ART : Christo’s Latest Eye-Opener : 1,760 umbrellas will pop up along the Tejon Pass, another 1,340 from the Japanese landscape. It can be the work of only one artist

Christo is back in California and this time he is not the enemy.

Fifteen years ago, the Bulgarian-born artist was in Northern California to erect one of his trademark, site-specific alterations of landscape: a 24 1/2-mile fence of white nylon that stretched across fields of Sonoma and Marin counties and continued into the Pacific Ocean. During his four years on that project he was mocked, jeered and repeatedly taken to court.

Christo prevailed and “Running Fence” stood for its planned two-week exhibition. Since then he has wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris with 440,000 square feet of gold-colored fabric and surrounded 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay with 6.5 million square feet of pink fabric, among other projects.

He has returned with his most expensive and grandiose venture: “The Umbrellas: Joint Project for Japan and U.S.A.” It premieres Tuesday with the opening of 1,760 gigantic, custom-made, yellow umbrellas that have been placed in the mountains and fields along 18 miles of the Tejon Pass. They will be on view for three weeks to motorists traveling I-5 in the area, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles, popularly known as the Grapevine. Each of the umbrellas is as high as a two-story house and weighs 448 pounds.

Simultaneously, 1,340 blue umbrellas will be on view in the Ibaraki Prefecture, an area of rice paddies and urban development about 75 miles north of Tokyo.

When it’s over, on Oct. 30, the umbrellas will be dismantled and the parts will be recycled. None will be sold.

There have been a few local protests against “The Umbrellas”--some residents worried that the police, fire and ambulance services in the area would be stretched beyond their limits by the influx of visitors expected.

But they were drowned out by cries of welcome. “A lot of people you would not think would be interested at all are out there cleaning up, making everything look nice,” said Barbara Schu, the postmaster and only full-time employee of the post office in Lebec, a small town in the middle of “The Umbrellas.”

In Japan, “The Umbrellas” has a far lower public profile. Christo organizers in that country believe that the project has received little publicity because the artist refused to appear in a commercial handled by Dentsu--a powerful ad agency that has great influence with the press and media. The Christo camp hopes that when the umbrellas are finally opened, it will be too big an event for news organizations to ignore.

There are no worries about a lack of attention in the Tejon Pass. Reporters and television crews are already staking out prime viewing spots and the few motels in the area are completely booked for opening week. The California Highway Patrol is gearing up to handle what is expected to be at least 2 million extra people on the interstate while the umbrellas are on view. Locals are expecting a windfall of tourist dollars.

“This is something so historic that up here it will be remembered forever,” said Fran Poe, who owns a ranch that will be home to eight of the umbrellas.

Christo is still, however, an outsider in the American art world. His works--drawings, paintings and collages of his various projects--are seldom shown in major art museums in this country and some prominent critics ignore him or consider him just a showman.

“It’s a type of art, but it’s not serious art, it’s not important art,” said Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on a television show at the time Christo did the “Surrounded Islands” project.

“It’s not something that I, anyway, would want to take to a desert island with me for the rest of my life . . . I’d like to have somebody who probed the depths of human nature and revealed something about the human condition.”

Christo does have prominent defenders. “I think that most critics who think his work is just hype would change their minds if they actually saw a finished work,” said art historian Calvin Tomkins, who writes for The New Yorker, in an interview from his home. “Christo’s work is one that goes along with the 20th Century exploration of the nature of art, the constant questioning of what art is and the many different things it can be.”

And the public loves Christo, not only for his grand, temporary altering of landscapes and buildings with billowing fabric, but also for the way in which he goes about achieving his projects.

“All my projects are about freedom,” said the artist, now 56, who foots the entire bill for his pieces himself. He accepts no grants or gifts and he has no patrons. He allows no volunteer labor on his projects; all workers must be paid.

“The Umbrellas” will cost him more than $26 million, which he expects to raise from the sale of his work. Jeanne-Claude Christo-Javacheff, his wife and sole art dealer, does not take domestic telephone calls at their home in New York before 10:30 a.m. That is when she is on the phone to Europe, where most of the big Christo collectors live, hawking the art work he has done for “The Umbrellas” and other projects from throughout his career.

People might think that putting up thousands of umbrellas and calling it art is crazy, but they can’t complain that it’s being supported by their tax dollars or by a big foundation that might otherwise be doing charity work. Christo--who was born in Bulgaria and now resides in New York--is absolutely self-supporting. He is an all-American success story.

“Not everything about his art makes sense to me,” said Poe, “but I do think everyone should be able to follow their star. And he has done that.”

In 15 years, Christo has gone from object of scorn to folk hero. For him, timing is everything.

Christo first proposed a duo-continent project, linking Asia and the West, in 1969.

“Back then I was already thinking that the world was tilting to the Pacific Rim,” said the impish artist in his rapid, heavily accented English. He was on a recent dinner break from the almost round-the-clock work of getting the umbrellas ready for the opening.

“I was interested in the Japanese who are workaholic, like I am workaholic. And I had been influenced by their use of space.”

His modest proposal was to wrap in fabric the walkways of Ueno Park in Tokyo and Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem, Holland, simultaneously, in a project that would evoke the differences between the two cultures.

He was, however, almost unknown as an artist and he failed to get the necessary permission. This, he said, did not daunt him: “I am very patient,” Christo said with a grin, his eyes lighting up behind his trademark black-rim glasses. When he gets that look, which he does often in conversation, he bears more than a passing resemblance to Woody Allen.

“It is OK that these things take time. All the projects, they have a right time. Who could have known that when I finally get to do a project in two countries that it would be in the two most powerful countries in the world?

“I always just have to wait.”

He was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in 1935 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. His father owned a chemical manufacturing business until it was nationalized in 1944 when the Communists came to power.

Christo later called life under Communism “boring and sclerotic,” but in art school in Sofia in the early 1950s he learned to paint in the politically correct, socialist realist manner and he took part in artist agitprop projects. In 1956 he went to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to study and work at an avant-garde theater and while there was shaken by the news that the Soviets had brutally crushed the uprising in Hungary.

A doctor he had befriended invited the artist to escape to the West with his family in a freight train car that was supposed to be carrying medical supplies. Christo landed in Vienna and shortly thereafter made his way to Paris where he fell in with the nouveaux realistes , a group of young, avant-garde artists.

Christo began to experiment with wrapping things in fabric, starting small with everyday objects such as bottles and working his way up to oil cans and a nude woman. He does not talk much about the aesthetic reasons behind this work, but some of his admirers have called it a social commentary on commercialism. Others thought that wrapping an object simply made it more mysterious, more beautiful.

To eke out a living, he painted the portraits of society figures and in that way met the person most crucial to his success. Jeanne-Claude was the daughter of a prominent French army officer. When artist and model fell in love, her mother was so distressed that she tried to have Christo deported.

But Jeanne-Claude was headstrong--a quality that has served Christo’s projects well--and she and Christo were married in 1962.

In 1964 they moved to New York. He dropped all but his first name and began to do larger projects. “He found his real scale when he came to America,” said French critic Pierre Restany. “That sense of space and big dimension--it must be the same kind of feeling that the Europeans had when they first landed here in colonial times.”

In 1968 he wrapped his first building, the Kunsthalle Berne in what was then West Germany, and he said at the time: “I predict that artworks of the future will be in size category of Chinese Wall, and may become one day just as beautiful.”

In 1969 he wrapped the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and a 1.5-mile stretch of coastline in Australia. In 1972 he hung a curtain of nylon between two mountains in Colorado.

Along the way he was developing his strict working rules. For example, all the works would be up for only a limited amount of time, usually two weeks. “The temporary aspect of the project challenges our idea of the immortality,” Christo told students in a speech at Cal State Bakersfield earlier this year. “It’s from naivete and arrogance that we build things in gold, stone, with a very childish idea that we will be remembered forever.”

He also decided, as he became more popular, that he would not take part in any of the merchandising of any kind. He would make money only off his handmade art.

With “The Umbrellas,” the merchandising is in multi-million-dollar proportions. When “The Umbrellas” opens, there will be scores of vendors along the access roads selling T-shirts, mugs and, at least in one case, “commemorative sunglasses.” One charity coalition has taken to selling ad space on portable toilets to raise funds.

Christo is not only paying for this project, he is providing subsidies to help it go smoothly. For example, he will pay the CHP about $200,000 for the extra personnel needed during the event.

Jeanne-Claude said that her husband’s strict rules about funding are sometimes frustrating, especially when faced with the “Umbrellas” bills.

“But most people who sell commodities are not as lucky as I am,” she said in an earlier telephone interview from their walk-up apartment in New York. “When I do not have the money to pay a bill, my Christo will say, ‘OK, I go make you some money.’

“He goes to the studio, grabs a yellow pencil and a blue pencil and he makes me art.”

The huge projects increase his notoriety and, of course, make his art more valuable. His largest collages, which are eight feet in width and come in two parts, are now priced by Jeanne-Claude at $360,000.

With “The Umbrellas,” as with his other recent projects, they cannot accumulate enough working capital from his art before opening day to pay all the bills. She has had to take out loans, which she said are always successfully paid off.

Although the works of art are his sole source of support, Christo limits his output. He made 450 works in his studio, most of which are far smaller than the collages, while working on “The Umbrellas.”

Once the project opens, he said, he will never again make an artwork based on it. It’s another one of his rules.

Christo actively began work on “The Umbrellas” in 1985, when he started to scout locations in Japan. He eventually made deals with 452 landowners in Ibaraki, promising that his art would not interfere with the rice harvest.

In the United States he wanted to work in Southern California because he felt the area had a strong kinship with Asia both economically and culturally. He settled on the Grapevine because of its dramatic landscape.

The key to working in the Grapevine was winning the approval of the Tejon Ranch, a 270,000-acre spread roughly the size of the city of Los Angeles.

“Before Christo first came in to the office, I had never heard of him,” said Jack Hunt, president of the ranch. “We were used to hearing all kinds of proposals for what people wanted to do with the land, but an art project . . . that was a first.”

Christo came bearing audiovisual aids, including the persuasive documentary that had been made about “Running Fence.” He could also show that after each of his projects, he had religiously returned the land and structures back to their pre-project states. It took about a year, but Hunt and his board approved letting Christo use the ranch.

“Frankly, we realized that his projects bring a lot of notice to an area,” Hunt said. “Our long-range plans includes many things, including the possibility of development. Being associated with this event could be a very positive thing.”

Tejon not only gave Christo the easements he needed, they also provided a small office building for his headquarters. Christo, in return, gave them a medium-sized painting. The other 25 landowners that will have umbrellas each received a payment of $100.

With the landowners on board, Christo could pick his exact sites for the umbrellas and have his engineering and design team begin developing the umbrellas.

His team could also begin getting the numerous permits necessary for the project. In Japan those permits were so voluminous that together they are the thickness of a city telephone directory. The Japanese insisted that the umbrellas be constructed as soundly as a house and so extensive wind tunnel tests were done on prototypes.

Bases were designed to fix the umbrellas to soil, rock and riverbed (100 of the Japan umbrellas are in a river). Eleven manufacturers were contracted to make the umbrella parts, which according to the Christo organization comes to a grand total of 1,655,400 pieces for the combined project.

The research, development and manufacturing is all completed, but as the final realization of the project has come near, tension at Christo headquarters has grown. Christo and Jeanne-Claude go back and forth from Japan to California, checking on each.

With all that rides on this project, Jeanne-Claude is particularly manic and sometimes she flies into a rage, her red hair whirling as she shakes her head. “Go tell your boss that the lady with the red hair is crazy!” she instructs one hapless visitor who said she was being unreasonable.

“One minute she is like that and then 10 minutes later she puts her arms around you and tells you what a good job you are doing,” said one staffer.

“Each of Christo’s projects is like a military exercise,” said Paul Gottlieb, editor in chief at Harry N. Abrams, which has published several books on Christo projects. “And Jeanne-Claude is the general.”

Jeanne-Claude is today the president of their corporation, chief administrator and fiercest promoter, in addition to being his art dealer. All of these roles have been put to the test most arduously on the hugely expensive “Umbrellas” project and Jeanne-Claude, 56, is admittedly obsessed with getting it successfully realized.

“When the coup happen to Gorbachev in Russia,” she said at dinner in her French accent, “my reaction was, ‘Thank God!’

“All the people around me (ask), ‘How can you say that? This is a terrible thing that has happened.’

“And I say, ‘Yes, but it did not happen on Oct. 8,’ ” the opening day for the umbrellas.

Through it all, Christo remains almost serene. He is anxious, but it is the nervousness of a kid a few days before Christmas.

When his big present opens on Tuesday, he plans to be surprised. “All the umbrellas, they are bigger than my imagination,” he said.

He said he doesn’t really know what the projects mean to him until they are finally in view. The only way the “Umbrellas” will be a failure is if it fails to evoke emotions in himself and visitors.

Christo, it could be argued, is as much an orchestra conductor or stage director as a visual artist. He presents a work that will live for only a brief time. And time is of extreme importance to him.

“My projects, they are once-in-a-lifetime experiences,” he said. “Each one has their time, and then it is over.”

A VIEWER’S GUIDE TO THE PROJECT, PAGE 5.