A fake mountain and real magic transform Paris oldest bridge

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Paris — There’s a present-day answer to the question that was posed in verse by the French medieval poet and street brawler François Villon: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”They’re right here, in high summer, on Paris’ oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, where an enormous art installation, a trompe l’oeil inflatable snow-clad mountain range, has arisen over the river Seine.Using about 200,000 square feet of printed fabric, Paris-born street artist JR has created “La Caverne du Pont Neuf.” It’s his version of and homage to the innovative work of groundbreaking environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.They’re the fabled duo who first wrapped the arches of this same bridge in straw-colored fabric in 1985.Over the years, they also surrounded 11 islands in Florida’s Biscayne Bay with flamingo-pink cloth, hung saffron-colored fabric “gates” in New York’s Central Park, installed a “running fence” of billowing white material across nearly 25 miles of Sonoma and Marin counties and, in 1991, planted 3,100 yellow umbrellas, blooming like 20-foot-tall poppies, through the Tejon Pass north of L.A.

Archives My wife and I drove up to Bakersfield and back the other day and on the home trip we stopped at Grapevine for gas and Cokes.I interviewed Christo in 2011, and he was eloquent about how his and his wife’s work alters perceptions of nature, and about the deliberately transient character of the art itself.

JR, an acolyte of their work, told me in an email that “an ephemeral artwork forces you to come now, and usually to come with other people.The visit becomes a shared moment … and this moment becomes a memory.”In a city celebrated for artworks that have survived for centuries, this installation was very nearly too transient.

A kooky hailstorm in late May, a heat wave in June, followed by ruthlessly ripping winds, delayed the opening by days....