The Artist as a Jeweler - Report Example

The Artist as a Jeweler The Artist as a Jeweler “Calder Jewelry” consists of earrings, bracelets, brooches, bracelets and necklaces that have been accustomed in newly portrayed photography. In his art forms are also boxes made for storage on the same jewelry. These pieces of art forms were considered mini-mobiles that dangled from the wrists, necks and earlobes of sophisticates and reputable artists, patrons and other art collectors e.g. Peggy Guggenheim, Georgia O’Keeffe among others (McCarthy, 2010). Alexander Calder’s Jewellery is made of three-dimensional pieces that are shaped and hammered to produce the artist’s sculpture forms. Beginning in 1906, he used to gather copper wires from the streets and began adorning his sister’s dolls with them. Hiss use of ordinary and perceived cheap material led him into the creation of a jewelry technique that was inventive and saw him make over 1500 art forms of jewellery. His work was desirable to Surrealist coterie and it is still being sought after to the present date by many collectors and more so the museums (McCarthy, 2010). The Whitney Museum is a showcase of Calder’s art displaying his wire art forms and sculptures. These however are not among the more than 1800 pieces that he has made over time. They are only playful wire sculptures that make up the ‘Calder’s Circus’. About 90 of the pieces that he made are exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum which was among the first museum to showcase original jewelry from Calder. Calder’s Jewelry is made of steel and brass wires with small traces of ceramic, glass and even wood (McCarthy, 2010). His works are also found at the Norton Museum of Art in New York; it was put in exhibition by Jane Aldin, Mark Rosenthal and Alexander Rower who is Calder’s grandson. They created a boutique environment by placing brooches and hair combs in vertical cases so as to display even the smallest of the pieces. This is to ensure that the smaller art forms do not get lost in the galleries with very high ceilings. In two of the cases, it is shown that Calder made jewelry for his wife, Louisa. Their engagement ring, for example, was a simple spiral piece of gold wire. It is said that he always used this as gifts for his anniversary and birthdays. Mr. Rower, Calder’s grandson says that his grandmothers’ dressing table was a ‘mysterious altar’ because of the works of his grandfather. He also made some of his pieces by engraving monograms or initials e.g. the pieces with a Surrealist bent portrayed in the pair of earrings with the words “A bas la Mediterranee” meaning Down with the Mediterranean. He also made similar pieces for his friend and curator Dorothy C. Miller. His works of arts as mobile had a significance in those who wore them. Peggy Guggenheim showed her pride in them when she said that she was the only woman who wore his huge mobile earrings in the world over. She includes this statement in her autobiography. The earrings were large enough to make one make a dramatic statement as they appeared in any particular event. Mary Rockefeller wore the Calder necklace and was said to have needed an elbow room when she went to art openings. The pair of earrings is broad and pendulous and certainly not worn by everyone. They even seem to portray some form of pain. Several descriptions have been given by those who perceive them according to their feelings. “The Jealous Husband” is a piece of necklace, oversize in nature and has hammered wires that rise into barbed coils at the collarbone. In The New York Times Magazine in 1976, Hilton Kramer was quilted as saying that the works are a “humor of mock aggression and shameless self-assertion.” The “Flower Necklace” of 1938 was a daisy-like blossom of looped wires of delicate silver leaves in a chain. They necklaces and even tiaras may be seen to take up a lot of space but not weighty. In another piece, the ‘Crown’, some brass ‘ivy’ is seen rising from a simple headpiece to form a tiara. Almost all his works of art are bent, hammered or chiseled into place. When he needed to make jointed pieces, he often used loops and bound them with snippets of wire rather than solders. Just like Picasso, Calder maintained a ‘primitive’ ambience. Much of his work, aside from painting, involved sculpture forms of welding and assembling if images from pieces of sheet metal. This arose from one small guitar that Picasso used to snip and join. When it came to modern collage, putting glue and sticking old unrelated materials onto flat surfaces was an idea curved from Picasso’s work. Though not a member of any Surrealist group, his work, the ‘Eros and Thanatos,’ was a production of scary deviations of the human body, some illogical and cruel forms of art in the 19th century (Venet, 2011). Jean Cocteau, another French artist, was delighted by the works of Cartier to the extent that put on a pair of the jeweler’s rings from Trinity. These were composed of three intertwined bands of white, rose and yellow gold that stood out as a stack on his left pinkie. This showed another angle to ‘wearable art’. Cartier was then made to decorate his honorary sword with imagery taken from his books and films when he was inducted to the ‘Academie Francasie’ in the year 1955. In one of his films, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, we see a scene where Belle, on visiting her ailing father, cries tears that turn into diamonds. The Trinity Sauvage ring, a pendant, and a bracelet, all have been engraved with a band printed with black-lacquer spots, an assurance of the panther motif and the leopard print both which became famous for the inventive spirits of Carter and Cocteau. Another artist was Belgian Surrealist René Magritte (1898-1967). He frequently combined images with words and most of his work ended up being incorporated in advertisements. They were bold, frontal and symmetrical compositions. Magritte compartmentalized his canvasses and subdivided them into comic strips sections. He was enthused by popular culture and used his imagery for advertising such as in illustrated dictionaries, shop window displays, magazines, and postcards. The ‘Treachery of Images’ is seen as if to float in mid-air like shop signs (Morris, 2004). Many of his works are simulations of material used in surfaces such as the polished wood or marble. It does not necessarily contain any imagery of surface effects but it has a ‘wallpaper’ effect, a feature he learned in the early twenties to portray a flat patterned surface. And then there is Magritte’s distinctively deadpan painting style – as anonymous as the expressionless, mannequin-like people who populate his canvases. This works became significant tin the advertising industry and thus he created his works mostly for the rich and especially for the large corporations and firms. He came about as a designer and illustrator of publicity material that shaped his works of art. He produced posters and advertisements for Belgian couture house Norine, for bookshops, and for a prominent car manufacturer, Alfa Romeo. The ‘False Mirror’ Magritte’s close-up painting of a lash-less eye, portrays an iris appearing as a reflection of puffy white clouds that float against a bright blue sky, has inspired the logo of the America’s CSC television network to date. This shows a significance of art not just in human body jewelry, but in functional sectors as advertising. He worked as a commercial artist. Man Ray, did a work of art in the 1970’s that were deemed the chicest jewels of all forms of art from popular artists: a 24kg gold pendant showing a female profile with lapis eyes, an 18kg green and gold eye-shaped brooch and malachite based on his previous work in 1944. His designs are termed ‘serious’ and draws dramatic attention to the women who wore them. Man Ray, just like Picasso, revolutionized jewellery as a form of art. According to Leiberman, their works “lent it relevance”. They also paved a new way for modern and celebrity jewelers. Paloma, Picasso’s granddaughter is a good example of persons who picked up this original work of art to produce modern designs. There attachment to the renowned artists gives an edge to their ornamental work (Baldwin, 2000). Artist-designed jewelry therefore has found its way from the ’60s and ’70s. Even though most of the popular artists who created art are either deceased or not making jewelry in recent times, as Leiberman observes, “the artist-designed jewelry trend uncovered a niche in the market.” To some degree, that niche turned into a demand for both big-name designers and unique, self-expressive jewelry—and it’s been growing ever since. References Baldwin, Neil, (2000), Man Ray: American Artist, 2nd Edition. Da Capo Press Morris, L, Robert, (2004), Robert Lee Morris: The Power of Jewelry, Publisher, Harry N. Abrams. Cathleen McCarthy, (2010), Alexander Calder’s jewelry: going mobile. Retrieved from http://thejewelryloupe.com/alexander-calders-jewelry-going-mobile/ "History of the MCA". Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2011. Venet, Diane, 2011, From Picasso to Koons, the Artist as Jeweler. Pub: Skira Read More