This article is based on the artistic research called Purity or Promiscuity? Exploring Hair as a Raw Material in Jewellery and Art that was conducted by Carla Castiajo at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, Estonia, 2011–2016, with a scholarship from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Portugal, 2011–2015, and which was supervised […]
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Alexander Blank, Bunny, 2006, gold, stag horn, 95 x 60 x 12 mm, photo: Stefan Heuser, modeled by Stefan Heuser Alexander Blank’s jewelry frequently riffs on the notion of pop-cultural-icons-as-cameo-portraits: bashed yellow “smiley-face” brooches, “skull” pendants seemingly made of the fossilized remains of Daffy Duck and the Tasmanian Devil and, in this piece, a roughly
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VALIE EXPORT, Tapp und Tastkino (Touch Cinema), 1968–1971, performance, photo: mumok, Vienna The late 1960s were turbulent times. Liberation, emancipation, and democratization were the truths of the day. Social codes were exceeded, and people enjoyed the freedom of the sexual revolution. Taking off one’s clothes publicly, for instance at festivals like Woodstock, was a sign
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(left) Caroline Slotte, Round Piece, from the Landscape Multiple series, 2012, reworked second-hand ceramics, 245 mm in diameter; Anna Talbot, Blue Wolf, 2012 brooch, old box, anodized aluminum, brass, wood veneer, steel, 80 x 80 x 20 mm, private collection, photo: artists It is universally acknowledged that contemporary jewelry subverted completely the “hierarchy of materials”[1]
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Art history is a long road where precocities and delays often collide; it’s made of screams and terrible silences. As Henri Focillon wrote once, “[a work of art] is both completely absorbed in the dynamism of time and, at the same time, a universal witness”[1]: forms live through time and space, and history of the
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The Jaw Bone mouthpiece is modeled after the jaw of jeweler Shaun Leane, and was created for Alexander McQueen’s untitled spring/summer collection of 1998 (originally called The Golden Shower until a sponsor found out its pornographic meaning and threatened to back out). Hooks around the ears and inside the mouth are used to fasten Jaw
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