One arena where this tension has become quite clear is in the realm of jewelry. We live in a modern world where we can decorate ourselves with mass-produced trinkets, but do those shiny objects constitute true art? What about the pieces that are formed with a skillful eye and hand?

Here, we’ll explore the relationship between jewelry and high art, plus we’ll see some examples from the creators who brought jewelry into the realm of art and the contemporary artists who use jewelry as their medium of expression.

Can Jewelry Be Considered Art?

When it comes to defining art, there is a wide array of definitions out there. But the most basic and general definitions agree that art should be creative, communicative, and relevant to the community it is displayed in. When you look a little closer, you’ll see that custom-designed (as opposed to mass-produced) jewelry ticks all these boxes, making it more than just a handicraft.

Overall, given the broad definition of art and the understanding that not all jewelry is art, how can we define “wearable art” when it comes to jewelry? Usually, this distinction is made clear by the artist. Often, the person who designed the wearable art and the person who implemented the design – often by hand, in a studio, with a set of specific tools that they are specially trained to use. This sets a bespoke piece of wearable art apart from simple mass-produced pieces of jewelry.

Also, if the piece was made by a person who put plenty of thought and intention into the creation of the work, while also drawing on clear and articulatable inspiration, then that piece can be considered a work of art. Even if the jewelry is slammed by critiques or not taken very seriously or never becomes well-known, the intention and skill of the artist make that jewelry artwork.

Another key indicator that a piece of jewelry can also be considered a work of art is the reactions from you, the perceiver. Does this jewelry inspire an emotional response, especially one that resonates with the artist’s original intention? Does the story or insight that inspired the piece shine through to the viewer when they see the jewelry? If so, this piece could very likely be considered a work of art.

Based on all these criteria, you can determine whether a piece of jewelry is in fact a work of wearable art. Of course, these distinctions are certainly subjective at points, but a careful eye and a deeper understanding of how the piece was conceived, how it was created, and how it was produced will also give clearer insight.

Visionary Artists That Merge Art with Jewelry

It’s not easy to draw the line between what is wearable art and what is “merely” jewelry, especially since the intrinsic value of the jewels and precious metals that compose the piece are often considered before its artistic value. But despite this hurdle, there are plenty of contemporary jewelers who are also fulfilling their roles as true artists.

For example, one of the first mid-century jewelry designers to really bring the form into the art realm was Margaret de Patta. She had clear vision about the form of her pieces, with an emphasis on color and how each piece took up space; her ideas were directly in line with fundamental concepts of sculpture. In her work, we see the artistic intention and commitment to evoking specific reactions from the view that is characteristic of art.

Another prominent – and contemporary – artist who uses jewelry as her medium is French designer and jeweler Victoire de Castellane. She currently works as a head designer for Dior Jewelry where she explores aspects such as texture, form, and color. These are the same elements that a photographer or painter would consider throughout the creative process; it’s clear to see how her own process and skillful application of technique put her in the same category as other artists.

Other contemporary jewelry-medium artists are also out to make wearable statements. One such artist is Estonian artist Darja Popolitova. Her recent “Save As” collection was meant to send a direct message about the mass-produced jewelry industry. Her work makes clear use of Dadaist elements while her medium – 3D printing – is a high-tech development on the form. Her pieces started as found 3D printing designs that she then extorted and modified, also incorporating a performative element as she filmed dramatized and stylizing scenes of much of the process. All these added elements help to define her jewelry as wearable art.

Final Thoughts

Jewelry as wearable art is a valid and well-defined niche in the art world, with its own history and development throughout the past century or so. Bespoke jewelry that exhibits the skill, message, and intention of the artist falls in line with the broadly accepted definitions of art. Although the value of jewelry as wearable art is often conflated with the price tag of the raw materials needed to implement the design of the piece, there is an underlying and valid artistic value to these pieces as well.

Contemporary artists all around the world continue to use and develop jewelry as wearable art, with new movements and messages emerging in the medium every season.

About the Author: Margaret Bell is a writer with The Pearl Source. When she’s not keeping up with the latest fashion developments in the world of e-commerce jewelry, she enjoys traveling, reading, and making music with friends. She believes in slower fashion and a more sustainable world moving forward!

The post Trend Spotlight: Jewelry as Wearable Art appeared first on Art Business News.

Inspired by the Wildest Dreams

The late Alexander McQueen is the man whom many consider being the father of wearable art. Always pushing the limits, McQueen once had an amputee model walk the runway in a pair of hand-carved wooden legs. While his collections also included more practical items such as pencil skirts, his wearable art is like something out of a fantasy. Inspired by nature as well as his wildest dreams, McQueen incorporated a vast array of materials from clamshells to animal tusks into his one-of-a-kind pieces that were and still are at the forefront of fashion.

Fleeting Inspiration

One of the hottest wearable jewelry artists today is Kazumi Nagano. Nagano got her start with a chance encounter at the studio of Minato Nakamura. Nagano knew nothing about contemporary jewelry, but it spoke to her soul and she dove in headfirst. Her other inspirations include Kayama Matazo’s work and Japanese-style painting. The latter seeks to portray the beauty and transience of nature as it changes through the seasons. Nagano using a variety of materials to create her ethereal pieces, including gold, silver, linen thread, and bamboo fiber. Her wearable art can be found in many galleries and museums around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Also inspired by traditional art is the Akola collective. ‘Akola’ means ‘she works’ in a local dialect of Uganda. Built from the ground up, Akola employs women across Uganda with the goal of empowering women and advancing economic development throughout the continent of Africa. The affordably priced pieces are handcrafted by artisans using a variety of materials including metal, glass, raffia, and bone, and reflect traditional art as well as contemporary designs. Akola also provides access to educational programs to its all-female workforce on topics such as finance and leadership.

While some wearable artists are classically trained, many are self-taught, including Montana-based bead artist Laura Lee Ullrich. She got her start by picking out a project from a magazine and was immediately hooked. Along the way, Ullrich has connected with others in her field who helped her learn a few tricks of the trade. Ullrich’s designs are the ultimate in handcrafting: she sews on each bead one at a time. Ullrich finds inspiration in nature. She sometimes incorporates an antique into her pieces and believes doing so adds soul. Ullrich also says that being creative is integral to her happiness, and she strives to work on her art every single day.

Intensity and Enchantment

For some, creating art is about having no limits. For others, imposing rules is all part of the challenge. German wearable jewelry artist Mirjam Hiller uses single materials, such as a single sheet of metal, to create her pieces. She looks for the beauty in the banal and the bizarre and wants her art to engage the senses and take viewers into another world. She believes art should awaken curiosity in the individual, as well as make them want to own and wear it.

Found objects are another popular material used by wearable jewelry artists. Born in Africa, raised in Indonesia, educated in America, and now residing in Italy, Barbara Ebbli is a true citizen of the world and creates pieces that reflects her background. She incorporates rules with nature to create one-of-a-kind wearable art from shells she finds on the beach along the Adriatic coast. The gold or silver setting is hand-shaped to conform to the contours of the shell without using any type of adhesive. Her principle is: The shell rules and the craftsperson must follow. The result is something that looks simple but is powerful, timeless and relatable no matter who you are or where you come from.

Cutting-Edge Vision

One of the delights of wearable art is that it can be created from literally anything: precious stones, found objects, and even high-tech materials like polycarbonate film. One artist who is using not only modern materials but also cutting-edge technology is Berlin-based Svenja John. Her attitude toward creating art is why use medieval techniques when we live in a modern world? John’s latest love is a material called Makrofol foil, a tough, heat-resistant yet elastic material also used in automotive equipment. It can be cut like metal and offers endless possibilities as to finish, from matte to sparkling, to create exactly the effect she is looking for. John sketches and makes paper models, then switches over to CAD to create her unique geometric shapes. Next, she uses waterjet technology to make the precision cuts. The finishing, coloring, and final assembly are all done by hand. John is excited about the prospect of pushing her jewelry engineering skills into the not-yet-invented technologies of the future.

Future Heirlooms

Wearable art is often considered to be the antithesis of fast fashion. Thoughtful, distinctive yet eternal compositions created with the intention to last a lifetime and beyond, many wearable jewelry artisans design with the future in mind. Sisters Morgan and Jaclyn Solomon combined their commitment to sustainability with their passion for architectural design to found AGMES. Based in New York, they hand-create each piece using gold, silver, and freshwater pearls. Any scrap metal is melted down for reuse. Their zero-waste approach includes working exclusively with local businesses in creating prototypes through production to packaging. AGMES donates a percentage of their sales to charitable causes.

Every human has creative potential. The trick is finding the right medium. If you’re thinking you’d like to try creating some wearable art but haven’t even picked up a colored pencil since grade school, take heart. Making art doesn’t have to be complicated. Many artists work with simple tools you can find right in your average toolbox, sewing kit, or even a kitchen drawer. A studio need not be a huge separate space. It can be as modest as a small table in a spare room. Many artists say that the process of creating teaches them a lot about themselves. Whether your idea of art involves precious materials or simply stringing beads on thread, anyone can tap their imagination and become a creator of wearable art.

Author’s bio: Sue Seabury is a content writer at Laguna Pearl. She is passionate about fashion, travel and people, and loves sharing the hottest style trends with the world.

The post The Art Side of Bling: Sculptural Jewelry appeared first on Art Business News.

Dragonfly Woman by Rene Lalique – Art Nouveau

The Dragonfly Woman is one of the most notable works by French jeweler Rene Lalique. This corsage ornament was created in 1897, towards the latter end of the Art Nouveau movement that had made its way through Europe and the United States with its decorative style characterized by sinuous, asymmetrical lines.

Consisting of various materials such as gold, enamel, chrysoprase, chalcedony, moonstones, and diamonds, the Dragonfly Woman strikes a contrast between a regal female figure and an elaborate insectoid with large claws. This piece was presented at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and was later acquired by Armenian businessman Calouste Gulbekian in 1903.

The Works of Elsa Schiaparelli – Surrealism

Founded in 1924 by Andre Breton in Paris in 1924, the surrealist movement’s goal was to counter the restrictive boundaries of rationalism and liberate thought, language, and the human experience by eschewing typical structures in favor of the irrational, poetic, and revolutionary.

One of the earliest pioneers of surrealist jewelry is Elsa Schiaparelli, one of the most famous fashion designers who was herself influenced by known surrealists Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. One of her most notable surrealist works is her 1938 rhodoid necklace studded with metallic insects, giving the impression that the wearer has bugs crawling on their skin.

7 Necessities for a Woman (to feel like a woman through the eyes of a man) by Ted Noten – Conceptual Art

7 Necessities for a Woman is a piece of art made by conceptual artist Ted Noten, consisting of 3D printed nylon guns with 18-karat gold details. These guns contain compartments for the eponymous necessities, such as lip gloss in the muzzle, a pill compartment in the loading chamber, a toothpick, a hairpin, and a small vial of perfume.

This commentary on how femininity is subject to patriarchal standards is a prime example of conceptualism, a movement that arose during the late 1960s with the purpose of enforcing ideas and theoretical practices as opposed to the creation of visual forms.

Bulgari’s Wild Pop – Pop Art

There are few names that are as synonymous with pop art as Andy Warhol, renowned painter, printmaker, and filmmaker. His style, which drew heavily from pop culture and employed commercial imagery to create accessible works of art, inspired Italian luxury brand Bulgari to create various works of jewelry celebrating 80s pop culture.

Various gemstones, such as diamonds, emeralds, amethyst, peridot, rubellite, onyx, and aquamarine have been combined to represent synthesizers, marijuana leaves, hair curlers, UFOs, and even Ronald Reagan. This line of jewelry was unveiled at a launch party at the iconic Stadio dei Marmi in Rome.

The Opticuts of Margaret De Patta – Constructivism

Constructivism was a movement established in Russia in 1915, existing as an embracing of industrial society and urban space, rejecting decorative stylization in favor of calculated and functional assemblage.

Margaret De Patta was a jeweler who embraced constructivism. Her jewelry was a combination of silversmithing and lapidary that, while not as flashy as her contemporaries, made use of visual effects such as light refraction, image reflection, and magnification, resulting in De Patta referring to her specially cut gems as opticuts.

The Works of Alexander Calder – Primitivism

Primitivism is a movement that was born from a reaction to both anxieties of advancements in technology and an examination of the symbiotic relationship between older cultures and nature. This movement manifested in various artists creating works inspired by iconography associated with those cultures.

Alexander Calder was an artist who produced over 2000 pieces of jewelry that reflected his fascination with African tribes. To this end, he used materials such as brass and steel, with bits of ceramic, wood, and glass, and he also adopted their methods, using snippets of wire or fashioned rivets to connect strips of metal instead of the more typical solder.

Silent Protest by Dr. Mahtab Hanna – Dada / Dadaism

Dadaism was a reactionary art movement established in response to the First World War. Its defining characteristic is that it is strictly anti-establishment, exposing accepted and repressive societal conditions through the rejection of conventional artistic practices. This form of artistic protest continues to this day across multiple mediums.

One of those mediums is protest jewelry, which was examined in 2017 by British-Persian jeweler Dr. Mahtab Hanna in her show Silent Protest. The show illustrated the connections between wearable art and social commentary by combining decadent jewelry with representations of power and struggle.

The Works of Art Smith – Modernism

British Caribbean jeweler Art Smith was a pioneer of the modernist jewelry movement, creating various large pieces that combined surrealism, biomorphism, and primitivism. They were designed to be worn by avant-garde dancers whose movements reflected the free-flowing style the jewelry evoked.

The modernist movement itself was born during the late 19th/early 20th century because of broad societal changes that many artists believed should herald in new styles of art that could better reflect the newly emerging industrial world. By combining African tribal jewelry and dance that incorporated jazz, a genre of music pioneered by African American artists, Smith used his art to create a modernist statement rejecting the suppression of African American culture.

Jewelry by Architects – Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a broad art movement that exists to highlight how knowledge claims and value systems are contingent or socially conditioned. In terms of jewelry, postmodernism functions similarly to how it did for architecture, in that postmodern artists were rejecting the rational combination of function and form, deeming it aesthetically unpleasing. As a result, the goal of both postmodern architecture and jewelry was to be visually extravagant and unconventional while still retaining some semblance of function.

In the early 80s, Italian designer Cleto Munari commissioned several well-known postmodern architects such as Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Hans Hollein, Alessandro Mendini, and Peter Eisenman to create several pieces of jewelry for his brand new store. In true postmodern fashion, these works combined bold primary colors and elaborate geometry to create jewelry whose function was not obvious on sight.

Blockchain by Simone Faurschou – Digital Art

As digital mediums not only grow in sophistication but become more accessible to aspiring artists, the works of art that can be created from those mediums follow suit. Blockchain is a modular work of jewelry art created by Simone Faurschou that takes this concept to its logical conclusion.

Blockchain exists both physically, as a series of uniquely designed white and yellow gold blocks, and within the digital realm as an NFT (non-fungible token), a crypto asset that records ownership of a digital item. With NFTs being made from all kinds of art including paintings and music, it only makes sense that jewelry follows suit.

Author Bio: Chris Holdsworth is a member of the Gemmological Association of Australia and the National Council of Jewelry Valuers and has diplomas in Gemmology and Diamond Technology. His family started Holdsworth Bros. Jewellers in 1884 and Chris now runs the business with his brother Tim.

The post Ten Pieces of Jewelry That Reflect Major Art Movements appeared first on Art Business News.

Bove Jewelers owners and avid art enthusiasts, Bob and Matt Strehlau, have been saddened by the closing of museums and galleries around the country and were inspired to do something about it. The two wanted to provide the beauty of art and spread holiday cheer to their community by creating their own art museum. Bove customers donated pieces from their personal collections to help create the exhibit.

“Art is the perfect way to escape reality, and be pulled into an artist’s world,” says owner Bob Strehlau who has “always drawn inspiration, solace, and peace from art.” Bob hopes that their store can offer people a place to escape reality, after enduring such a challenging year. “This can be the perfect way for people to refresh their mindset as we enter a new year.” Customers will be able to shop fine jewelry while admiring pieces from well-known artists, including Banksy and Dali.

The art exhibit also includes Van Gogh’s painting, “Landscape with Tree,” and Warhol’s painting of John Lennon. The store is following all the precautionary guidelines suggested by the CDC and the exhibit will remain at 50% capacity.

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