# What do you think of the London Mastaba? (Christo & Jeanne Claude)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-the-london-mastaba-christo-jeanne-claude/821485>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 17, 2018, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-the-london-mastaba-christo-jeanne-claude/821485 "2018-09-17T18:17:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-the-london-mastaba-christo-jeanne-claude/821485/21 "2018-09-18T22:32:23Z")

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> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> It’s like that in real life - it’s like it has been photoshopped right into your eyeballs. I don’t know if that was intentional

OK, it just got more interesting. I’m not exactly sure why, but it does. That I’d like to see.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2018, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-of-the-london-mastaba-christo-jeanne-claude/821485/22 "2018-09-19T08:24:29Z")

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Breaking it down (which isn’t always a great idea for art phenomena), I think what was happening is:  
[ul]  
[li]It’s a huge, bright, unexpected object in a fairly natural-looking setting (OK, it’s an artificially landscaped park, but the other objects in view are trees, water, people)[/li][li]The colours used are at opposite ends of the spectrum - it’s hard for the eye to focus properly on blue and red things both at the same time[/li][li]You can’t get really close to it on land - you can circle around it along the lake edge - and where you’re looking at it across featureless water, it’s hard to get any scale context - I felt like I was at times grasping to understand whether it was big and far away, or smaller and closer.[/li][li]It doesn’t seem to cast as much of a reflection as you might expect it to. I don’t know if the surface of the Serpentine is ever flat calm - it wasn’t when I visited, and it isn’t in any of the photos I have seen. Lack of reflection makes the object look implausible.[/li][/ul]

I don’t know how much of that was the intent of the artist - he seems a pretty clever guy though, so it wouldn’t surprise me to learn this is what he wanted.

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