CARTIER AND ISLAMIC ART: IN SEARCH OF MODERNITY

Bedazzled

Extraordinary jewelry and eye-popping videos animate “Cartier and Islamic Art”

By Holly Haber

Not many exhibitions can be described as jaw dropping.

But there is something about dazzling jewelry — literally thousands of carats worth millions — alongside wall-sized videos of said gems that stops you in your tracks.

Those are only two of the mesmerizing aspects of “Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity,” an unusual exhibition that chronicles how extravagant baubles — once worn by Vanderbilts, the Duchess of Windsor, and other one percenters — were inspired and created.

There are more than 130 Cartier pieces on display, including diamond tiaras, “tutti frutti” bib necklaces, inlaid cigarette and vanity cases, brooches, and handbags with jeweled clasps.

Most of the personal ornaments date to the first

Bib necklace, Cartier Paris, special order, 1947

half of the 20th century, but there are also pieces representing nearly every decade to the present. Reflecting intensive research, the exposition reveals how shapes and patterns in Cartier’s work mimic artwork that originated in the Middle East, India, North Africa, and Asia. It showcases a variety of Islamic artworks, from ceramic plates to textiles, paintings, daggers, books, and more.

It was Louis J. Cartier (1875-1942), the eldest of house founder Louis-François Cartier’s three grandsons, who became fascinated with Islamic art in the early 20th century.

He began collecting artwork and books about Arab art and monuments, directing his design team to study the shapes and interlocking patterns and draw them as an artistic exercise.

These motifs would form the foundation of not only Cartier

designs but also the Art Deco style that the house pioneered in the 1920s and 1930s.

Louis Cartier’s brother Jacques also played a key role, traveling to India and the Persian Gulf to buy distinctive gemstones like carved emeralds, natural pearls, and inspirational objects.

“Artists are always in pursuit of the most modern ideas, and that’s what is personified by Cartier in the show,” says DMA decorative arts curator Sarah Schleuning. “What you see are these kaleidoscopes of creativity that cross form, material, motif, technique, and colors.”

High Tech Enhancements

The small size of the jewelry and many of the artifacts, such as book pages, made them challenging to display with meaningful impact, notes lead exhibition designer Elizabeth “Liz” Diller, an architect and founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York.

She and her team turned up the volume with superhigh-resolution videos that magnify some of the objects 14 feet high.

In addition, each of four videos animates the construction of a singular

“What you see are these kaleidoscopes of creativity that cross form, material, motif, technique, and colors.”

Photos by John Smith courtesy of the DMA

The “Lexicon of Forms” gallery

A super high definition video illuminates the structure of the 1923 diamond and platinum bracelet on display

Tiny details of a painting are revealed via digital video in the “Library” gallery of Louis Cartier’s collection of art and books

piece that is displayed with it alone in a gallery.

‘We didn’t want to overexploit or teach but to create a kind of experience to see the object in a different way, in a different scale,” Diller says.

Each of the four animations shows how one complex piece was inspired, engineered, and crafted, from the precious-metal skeleton to the stones and shanks.

For instance, a building fronted with rounded arches evokes a platinum, gold, diamond, coral, and onyx bandeau tiara fit for a princess.

The gems appear in a phalanx above the tiara’s metal structure and drop rapidly into place, resembling the falling bombs in a Space Invaders game.

Visitors tend to look back and forth from the oversize video to the jewelry.

Another animation elucidates a spectacular diamond, amethyst, turquoise, gold, and platinum bib necklace that was made by special order and once adorned the Duchess of Windsor.

Another technical enhancement is the “breathing necklace,” a contemporary gold and diamond bib necklace that rises and falls on a moving neck form.

“We were fascinated by how these Cartier jewelers had constructed these engineered objects, how they held their perfect geometries, and were able to drape on the body,” says Diller.

Touring the Galleries

Dense with research as well as 400-plus objects, the show is organized into sections. Be sure to grab a spiral guidebook at the entry because it is the only way to identify most of the items on display.

The show opens with a 1936 platinum and diamond tiara lined with turquoise gems carved into paisley shapes that mimic those woven into a nearby Indian shawl.

The first galleries relate how a 1903 exhibition of Muslim art in Paris and another in Munich in 1910 may well have introduced Louis Cartier to the genre.

They also examine the broader influence of Persian arts in Paris at the time, including a painting of the set for a ballet of “Scheherazade” and a 1911 dress designed by Paul Poiret to be worn to a Persian-themed party.

Delving into Cartier’s history, the “Library” gallery presents studies and annotated books from the house’s archives as well as paintings and art objects that were originally in Louis Cartier’s own collection.

They are paired with lavish jewelry that reflects a transitional style that blended Louis Cartier’s famous swirly “garland” look with geometric motifs from the East.

We see how the shape of a 13th century lamp pictured in a book is sketched by a Cartier artist and ultimately becomes a diamond pendant.

The “Lexicon of Forms” gallery at the rear showcases an almost overwhelming array of jewelry and decorative objects from the first quarter of the last century.

The gallery details tassels, almond shapes, geometries, architectural elements, patterns with scales, and more. They come to life in cigarette cases, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, tiaras, and dramatic 1920s head ornaments crowned with tufts of white feathers.

Subsequent galleries reveal the influence of Indian jewelry and the development of a lavish “tutti frutti” style packed with colorful gems plus the use of fabulous Colombian emeralds engraved in India.

The show credits the achievements of former Cartier accessories director Jeanne Toussaint, who designed jewels to harmonize with leading fashions by Chanel, Balenciaga, and Dior and for such famous clients as Daisy Fellowes, Barbara Hutton, and Wallis Simpson.

The exhibition finishes with a flourish of 21st century jewelry that reflects Islamic art motifs.

Conceiving the Show

Schleuning and DMA director Agustín Arteaga approached Pierre Rainero, Cartier heritage, image and style director, in 2018 with the idea for the exhibition.

Arteaga, who describes himself as a “long admirer of Cartier jewelry as a form of artistic expression,” had previously curated a Cartier exhibition in Mexico City. Further, the DMA is home to the Keir Collection — one of the largest and most important private collections of Islamic art in the world.

“Cartier and Islamic Art” epitomizes Arteaga’s mission to engage a broad audience by presenting artwork that reflects the diversity of Dallas-Fort Worth, which is home to at least 62 mosques.

For its part, Cartier has an extensive digital archive of drawings, documents, photographs, and many of its own creations, which it began buying back in 1983 in order to share with the public, Rainero explains.

“Cartier is never the curator of its own shows,” Rainero points out. “Since 1983, the idea was that only an external eye would be at the origin of a show at a public institution.”

The exhibition was originally intended to debut in Dallas, but the pandemic altered the schedule. A slightly different version of it opened in Paris last fall at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which co-curated the show with the DMA and the Musée du Louvre with support from Cartier.

“What we really wanted to focus on is this idea that across time, media, and geography, artists are inspired and create new ideas,” Schleuning says. “I hope people walk away with this incredible idea of what it means to be inspired…”

Tiara, Cartier London, special order, 1936.