A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum aims to show how “gold has served as a powerful form of communication and self-expression for millennia.” Big ambitions deserve a big show: The 500 objects in “Solid Gold,” around half drawn from across the museum’s collections, include ancient Greek jewelry, Egyptian funerary objects, amulets made by Indigenous artisans in pre-conquest Latin America, 14th-century Italian altarpieces, gold-toned photography, illuminated manuscripts, Japanese folding screens, Hollywood film, a Peruvian gilded bed frame, technology and industrial design, and gold and diamond grills (or grillz).
But this is ultimately a show about fashion. Curated by a team led by Matthew Yokobosky, “Solid Gold” tells a story about the way couturiers have used gold in their designs as the ultimate expression of luxury, one that connotes royalty, power, outrageous wealth and conspicuous consumption. It’s a multisensory extravaganza with a soundscape and light show, and — as is often the case with Brooklyn Museum exhibitions lately — celebrity is front and center.
‘Egyptian Disco’ From the Blonds
A high mounted screen near the start of the exhibition shows a clip of Elizabeth Taylor in 1963 film “Cleopatra.” She and the film are recurring themes in the exhibition, embodiments of the Egyptomania that runs through the pieces here. John Galliano’s spring/summer 2004 collection for Dior has a headpiece that could have come straight out of King Tut’s tomb. The Blonds, the glam duo who focus on sexy, bedazzled custom designs for celebrity clients like Beyoncé and Rihanna, channeled Taylor’s Technicolor version of Cleopatra’s style in their spring/summer 2016 “Egyptian Disco” collection. The garments are confected of sequins, lamé, crystals, beads, gold-leaf laminate and 24-karat gold-chain piping. (Much of the fashion in the show is gold-colored, rather than made of gold, but there are some pretty spectacular exceptions.)
Ancient Gold
All the bling in the world can’t distract from the charms of the ancient artifacts on display nearby, including a pair of tiny beads in the shape of flies made in Egypt circa 1539 to 1292 B.C.E., and a fourth-century B.C.E. cache of gold ornaments and jewelry from the Eastern Mediterranean — not only because of their delicate perfection, but also because they managed to survive this long. Even though it doesn’t corrode or tarnish, and thus can last a really long time, gold was commonly reused in the ancient world — melted down and shaped into new forms. When it endures, it feels a little bit miraculous.
Chain Link and Gold Coins
The show highlights different forms gold can take — including chains, chain mail and coins. Chains inspired a dress designed for Tina Turner by Azzedine Alaïa (1989) and Paco Rabanne’s chain-mail minidress and cowl (1970-71). Anna Sui’s designs for her fall/winter 2007 collection, inspired by the industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames, include circular medallions referring to coins and, in one case, a watch hung on a skirt, attached with a chain-link fob.
The Blonds’ open-front bolero jacket and bell bottoms dripping with gold beads are accessorized with the “Mr. Blond” neck corset from their 2019-20 collection, an epic stack of chains inspired by Mr. T’s signature style. The actor came into his look when he was a bouncer in Chicago clubs, adding necklaces that patrons left behind after getting in fights. He said in interviews that people were free to come back to collect their lost items — as long as they were willing to take them off his neck.
Gold’s Darker Side
The curators recognize the devastation that gold has caused in the world, from the violence of the Spanish conquistadors on the hunt for El Dorado in the Americas to the environmental and human costs of mining. The show includes the South African artist William Kentridge’s harrowing, hand-drawn animated film “Mine” (1991), which focuses on the greed of a mine owner and the dangerous work performed by Black and brown laborers under apartheid.
The question of value is also addressed. Zadik Zadikian’s “Path to Nine” (2024) is composed of more than 1,000 gold bars — or rather, carved wooden blocks covered with gold leaf. If the bars were pure gold, they would be valued at a billion dollars — but here, arranged as a wall cutting through the middle of the gallery, such wealth is an obstacle as much as an opportunity.
What’s not spoken about is the question of wealth disparity — the fashion and jewelry on display have largely been the purview of the richest of the rich. The meaning of gold to ordinary people (like in India, where women from all economic classes wear their savings in the form of gold bangles and earrings) is rarely acknowledged.
Gold Ground Painting
Gold has been used in painting for centuries, and the exhibition includes gold-embellished manuscripts from Europe and Asia, and folding screens from Japan. A roomful of Italian Renaissance altarpieces, whose godly aura is conferred by glowing gold leaf, is joined by a large diptych from Titus Kaphar’s “Jerome Project” from 2014. Both gold ground canvases depict portraits based on publicly available mug shots of incarcerated or formerly incarcerated men called Jerome — the name of the artist’s own estranged father. Kaphar dipped the canvases in a tank of tar to a depth gauged to how much of the men’s lives were spent in prison. One of the portraits is entirely obscured, the other mostly so. It’s a heartbreaking comment on how our society treats its most valuable commodity — human life.
Unexpected Treasures
There are a few real surprises here, too. “Friendship” (1963), a rare canvas by Agnes Martin, shimmers with gold leaf over a red underpainting, her signature hand-drawn grid incised into the surface. It is one of only three works she made using the technique. Another unexpected delight is gold jewelry by Alexander Calder, including a 1937 necklace comprising discs and strips of hammered gold — although it makes perfect sense that a kinetic sculptor would have an eye for designs that moved with the body.
Inspiration or Appropriation?
One of the questions that looms over the exhibition is when inspiration crosses into appropriation. “Shalimar,” from Gianfranco Ferré’s fall/winter 1996-97 “Indian Passion” collection for Dior, emulates the distinctive draping and embellishments of South Asian saris. (Meanwhile, no South Asian couture designers are featured in the show.) Yokobosky acknowledges Ferré’s source material, but the gesture feels inadequate. Tucked behind the Dior and Balenciaga’s mid-1960s gold frock for Elizabeth Taylor is a 19th-century Rajasthani odhni, or wedding veil, exquisitely embroidered with actual gold thread. But instead of being draped over a sumptuous lehenga (a floor-length skirt and corset ensemble), as it would likely have been worn, it is rather awkwardly arranged over a mannequin wearing a plain black skirt. The display doesn’t come close to representing the luxurious excess of Indian wedding attire — it diminishes, rather than celebrates, the piece.
Eastern ‘Spirituality’
One of the oddest moments in the show is a gallery that evokes links between gold and Eastern spirituality, introduced by Marc Quinn’s life-size, solid 18-karat gold sculpture of the supermodel Kate Moss. She is twisted into a “yoga-like pose,” we are told, in which her genitals are almost fully visible — barely hidden by a scant pair of underwear. Quinn titles the 2008 piece “Siren,” after the mythological creatures who lure sailors to their deaths, equating Moss’s frank display of sexuality with men’s demise. All the namastes in the world can’t convince me this piece has anything to do with spirituality.
When Fashion Becomes Art
The relationship between art and fashion is a continual theme in the exhibition. Gareth Pugh, whose fall/winter 2011-12 collection included pieces covered with small gold-tinted laminated metallic tiles that riffed on the design of microchips and suggested an almost pixelated sense of movement, is often seen as pushing the boundary between art and performance. Elsewhere we find a collaboration between the artist Peggy Slinger and Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, for the fall/winter collection 2019-20: a gold-leaf, dollhouse-size replica of Dior’s original showroom at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris that turns the wearer into a living version of Louise Bourgeoise’s “Femme Maison.”
Dior, one of the two corporate sponsors of the show, plays an outsize role in “Solid Gold.” A section is even devoted to designs from the fashion house’s advertising campaign for “J’adore,” its trademark perfume. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of the increasingly close relationship between museums and brands lately — when is an exhibition simply one big promotional event?
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