When artists create jewels
Artists don't always create monumental and spectacular works that only the happy few can possess. Some also produce unique pieces or small series that you can take home with you...and even on you! These are pieces one is proud to display on a pretty tanned décolletage, a lapel or elegant hand. As you have already understood, these masterpieces are jewellery. These intimate objects are true, emotionally charged and engaging works of art that transport the wearer on a beautiful journey. By adorning the body, these artists open up a new world to us. Each artist proposes a work connected to his/her world that we can perceive by wearing it and making it a part of our daily lives. This is how works by artists in the Societe Generale Collection (Bernar Venet, François Morellet, Claude Lévêque, Vera Molnar, Françoise Pétrovitch, Barthélémy Toguo, Lee Ufan or Miguel Chevalier) have been transformed into jewellery, much to our pleasure. Because pleasure is what the operation is about, for the artists as well as those who appreciate jewellery.
Art is within everyone's reach, since the artists' creations are just as intense as their other works in different formats. The same poetry, power or lightness is there. The pieces created by Bernar Venet reflect his sculpture and drawings with their lines and curves. Pursuing his research on space, he has created practically all the possible variations of his sculptures at jewellery scale. "Creating jewellery is a way of scale-testing my works" he says. While François Morellet freely admits he has never really wanted to create jewellery before, because for him there is a real boundary between functional objects and art, he tried anyway and was surprised how pleased he was to transpose, for his friends, some of his works as jewellery. His sense of humour is quite obvious and easily recognised in his brooches and pendants. For Barthélémy Toguo his jewellery is the result of a specific thought process: "Creating a piece of jewellery is a way of exploring new territories by exposing art on another's body.
It's a different means of communicating with others, but above all the possibility of making the "wearer" part of the performance. Jewellery expresses the desire to appear; a way of making a statement, like my Carpe Diem ring. It's a sort of declaration" he asserts. Therefore he created jewellery for those who want to extend a visit to one of his exhibitions, for those who are assertive, who feel free and who want to give a work of art another function in society by wearing it on their person. Whether for everyday use or special occasions, everyone can imagine wearing a sculpture.
