There is a flat, amorphous pendant stamped with a faun’s face by Pablo Picasso. A brooch that fuses the forms of a hair comb, watch and a spoon certainly is the work of Salvador Dalí. And Man Ray’s gleaming “Optic Topic” gold face mask would be borderline creepy if it weren’t so impressive.
These rarities, as well as works by Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, Roy Lichtenstein and others, are set to appear in “Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection,” an exhibition scheduled at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., from April 12 to Oct. 5.
They compose an anthology of jewelry on loan from Diane Venet, an internationally recognized collector who began amassing her treasures in the 1980s, not long after she met her husband, the French conceptual artist Bernar Venet.
During a recent phone interview, Ms. Venet said she purchased her first artist-created adornments from Joan Sonnabend, a friend who owned the Sculpture to Wear gallery, which was in Boston at the time. “Few artists were making jewelry,” Ms. Venet said. “And they were not just reproducing what they were doing in their career; the change of scale is a very difficult challenge to resolve.”
J. Rachel Gustafson, the Norton’s chief curatorial operations and research officer, who worked closely with Ms. Venet on the show, said she believed her collection of more than 200 pieces was likely the largest of its kind in the world.
She also noted that many people, even some art scholars and historians such as herself, don’t realize that artists make such pieces. “I love Lynda Benglis. I love Louise Bourgeois. I had no idea they made jewelry,” she said. “But why is that? The conclusion I came to is that historically there’s been a distinction between craft and fine arts. And also, I think we’re conditioned to think that jewelry is frivolous because it’s a female commodity.” The exhibition seeks to challenge that perception, she said.
Most of the 189 pieces in the exhibition are from a limited-edition series or a piece the artist produced for a friend or acquaintance. For example, Frank Stella, a leading figure in the Minimalist movement, finally agreed in 2009 to make a necklace for Ms. Vernet. As oversized as a clown’s bow-tie, it is an abstracted flower with a contorted center and petals spanning 11 inches, crafted in steel and gold paint.
“A jewel is different from any other artistic work, because it has to be wearable on the body,” Ms. Venet said. “And Frank’s is probably the largest piece I have. I do wear it sometimes — it’s huge but it’s great.”
The Stella necklace, along with the rest of Ms. Venet’s exhibition pieces, is to be shown amid approximately 60 artworks, from Picasso oil paintings to Lichtenstein lithographs, from the Norton’s permanent collection.
“When you look at those jewelry objects alongside a painting or a ceramic vessel, all of a sudden you realize that the artist’s aesthetic is cross-medium — and part of a much longer artistic process,” Ms. Gustafson said. “I think that is going to be the heartbeat of this show.”
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