Style Edit: Celebrate the legacy of artist-jeweller Daniel Brush with ‘Thinking About Monet’ – his first showcase in Japan, held by Van Cleef & Arpels’ L’École School of Jewelry Arts
Who would you entrust your legacy with when you’re gone? This difficult question may have crossed the minds of many great creators and artists. However, when one has shared their creative journey and process wholly with another for half a century, the answer is more straightforward.
American jeweller, sculptor and painter Daniel Brush shared this unique connection with his wife and creative partner of five decades, Olivia Brush. There’s no better perspective from which to curate a show about the artist and his tremendous body of work than through the eyes of his greatest collaborator.
“Intellectually, emotionally, and physically we worked as one,” says Olivia. “Daniel almost exclusively physically made the work, however, the ideas, the feelings and the deep philosophical immersion into areas of study was done together.”
Known for his gold granulation work and his hand-engraved work in steel and aluminium, Daniel’s unique approach to metalsmithing and jewellery-making is presented as a body of work that arrives in Japan for the first time.
Held by Van Cleef & Arpels’ L’École School of Jewelry Arts, “Thinking About Monet”, the third of a series of exhibitions honing in on Daniel’s work, kicks off in Tokyo’s 21-21 Design Museum and is set to run until April 15.
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The exhibition’s theme is a nod to the artist’s affinity for Monet’s aesthetics, as well as the late Daniel’s body of work that shares the exhibition’s name. And there’s perhaps no setting more perfect than Tokyo to explore this particular pillar of his work, heavily influenced by the French Impressionist painter.
“Monet was greatly inspired by many aspects of Japanese culture, by Hokusai, and by the Japanese reverence for nature,” says Olivia.
“[Daniel] could see in Monet’s paintings the way light transformed colour … much of [Daniel’s] work over all the years was especially obsessed with light,” she adds. The relationship between light and the passage of time, from morning to night and the changing of seasons, heavily shaped Daniel’s perception of beauty.
Daniel’s process is reflected in this observation of light. He was able to capture the beauty as light refracted off of materials such as gold, aluminium and steel, as well as the mediums he used in his sculpted and hand-engraved works.
The arrival of the artist’s work in Japan, in particular at this exhibit held by L’École School of Jewelry Arts, is a long time coming. The multidisciplinary artist, whose interests are far-reaching and diverse, had always had a unique creative connection across many different countries and cultures.
Olivia recalls how the artist’s curiosity led him to explore a wide range of subjects, including 1960s poetry, Japanese literature and theatre, Tantric Buddhism, Byzantine gold and Cycladic sculptures, all the way to engineering treatises from the late 1800s. “He resisted simple categories, preferring to engage with viewers across all the kinds of work,” she explains.
This curiosity about the world allowed Daniel to work beyond the traditional confines of his craft in a way that unleashed unrestrained creativity. “One day, he might have emotionally, mentally and physically devoted a solid 24-hour period with no interruptions to a painting, line by line, each line a recording of his breath and heartbeat, and the next day, as a diversion from the intensity of the day before, carving a Bakelite/resin skunk. Daniel’s hands were extensions of his mind and his heart and his breath,” says Olivia.
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Despite the inspiration drawn from Monet’s play on light, the similarities between the two artists’ works stop there. While the impressionist painter often modelled his masterpieces after real-life scenes – case in point, the Giverny – Daniel’s approach leaves much of the creative process to his imagination.
“He preferred not to discuss techniques or virtuosity because he believed that when they became effortless then the techniques disappeared. At this point, then, one doesn’t ask ‘how’ something is made but rather, ‘why,’” continues Olivia.
The “Thinking About Monet” exhibition reflects these pillars of Daniel’s work. Comprising three parts, beginning with five large drawings “written … line by line, top to bottom, left to right, as a poet might write their thoughts and their voice”, reveals Olivia.
The second part displays five carved and engraved steel, aluminium and gold objects and jewellery, each a specimen of Daniel’s deep explorations of working with different metals to bring out their inherent and transformative power and light, says Olivia.
And finally, the exhibition concludes with a showcase of Daniel’s creations from his “Thinking About Monet” series.
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Jewel lovers can expect to reconsider their own relationship with their baubles and gems after immersing into the world of design from the perspective of the great artist.
“For Daniel, the function of jewellery was secondary. He believed that the value, monetary or societal status one placed on a piece of jewellery was irrelevant,” says Olivia. “[Something] small in size can have enormous scale; its value rests in its ability to arrest time, engage the spirit and make one think and dream, to remove your mind from the every day.”
- ‘Thinking About Monet’, an exhibition of Brush’s work, will run till April 15 at Tokyo’s 21-21 Design Museum; Brush ‘resisted simple categories’ and, like Monet, was inspired by Japanese culture
- Curated by his long-time partner Olivia Brush, the show celebrates the work of the late artist, who worked with gold, aluminium and steel