The Perseverance of Christo and Jeanne-Claude

For decades, environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been waging guerrilla war on the boundaries of art, strafing skeptical bureaucracies, winning cautious hearts and minds, and turning even their adversaries into co-conspirators in their controversial outdoor exhibits.

They surrounded 11 islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with pink synthetic fabric. They wrapped Berlin's Reichstag in silver cloth. They erected 300 giant umbrellas in the California countryside.

Thursday night, admirers of the artists filled an auditorium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the premiere of an HBO documentary about their latest piece, "The Gates." For that project, which went up in New York's Central Park in February 2005, the artists erected 7,503 16-foot gates and unfurled from them long panels of fabric in a shade of orange familiar to followers of the Dalai Lama.

The couple first sought official permission for the project in 1979, and the 98-minute documentary, to air on the cable channel beginning Feb. 26, records a conversation between a much younger Christo and a New York official who warns him that the project will require a lot of explaining: "Will it cause cancer? Is it fattening?" And "Why do you do this? You're going to pay for all this?"

By the time New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg dropped the first wall of saffron fabric in the park before a cheering crowd, even TV pundit George Stephanopoulos had gravely opined about the merits of the $21-million project, which the artists say they paid for with sales of their work.

"I would just like to say thank you, thank you for your vision [and] perseverance in your glorious, joyous projects," said a woman at the premiere who had pulled her kids out of school to travel to see "The Gates." "It was a love note, a valentine to New York."

The LACMA premiere was likewise something of a celebration of the artwork, complete with laughter, applause and a standing ovation.