An Artist of Line and Thought: Daniel Brush exhibition in École Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris
Some seven or eight years ago, at TEFAF in Maastricht, a colleague drew my attention to a group of steel-and-gold brooches of intricate texture by the American jeweller Daniel Brush. It didn’t click for me at the time, I could appreciate the level of craftsmanship, but as “design” I simply couldn’t. What I saw were exquisite artistic studies, not wearable pieces. I noted the name but did not add it to my list of designers I follow.
In 2019 I missed his exhibition at Phillip’s in New York by a matter of days, and it was a remarkable one: 69 steel bracelets, each dedicated to a significant American actress. It was conversation about huge part of American culture in such a remarkable way.
Now the École Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris is hosting the artist’s posthumous exhibition, “The Art of Line and Light,” assembled by his widow, co-author, and muse Olivia Brush together with the jewellery historian Vivienne Becker. For me personally, the show put a great many things in their right place, why his jewellery never quite looked like jewellery (spoiler: for him, it wasn’t), and why certain pieces read as studies rather than finished works.
Brush was a painter, a philosopher, a sculptor, and a jeweller, all at once. He was not a painter who “also made jewellery,” treating it as a minor offshoot of proper sculpture. Nor was he a jeweller who “also liked to draw.” He simply did not think within these conventional compartments of artistic practice. He seems to have existed across all media simultaneously, and to have been perfectly comfortable there. Or perhaps across the entire field of culture at once.
Throughout his life he explored the question of whether a jewel must be wearable at all, and, more broadly, to what extent the idea of an ornament needs to accommodate the human body, to remain an adornment rather than an autonomous object. And much else besides. These are large questions, and they do not sit comfortably within the framework of “gold, diamonds, and other precious stones.”
The exhibition at École Van Cleef & Arpels shows how he worked with materials, drawing inspiration from Japanese culture and Japanese techniques that are now all but abandoned because of their complexity. Gold and steel, his materials of choice, are extraordinarily difficult to bring together. It shows how he created a series of drawings and brushed gold sheets as an homage to Monet’s Rouen cathedrals, one of the most lyrical artistic homages I have ever seen. Brushing and intricate rhythmic engraving were his signature techniques, which, given his surname, has a certain elegant ring to it.
The exhibition “The Art of Line and Light” runs until October 4.
L’École, School of Jewelry Arts, Hôtel de Mercy-Argenteau, 16 bis boulevard Montmartre, Paris 9e
Free of charge, but you need to book on the website (which is easier said than done).
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