“Daniel Brush, the Art of Line and Light” that runs from June 8th to October 4th in Paris, brings together more than 75 jewels, paintings and sculptures, some of which have never left the artist’s Manhattan studio.
Brush died in 2022 aged 75 and the exhibition is curated by Brush’s wife and lifelong collaborator Olivia, Brush, together with the jewellery historian Vivienne Becker, who wrote the definitive monograph on his jewel work. Rather than following a chronological or thematic path, the show is structured around the questions that consumed Brush throughout his career. Does a jewel have to be worn? Can it exist as a hand held object? Where does jewellery belong as an art form, and is it a work of art? These are not rhetorical provocations but the animating ideas behind a body of work that refused to respect the boundaries between disciplines.
A basset hound brooch by Daniel Brush from La Ménagerie Magnétique, where incised steel and coloured diamonds turn animal portraiture into an exploration of line.
For those unfamiliar with Brush, his significance in the world of art jewellery can hardly be overstated. A self taught goldsmith who began his career as a painter and sculptor, he retreated from public life in 1978 and spent more than a decade in near seclusion in his New York loft, teaching himself the ancient Etruscan technique of granulation — the painstaking process of soldering minute gold grains to a gold surface. He mastered this skill to a degree that rivalled the ancients, but it was only the beginning. Over four decades he created an extraordinary range of work: delicate granulated gold domes, jewel encrusted objects of fantasy, sculptural cuffs in blued steel and gold, the haunting Necks series of 75 steel chokers, and the Actresses collection of diamond and steel ID bracelets paying homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood. He worked entirely alone, without assistants, often with no preliminary design, cutting and shaping straight into the metal. His pieces sit in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have been exhibited by the Smithsonian, the Museum of Arts and Design, and Christie’s and Phillips. In an era when the line between fine art and jewellery remains fiercely contested, Brush did more than anyone to challenge the hierarchy, insisting that something small enough to hold in the palm of your hand could possess the scale of history.
In Nest, butterflies settle on a worked steel form punctuated with gold, introducing a fleeting sense of movement. Work by Daniel Brush 1990-1992
The leitmotifs of line and light thread through this exhibition. For Brush, light meant illumination in its most profound sense — the light of the divine, of the golden mosaics of Ravenna, of the cathedrals he visited on his travels. Line related to breath, to poetry, to the creative dynamism that drove his relentless process of making. Together they offer a way into the mind of an artist who was at once a philosopher, a craftsman of extraordinary rigour and a poet of precious materials.
The exhibition is free, with entry upon registration, and is open from Tuesday to Sunday, with late opening on Thursdays until 8.30pm. For anyone who cares about where jewellery sits in the wider conversation about art, this is essential viewing.
L’École, School of Jewelry Arts, Hôtel de Mercy Argenteau, 16 bis boulevard Montmartre, Paris 9e. lecolevancleefarpels.com
Daniel Brush in his Manhattan studio, surrounded by the antique lathes he restored and used to work directly into metal, without drawings or assistants.
In Maze, gold and steel flow in layered, shifting lines, suggesting a landscape shaped as much by time as by hand. Work by Daniel Brush.
In this elephant head brooch by Daniel Brush , carved dark material, pale elements and diamonds create a compact study in contrast and volume.
A basset hound brooch by Daniel Brush from La Ménagerie Magnétique, where incised steel and coloured diamonds turn animal portraiture into an exploration of line.
In Nest, butterflies settle on a worked steel form punctuated with gold, introducing a fleeting sense of movement. Work by Daniel Brush 1990-1992
A classroom at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris, where courses span gemmology, craftsmanship and jewellery history, reflecting its role as a place of transmission supported by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Detail of Maze, where granulated gold emerges within fractured surfaces, catching light in minute, controlled bursts. Work by Daniel Brush 1992