Literature
- Brush, Daniel, et. al. Daniel Brush. New York: Museum of Arts and Design, 2012.
Exhibition
- Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, October 16, 2012–February 24, 2013.
Biography
Since the 1980s, New York based artist Daniel Brush has created paintings, sculpture, and jewelry. His paintings and drawings are inspired by the Japanese Noh theater, while his steel sculptures incorporate granulation and inlaid gold. His experimentation with jewelry design evolved from pieces inspired by ancient gold work to animals made out of Bakelite and other space-age materials to exploration with steel and aluminum. He has had several exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and Daniel Brush: Cuffs and Necks at Van Cleef and Arpels’s L’École des Arts Joailliers, Paris and New York. Many books have been devoted to his work, and most recently, Rizzoli published a monograph on his jewelry.
Significance
An extraordinary and unconventional artist, Daniel Brush uses stones and precious materials like paint. He never counts stones or weighs them. And he ultimately doesn’t care about the market value for stones. If he likes white ones or industrial ones at any given time that’s what he uses. The value is not in the materials, but in the finished work of art.
Particular about his techniques, Brush creates each piece by hand using rigorous techniques. He creates work for the sake of the art, as Paul Theroux wrote in Gold Without Boundaries, “Nothing he has ever done has been for the market; nothing for commerce; nothing at the suggestion of a patron, no commissions, everything one-of-a-kind, no copies.”
This bracelet combines steel and diamonds, the high and low, and is embellished with chased and repoussed squares around the diamonds, giving them a concentric look. The diamonds are scattered around the words, “Extra Virgin,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the wearer. The edgy satire turns the jewel into a dialogue between the wearer and the viewer. The craftsmanship, design, and most importantly, the mind, takes this piece from a mere accessory to a work of art.
