from the opening note of a soul revue hosted by their guitarist Binky Griptite. On disc, the Dap-Kings are wall-to-wall soul, with abundant nods to their predecessors. But they're well aware it's no longer the '60s music scene. If it were, and radio played soul and R&B with the joy and frequency it once did, two songs on the new album—"She Ain't a Child No More" and "Better Things"—would be hit singles.

Ms. Jones joined the Dap-Kings a decade ago. Media make much of her brief stint as a corrections officer at New York's Rikers Island prison, but more relevant is her rollercoaster experiences as a singer. Thwarted early in her career by a thoughtless young producer who told her she lacked the look to be a star, Ms. Jones sang in a successful wedding band for almost 20 years before walking away to join the Dap-Kings, who had an unwavering commitment to soul music.

"I was turning down a $500 gig for a $75 gig," Ms. Jones said. "But I felt it's what I had to do." The Dap-Kings had secured a residency at a club in Barcelona, providing the singer with her first trip overseas, but those close to her thought she'd made a mistake. "My own family said, 'What is she doing running around Europe with these guys?'"

The band's furious stage show helped it build its reputation and lock in its sound. In 2004-05, it played more than 250 shows in 14 countries. The Dap-Kings' breakthrough album, "100 Days, 100 Nights," followed. Critics caught on, and countless TV and festival appearances followed. College-age members of the audiences who hadn't lived through soul's great era heard the band and introduced it to their parents. Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings were no longer seen as a nostalgia act out on the fringe.
[dapkings] Associated Press

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.

"We knew we were on to a good thing," Mr. Jones said. "We weren't making any money before, but now we were on a roll." Without a regular income, Ms. Jones had moved in with her mother in Far Rockaway, Queens. Now she was able to get out on her own again.

On the heels of "100 Days," new opportunities beckoned. Ms. Jones worked with Lou Reed and had a role in Denzel Washington's "The Great Debaters." "Finally, my look paid off," Ms. Jones told me with a wry smile. The Dap-Kings backed Al Green. The full unit appeared on the all-star charity album "Dark Was the Night." Back in Bushwick, sessions began for "I Learned the Hard Way," a title that reflected Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' rise to success.

As for the studio, with its analog recording equipment and reel-to-reel tapes, Mr. Roth, who produces under the name Bosco Mann, said: "It's all just a tool. Analog sounds good, but it's more important to have a good drummer." Owning the House of Soul means the Dap-Kings don't have to rent costly studio space by the hour, he added. The trick is to avoid the trappings of success and make better records. And to let Ms. Jones continue to blossom.

"Sharon has an unmatched ability to connect with an audience," he said. "She can't mail it in. As she says, what comes from the heart reaches the heart."

By JIM FUSILLI