BODIESAND SCULPTURES
Jewelry’s relationship to the body has always been a source of endless debate and an inspiration for creation. Considered wearable “mini-sculpture,” it becomes like a subcategory in art or “little art” consisting of the art of objects on the body or appended to the body, limiting its scale and defining its range. This subordinate relationship to the body is what jewelers and artists use as a starting point in their explorations, eventually accentuating it or contradicting it. In many cases, jewelry can dispense of the body and be appreciated on its own like sculpture. Dressen qualifies, though, that we have to distinguish “the instrumentalized autonomy of jewelry associated with power --- like a crown on display, which stands for the king in his absence --- from the willful emancipation of contemporary jewelry.” In the exhibit were examples of some unwearable, room-sized rather than body-shaped pieces, which were obviously imagined outside, or beyond the body. These pieces, in fact, were meant to break away from the human body to instead “shoulder their way into the museum.”
But some types of jewelry, on the other hand, can maintain a co-dependent relationship with the body, being activated when the body moves as in the case of kinetic jewelry. An exquisite brooch from Boucheron exemplifies the 17th century trembleuse technique of mounting stones on springs to make them dance with every movement of the body, enlivening the sparkle of the diamonds. This technique all but disappeared around the turn of the 20th century as evolutions in the art of stonecutting took over as the sole source of a diamond’s sparkle. Jewelry can also be co-dependent when it is imagined as emanating from a body in the form of a fragment or cast — acting as its double or redundant imprint.