From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith by Anya

Published on the occasion of the exhibition From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith, at the Brooklyn Museum, May 14, 2008–May 17, 2009 Copyright © 2008 Brooklyn Museum All rights reserved From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith was organized by the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition and publication were supported by the Harold S. Keller Fund and the Donald P. and Mary M. Oenslager Fund.

Cover: Detail of Art Smith's “Linked Oval” or “Elegant” Necklace This page: Detail of Art Smith's “Ellington” Necklace

When Greenwich Village was the center of bohemian life in New York City and a hotbed of modernist painting, sculpture, literature, and music, modernist jewelry flourished there as well. In fact, in some ways, modernist jewelry was the most visible expression of the Village art scene. Beginning in the early 1930s, the small Village ateliers and shops of modernist jewelers became informal salons in which artists and customers met and shared markedly liberal ideas about art, politics, and social issues. The art world and the public quickly embraced the new jewelry, and like modern art in general, modernist jewelry soon spread from Greenwich Village to the rest of America. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art showcased two dozen modern jewelry makers in the seminal exhibition Modern Jewelry Design, and two years later a countrywide traveling exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Modern Jewelry under Fifty Dollars, made a broader public aware of new trends in the field. In the postwar era, the new jewelry especially appealed to liberal, educated middle-class consumers. At a time in which

prosperity and burgeoning consumerism went hand-in-hand with feelings of alienation and fear of nuclear annihilation, modernist jewelry became a symbol of the rejection of the past and a belief in the power of creativity and newness. From the Village to Vogue celebrates the recent gift to the Brooklyn Museum of a collection of twenty-one examples of the work of one of the foremost modernist jewelers to emerge from Greenwich Village in the mid-twentieth century, Arthur George Smith. Presented together with this gift are thirty pieces of modernist jewelry from the Museum's permanent collection by other artists such as Elsa Freund, William Spratling, Frank Rebajes, Eva Eisler, Ed Weiner, Claire Falkenstein, and Jung-Hoo Kim. All of these jewelers were deeply indebted to the famous American sculptor Alexander Calder and his kinetic, abstract, biomorphic designs. The design vocabulary of the jewelry Calder himself made and often exhibited alongside his sculptures became their vocabulary as well. Like Calder, they eschewed traditional materials such as gold, platinum, and precious stones—diamonds, rubies, and emeralds—in favor of lesser materials such as copper, brass, aluminum, silver, ceramics, glass, and hard stones—quartz, opal, and agate. They championed the handmade and reveled in the spontaneous effects of the process, and because few of them were formally trained, they tended to develop their techniques by trial and error. Although they had much in common philosophically with the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early twentieth century, they broke stylistically with that movement and embraced the latest currents of modern art, including surrealism, biomorphicism, constructivism, and abstract expressionism. Their jewelry was an ornamental interpretation of contemporary art that integrated an awareness of the human form and the notion of wearability. Smith’s jewelry in particular is characterized by asymmetry, biomorphicism, compelling linearity, and, above all, a keen awareness of female anatomy. He relied on neither narrative nor pictorialism. Instead, he had a sculptor’s sensitivity to the human form and the power of negative space. The void that reveals the skin below is often as important an element in his designs as the metal and stones. In the abbreviated 1969 catalogue of his first New York one-man exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, he wrote, “A piece of jewelry

Detail of Art Smith's “Triangle” Necklace

is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form.” He also took artistic advantage of the dark patina that was a byproduct of soldering and often, as seen in his so-called “Lava” bracelet, artificially induced dark patination to add depth and drama to his forms. Art Smith, a black gay man, was born to Jamaican parents in Cuba in 1917. His family settled in Brooklyn in 1920, first near the foot of the Manhattan Bridge and then in BedfordStuyvesant, and Smith showed artistic talent at an early age, winning honorable mention as an eighth grader in a poster contest held by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Encouraged to apply to art school, he received a scholarship to Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. There he was one of only a handful of black students, and his advisors tried to steer him into architecture, suggesting he might readily find a job in the civil sector of that profession. His lack of proclivity for mathematics eventually forced him to abandon this path, however, and he turned to commercial art and a major in sculpture, training that would prove invaluable. After graduating in 1940, Smith worked first with the National Youth Administration, a division of the Works Progress Administration, and later for Junior Achievement, an organization devoted to helping teenagers find employment. He also took a night course in jewelry making at New York University. That and the friendship of Winifred Mason, a black jewelry designer who became his mentor, set him on the course of his adult artistic life. Mason had a small jewelry studio and store in Greenwich Village, and Smith became her full-time assistant. He subsequently moved from Brooklyn to the Village’s Bank Street. In 1946 Smith opened his own studio and shop on Cornelia Street in the Village with the financial assistance of a near-stranger who wished to undermine Mason because of bad feelings over business transactions. Cornelia Street was an “Italian block” then, and Smith suffered racial violence from some of his neighbors. Soon after, he moved to 140 West Fourth Street. The new store was better located business-wise, and Smith’s career took off. He started to sell his wares to craft stores in Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago, and

Model wearing Art Smith’s “Modern Cuff” Bracelet, circa 1948

Art Smith’s business card, 1946–82

by the mid-1950s he had business relationships with Bloomingdale’s and Milton Heffling in Manhattan, James Boutique in Houston, L’Unique in Minneapolis, and Black Tulip in Dallas. An important early influence on Smith’s career was Talley Beatty, a young black dancer and choreographer. Beatty introduced Smith to the dance world “salon” of Frank and Dorcas Neal, where he became acquainted with some of the city’s leading black artists, including writer James Baldwin, composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, singers Lena Horne and Harry Belafonte, actor Brock Peters, and expressionist painter Charles Sebree. Through Beatty, Smith also began to design jewelry for several avant-garde black dance companies, including, in addition to Beatty’s own, those of Pearl Primus and Claude Marchant. These commissions encouraged him to design on a grander scale than he might otherwise have done, and the theatricality of many of his larger pieces may well reflect this experience. In the early 1950s Smith received feature pictorial coverage in both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and was also mentioned in The New Yorker shopper’s guide, “On the Avenue.” For many years thereafter he ran a small advertisement in the back of The New Yorker. By the 1960s he had begun to use silver more readily in his jewelry, and as his client base increased so did his custom designs. He received a prestigious commission from the Peekskill, New York, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, to design a brooch for Eleanor Roosevelt, and he made cufflinks for Duke Ellington that incorporated the first notes of Ellington’s famous 1930 song “Mood Indigo.” In 1969 he was honored with a one-man exhibition at New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Art and Design), and in 1970 he was included in Objects: U. S. A., a large traveling exhibition organized by Lee Nordens, an influential early dealer in craft objects.

Smith had had a heart attack in the 1960s, and by the late 1970s his health had declined. Still, in 1979, he produced what is perhaps his most abstract, spatially challenging, and sculptural piece, often called the “Last” necklace. Three years later, in 1982, Art Smith died. For the donation of the extraordinary collection of Smith’s jewelry in the exhibition, the Brooklyn Museum is indebted to the generosity of Charles L. Russell, an intimate of the artist, and to Mark McDonald, a leading purveyor of twentieth-century design, who worked closely with both Russell and the Museum to bring the donation to fruition. The jewelry remained in Smith’s possession until his death and then passed to his adopted sister, Ina Smith Gordon. Upon her death in 1995, it was conveyed to Russell. In addition to giving the jewelry, he has also donated ephemera now permanently housed in the Museum’s Archives and available to scholars for study. This material includes Smith’s original shop sign, his tools, many working drawings and unfinished pieces of jewelry that illustrate the artist’s working methods, key correspondence dealing with his business transactions, rare catalogues of exhibitions in which he participated, photographs of models wearing his jewelry, and his account books. The twenty-one examples of jewelry in the collection span Smith’s entire career. Twenty are made of silver, and one rare brooch is of gold. Because the artist usually worked in these relatively expensive materials only on commission, these designs are more widely known in copper and brass. As Smith had all of these pieces in his possession at the time of his death, they represent presumably the best and certainly the most costly examples of his work. Stylistically, they present a unified aesthetic; once Smith found his artistic voice, he exercised it with great imagination. It is sometimes difficult, therefore, to be precise about the dating of a piece. We have relied upon illustrations in period catalogues and other publications, together with Charles Russell’s recollections, to help date and name some pieces.

Barry R. Harwood Curator of Decorative Arts Brooklyn Museum

All jewelry by Art Smith and made of silver in New York unless noted otherwise.

“Half & Half” Necklace, designed by 1948 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mark McDonald, 2007.60

“Bauble” Necklace, circa 1953 Colorless quartz Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.7

Model wearing Art Smith’s “Patina” Necklace, circa 1960

“Patina” Necklace, circa 1959 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.2

“Ellington” Necklace, circa 1962 Turquoise, amethyst, prase, rhodonite Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.4

“Galaxy” Necklace, circa 1962 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.8

“New Orleans” Necklace, circa 1962 Labradorite (?) Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.6

“Galaxy” Earrings, circa 1962 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.20a–b

“Metalic Boa” Necklace, circa 1964 Eight hard stones Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.5

“Triangle” Necklace, circa 1969 Turquoise, lapis lazuli, rhodochrosite Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.3

“Stone-in-Cuff” Necklace, circa 1969 Prase Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.9

“Encaged Marble” Necklace, circa 1972 Carnelian Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.10

“Linked Oval” or “Elegant” Necklace, designed by 1974 Amethyst quartz Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.1

“Last” Necklace, 1979 Two hard stones Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.11

“Lava” Bracelet, circa 1946 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.16

“Modern Cuff” Bracelet, circa 1948 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.15

“Baker” Bracelet, circa 1959 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.18

“Angle” Ring, circa 1958 Mother of pearl Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.13

“Circles in Cube” Ring, circa 1960 Tourmaline (elbaite) matrix Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.14

“Undulation” Ring, circa 1961 Chrysocola, amethyst, carnelian Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.12

“Cluster Knuckles” Ring, circa 1968 Jade, turquoise, zoisite, rhodochrosite Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.17

“Autumn Leaves” Brooch, 1974 Gold, jade Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Charles L. Russell, 2007.61.19

Robert Ebendorf (American, b. 1938) Brooch, circa 1969 United States Silver, copper, gold, photograph, ruby, black pearl Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever Fund, 1994.48

Elsa Freund (American, 1912–2001) “Idea” Necklace, 1960–65 Eureka Springs, Arkansas Silver, glazed earthenware Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1991.87.3

Robert Ebendorf (American, b. 1938) Necklace, circa 1993 United States Copper, stones Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Samuel M. Tolkin, 1994.54

Elsa Freund (American, 1912–2001) Drawing, 1950–55 Eureka Springs, Arkansas Graphite and ink on paper Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1992.277.2

Eva Eisler (Czech, b. 1952) Brooch, 1991 New York Stainless steel Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1992.151

Elsa Freund (American, 1912–2001) “Squares Neckpiece” (recto) and “Neckpiece with Pendant” (verso) Drawing, circa 1960 Eureka Springs, Arkansas Graphite and ink on paper Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1992.277.1a–b

Claire Falkenstein (American, 1908–1997) Brooch, circa 1948 California Nickel, plastic Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever Fund, 2007.21.5 Claire Falkenstein (American, 1908–1997) Hair Ornament, circa 1950 California Brass, aluminum Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Lever Fund, 2007.21.2 Elsa Freund (American, 1912–2001) Bracelet, 1946 Eureka Springs, Arkansas Aluminum, glazed earthenware Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1991.87.2 Elsa Freund (American, 1912–2001) Necklace, 1946–50 Eureka Springs, Arkansas Copper, glazed earthenware Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Jane Hershey, 1991.89

Charles James (American, b. England, 1906–1978) Maquette for Brooch, circa 1963 United States Base metal, artificial stones, and pearl Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Muriel Bultman Francis, 81.49.2 Jung-Hoo Kim (Korean, b. 1956) “Life in the Circus” Brooch, 1987 New Paltz, New York Silver, rubber, gold leaf Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Samuel M. Tolkin, 1992.202.1 Jung-Hoo Kim (Korean, b. 1956) “The Florid Wall” Brooch, 1992 Cerritos, California Silver, glass, silicone sealant, gold leaf Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Samuel M. Tolkin, 1992.202.2 Samuel Kramer (American, 1913–1964) Pair of Cuff Links, circa 1950 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Martin and Eve Lebowitz in memory of their parents Henry and Esther Lebowitz, 2006.7.1a–b

Nel Linssen (Dutch, b. 1935) Necklace, 1995 The Netherlands Paper, rubber Brooklyn Museum, Modernism Benefit Fund, 1995.138 Norman Mizuno (American, b. 1948) Necklace, circa 1990 New York Ceramic, textile Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist and Alan J. Davidson, 1996.31 Marion Anderson Noyes (American, 1907–2002) Three Brooches, circa 1940 United States Silver, green onyx Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 1992.40.40–.42 Charles D. Price (American, active 20th century) Necklace, circa 1933 Michigan Silver, quartz, moonstones Brooklyn Museum, H. Randolph Fund, 72.40.1 Frank Rebajes (Dominican, 1907–1990) Bracelet, circa 1936 New York Silver, with gold wash Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eitel Groeschke in memory of Frank and Pauline Rebajes, 1992.199.5 Frank Rebajes (Dominican, 1907–1990) Bracelet, circa 1937 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eitel Groeschke in memory of Frank and Pauline Rebajes, 1992.199.1 Frank Rebajes (Dominican, 1907–1990) Brooch, circa 1940 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eitel Groeschke in memory of Frank and Pauline Rebajes, 1992.199.3

Frank Rebajes (Dominican, 1907–1990) Necklace, circa 1940 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eitel Groeschke in memory of Frank and Pauline Rebajes, 1992.199.6a–b Frank Rebajes (Dominican, 1907–1990) Bracelet, 1950–55 New York Copper Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eitel Groeschke in memory of Frank and Pauline Rebajes, 1992.199.8 William Spratling (American, 1900–1967) Brooch, 1935–45 Taxos, Mexico Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Lotte and Al Blaustein, 1997.30 William Spratling (American, 1900–1967) Bracelet, circa 1940 Taxos, Mexico Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Martin and Eve Lebowitz in memory of their parents Henry and Esther Lebowitz, 2006.7.2 Deganit Stern Schocken (Israeli, b. 1947) Brooch, circa 1988 Israel Gold, silver Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Flavia Derossi-Robinson, 1990.81 Bill Tendler (American, 1924–1981) Pendant, circa 1960 New York Silver, pearl Brooklyn Museum, Promised gift of Cora Hahn in memory of her sister, Marion Greenstone, L2007.7

Ed Weiner (American, 1918–1991) “The Dancer” Brooch, circa 1947 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Michele Wiener Caplan, 1995.182.1 Ed Weiner (American, 1918–1991) “The Dancer” Earrings, circa 1947 New York Silver Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Michele Wiener Caplan, 1995.182.2a–b

Detail of Art Smith's “New Orleans” Necklace

Rhonda Zwillinger (American, b. 1950) Necklace, by 1987 New York Plastic, textile, metal Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Edward and Phyllis Kwalwasser, 2007.39.1

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