Yoko Ono hung wishes from trees. Jeanne-Claude and Christo coated entire coastlines. But their work had one thing in common: it made us think about what we should cherish – and what we are losing
Last week, I took my five-year-old nephew to see the new Banksy in London. As we were walking, I told him it was a new, magical tree that had suddenly appeared overnight, put up by a masked man, and that it was up to us to solve the mystery. He came up with all sorts of theories.
When we got there, crowds of people were arriving by bike and on foot, or slowing down as they passed in their cars – people of all ages and backgrounds. Like us, they were marvelling at the new green splattered wall that, from some angles, looks like a tree in full bloom. People were conversing, asking each other their thoughts, spotting the stencilled outline of a person holding a pressure hose next to the tree, or imagining how the artist was able to construct it so secretly.
