“Artistic crime of the century”

On August 7, 1974, shortly after 7 a.m., French performance artist Philippe Petit stepped from the roof of the South Tower of the World Trade Center onto a 1-inch-thick cable that stretched 138 feet (42 meters) to the North Tower.

Without a safety net or harness, he only had a balancing pole for support – and a 420-meter-deep abyss and certain death if he made one wrong step.

“I was a little nervous on the first crossing because we never checked how stable the anchor point was on the other side,” Petit tells the Post. “Honestly, it wasn’t great, but it was good enough.”

Petit’s tightrope walk was audacious, dangerous and completely illegal. Dubbed the “artistic crime of the century,” it took years to plan. Through covert surveillance and endless subterfuge, Petit managed to smuggle a huge amount of equipment up the 110 floors of the South Tower before his friend and collaborator Jean-Louis Blondeau shot a cable to the North Tower with a bow and arrow.

He even chartered a helicopter to take aerial photographs of the roofs of the Twin Towers.

Petit spent 45 minutes walking the tightrope, crossing it eight times. He once danced on it; he even lay down on it.

When it was over, Petit was immediately arrested.

He was released without charge on the condition that he perform a free show for children in Central Park.

A lot has happened since that Wednesday morning 50 years ago, not least the destruction of the Twin Towers in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

On the morning of the attacks, Petit, who had never owned a television, was called to his neighbor’s house in the Catskills to witness the horror. “They said, ‘Your towers are going to be destroyed.’

“But I could only think about the thousands of human lives, not the architectural destruction,” he recalled.

To his great annoyance, he also found himself in the Guinness Book of Records.

“My art cannot be defined by numbers or records, but the irony is that I inadvertently found myself in it, whether I liked it or not,” he said. “I never wanted to be next to people who can eat 10 pizzas in a minute.”

On August 7 and 8, Petit will recreate his legendary walk through the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in his new show, “Towering!” Along with a host of other artists, his friend Sting will perform a world premiere of a new song he wrote especially for Petit.

“It will be the most beautiful, most elaborate and most impressive show of my life,” says the 74-year-old. “It will be profound.”

The exhibition also offers an opportunity to dispel some of the many misconceptions that exist about Petit’s work, particularly in the United States.

“Here in America I’m called a daredevil or a stuntman, like I’m Evel Knievel on a motorcycle or Harry Houdini, but nothing could be further from the truth. My art is not death-defying, it’s life-affirming.

“I want to inspire people and make them believe that they can move mountains. I want them to look up without fear.

“I am a poet in heaven.”