Jewels are a form of body adornment, but, if we consider the meanings, materials, shapes and conceptual ideas behind some modern pieces, it is obvious that jewellery can at times be considered as a form of art. The history of art and fashion actually features a few artists who designed pieces for jewellery companies or for fashion houses, but Alexander Calder (1898-1976) set a different example, translating, reducing and adapting the essence of his massive mobile structures to a wearable size, and elevating in this way jewellery to avant-garde art. The first exhibition of his jewels in the UK is currently on at Louisa Guinness', a London-based gallery specialised in art jewellery. The event is presented in collaboration with the Calder Foundation.
Calder started making jewellery as a child, creating basic pieces made with copper wire for his sister's doll. In 1929 he tried his hand at real jewellery, using materials and techniques he had employed for his "Circus" characters, several toy-like figures built with wire armatures and dressed in scraps of fabric and random bits and pieces such as tin cans.
The jewels - mainly made using brass and found objects - were exhibited at the Fifty-Sixth Street Gallery in New York and shown alongside drawings, paintings and textile designs. Response wasn't that great, but improved in the late '30s when Calder mounted a solo exhibition of jewellery at the Artek Gallery in Helsinki, followed by two further events in New York in the early '40s. By then his jewellery included a variety of brooches, hair combs and headdresses, necklaces, earrings and rings.
Calder mainly worked with wire or continuous bands of metal that he then transformed into abstract shapes, hoops, zigzags and spirals, and also employed at times cutlery (anticipating the current trend for spoon jewellery and bracelets...). Deeply unconventional, his earrings, bracelets, headdresses, necklaces and brooches proved he was an innovator with a passion for primitivism and modernism as well.
The most important thing about his pieces is the fact that each one is genuinely unique: Calder hand-crafted each of them bending silver, brass and - rarely - gold, he therefore imprinted on his bold and brave shapes and on those unpolished surfaces his personal energy. The artist often designed bespoke pieces for his best friends and created them with a specific wearer in mind, that's why his brooches form at times initials or names.
Peggy Guggenheim once stated about Calder's pieces: "I am the only woman in the world who wears his enormous mobile earrings," but the exhibition at Louisa Guinness' features images of other iconic women who opted for Calder's pieces. The event brings indeed together both jewellery and photographs of the designs as donned by famous women such as Angelica Huston, portrayed in a splendidly oversized piece.
"Like true vessels of Calder's artistic manifesto, the women who wore his jewellery were some of the most forward thinking and unconventional of their time," Guinness states in a press release. "Our decision to exhibit images of these women wearing their Calder jewels - Simone de Beauvoir, Georgia O'Keeffe and Peggy Guggenheim among them - alongside the jewels themselves, is a celebration of their, and Calder's, subversive spirit."
To show that Calder's pieces still look extremely modern (and maybe wouldn't look out of place on a contemporary runway show) the gallery collaborated with fashion designer Elise Overland and photographer Alexander English to include a series of arresting contemporary images of Calder jewellery on young men and women. "We were also keen to show the contemporary relevance of Calder's jewellery," explains Guinness, "Not only was his artistic manifesto prescient, these jewels have a timelessness and of-the-moment relevance that continues to appeal to young people today".
"The Boldness of Calder" is at Louisa Guinness Gallery, 45 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YN, until 5 November.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post: Courtesy the Calder Foundation and Louisa Guinness Gallery
Anjelica Huston wearing The Jealous Husband (c. 1940) by Alexander Calder, 1976, photo by Evelyn Hofer, 2016 Calder Foundation, New York, Photo © Estate of Evelyn Hofer
Alexander Calder, Brass Necklace, c. 1940, bass wire, diameter 36.8 cm, unique, courtesy the Calder Foundation and Louisa Guinness Gallery
Alexander Calder, Flower, c. 1945, brass, 25.4 x 15.24cm, unique, courtesy of Louisa Guinness Gallery
Alexander Calder, Untitled, c. 1940, Necklace, silver, 24.8 x 37.5cm, unique, courtesy the Calder Foundation and Louisa Guinness Gallery
Brooke Shields, 1985, edition of 15, photo by Sheila Metzner, ® 2016 Calder Foundation, New York, Photo Sheila Metzner 2016
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