Artistic Luxury - Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique

Imperial Lilies of the Valley Basket by Faberge, 1896, yellow & green gold, silver, nephrite, pearl, and rose-cut diamonds It is always such an immense privilege to attend the press previews offered by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. These events are everything a museum visit should be: elegant, slightly formal, full of beauty and knowledge. This weekend, the Legion of Honor Museum launched its latest show entitled “Artistic Luxury – Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique” and last Thursday’s press preview was probably the best I’ve ever attended. No, it did not have the glamour of the Yves Saint Laurent show, nor the papparazzi of the Annie Liebovitz retrospective, but it certainly had elegance, formality, beauty, and knowledge.

The three guides of our press tour included Stephen Harrison, curator of the show from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Emmanuel Ducamp – an expert on Russian and French decorative art, and FAMSF’s own Martin Chapman. These three guided us on an exceptional tour of this new exhibition, easily bantering and trading points of knowledge between each other so that everyone could benefit from their passion.

You would have to be a cold-hearted Philistine to not appreciate this kind of understanding of the collection. To be sure, the show does place the exceptional craftsmanship and luxury of the early 20th Century right next to its own philistinism, but this dialogue is what makes the show so relevant for today’s world. The brand slaves of the new millennium would be at a loss if it weren’t for the self-conscious extravagance created by these early luxury brands at the height of their popularity.

The entire show at the Legion is a play on just this sort of irony: wealth and philistinism, art and use, dark and light, wit and wisdom, Europe and America, delicacy and power, natural and modern… The most significant dichotomy however, concerns the play between craftsmanship and technology. While the years celebrated are typically known as the Art Nouveau era, the naturalism of this aesthetic in the applied arts would not be possible without the many new technologies developed at this time. Yes, Art Nouveau was a hand-crafted reaction against the machine age, but it was because of the backbone of modern advancements that artisans could create more extraordinary and beautiful luxury items.

Eiffel Tower and Exposition of 1900 from the TrocaderoIndeed, the heart of this show lies at the very starting point of modern luxury, art, and technology: L’Exposition Universelle de Paris 1900, placing the three designers - Fabergé, Tiffany, and Lalique - against the backdrop of the Paris exposition. The Exposition of 1900 should not be underestimated in its historical significance. Here was a point in time when technology, creativity, and wealth were united in their appetites for the new, the exciting, the beautiful, the most extraordinary. Europe, and France in particular, had been through a difficult thirty years, beginning around 1870 with the Franco-Prussian War, while the United States was just beginning to realize its own wealth and position after the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent changes to taxation. Wealthy Americans did not pay income tax at this time, so it was their time to begin acquiring the accoutrements of European royalty such as portraits, property, jewelry, and art.

Necklace by Tiffany & Co., 1885- 1895, diamonds, pink tourmaline, yellow gold and platinum.Just as luxury brands today develop huge flagship stores that serve as loss-leaders or just good public relations for the brand overall, the artists showing at the Paris Exposition were equally savvy. While the average visitor to the exposition (and there were 50 million visitors to the fair in just eight months,) could certainly not partake of the wares of Tiffany, Fabergé, and Lalique, these companies knew that rich Americans would be visiting as well, and this was the demographic they were targeting. Because of this, many of the pieces are the Legion show are understandably audacious; incredible feats of artistic craftsmanship with little to no practical use, but they are still wonderful to see nonetheless.

A common metaphor for this age was the “Cult of the Orchid” – or a time when the exotic tropical blooms spread in popularity due to their fragility and romantic symbolism. Orchids are also exceptionally difficult to propagate, making them a hobby for the especially affluent. Practical, no, but still celebrated.

For Paris, this was a time to celebrate itself. The new Haussmann developments had created Les Grand Boulevards of open space and light, while the developments of the metro, electricity, and plumbing had created a city that was the benchmark for beauty and functioning technology. It was at this time too that entertainments such as the Moulin Rouge and the Opera Garnier took their cues from the open, strolling boulevards to create broad spaces where the classes mixed and people could see and be seen. This interaction of high and low was another astonishing dichotomy of the age.

Consuleo Vanderbilt, The Duchess of Marlborough with her son Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, by Giovanni Boldini, 1906Just as in Edith Wharton’s posthumus novel The Buccaneers, many American heiresses came to Europe to marry titled aristocrats who were rich in prestige but practically cash-poor. The true story that inspired Wharton’s work was the story of the rich and beautiful Consuelo Vanderbilt who married Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, and first cousin of Winston Churchill. At one point in the exhibition there are two different aquamarines set in diamonds on display – one is set by Tiffany and the other is set by Fabergé (a Siberian aquamarine given by tsarevich Nicholas to the future tsarina Alexandra) – and while both stones and settings are strikingly similar, there is enough of a difference to make a statement. “Europeans are always about the settings while Americans are always about the stones,” as Stephen Harrison explained. A very fitting metaphor for the marriage of American new money and European peerage – one that still holds true today.

Ironically, the new Duchess of Marlborough found such extravagances distasteful, but did develop a fascination for the Fabergé eggs she saw during a visit to Moscow in 1902, even commissioning an egg from the company – the only commission Fabergé ever received from an American. While the Duchess of Marlborough Egg is not on display at the Legion, there are a total of ten Fabergé eggs on view, (including the Imperial Blue Sperpent Egg, which inspired the Duchess of Marlborough’s commission.) This may not sound like many, but of the 105 known Fabergé eggs created, only sixty-nine have survived to the present day. Having as many as ten together in one exhibition is a true feat of diplomacy and curatorship.

Imperial Blue Serpent Egg by House of Faberge, Mikhail Perkhin workmaster, 1887, gold blue guilloche enamel, opalescent white enamel, diamonds, spahhiresThe Imperial Blue Serpent Egg was presented to Tsarina Maria Feodorovna on Easter, 1887 by her husband, Tsar Alexandre III. Over the years this egg came into the collection of the House of Grimaldi of Monaco, and was a favorite object of the late Princess Grace of Monaco. After many years unseen by the public, Prince Albert II of Monaco allowed this extraordinary egg to become a part of this exhibit. This egg is actually a clock with a rotating dial – the serpent’s tongue indicates the hour as the dial rotates around during the day.

Magnolia Window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, designed by Agnes Northrop, c. 1900Another piece in the show with this type of significance is the Tiffany Magnolia Window. This window was shown at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and purchased from Bing’s L’Art Nouveau gallery for the Baron Stieglitz Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts in St. Petersburg. After the Russian Revolution, this striking impressionistic window was stored in the Hermitage Museum until recently. This exhibit on Artistic Luxury is the first time the window has been seen publicly since 1900.

While Tiffany’s work is widely known, this show presents the finer details of his art that may not be understood. The craft of layering many subtle mutations of colored glass, as well as the iridescent effect of the famous Favrile glass are shown here to their best effect among very modern-looking vases, windows, and lamps. Indeed, the Favrile glass effect was reminiscent of the swirling colors of Loië Fuller’s shimmering costumes as she danced in the chromatic stage lights at the Palais de l’Electricité at the Paris Exposition in 1900.

Cattleya Orchid hair ornament by Lalique in Ivory, cloisonne enamel, and diamonds, c. 1900Lalique too is more widely known for his later work in glass sculptures, but in this show it is his intricate jewelry work that is on display. The jewelry is incredibly artistic, and while criticized for being “un-wearable” during its time, the pieces represent the Art Nouveau ideals and forms to perfection. His hair pieces are the true works of art, with many birds, insects, and flowers adorning combs and clips throughout the show. The massive cattleya orchid hair comb not only perfectly showcases the “Cult of the Orchid” mentioned before, but also the artisan’s craft: ivory is carved into delicate rippling petals while enamel and diamonds serve as a glamorous counterpoint of noble and humble materials.

With all of this beauty and luxury on display, there is indeed a touch of dark humor, even perversion too. The dark, gothic sensibility of the time may also be found among the serpents, wasps, cicadas, and bats carved into many objects. As Stephen Harrison also said during our tour: “The Belle Époque is also known as the moment when the ripe slips over to the rotten…” Were the artists especially prophetic or just witty and wise?

Perhaps in the creation of such objects they sought to offer a lesson, a reminder that beauty (and luxury) is truth, but it is also fleeting.

Again, how fitting for today...

Artistic Luxury - Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique
February 7 – May 31, 2009
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor Museum
Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street
Tuesday – Sunday, closed Mondays
Visit http://www.famsf.org/legion/ for details.

Comments

[Kateri]

I could not be more jealous that you got to see this, but thank you for the beautifully informative reporting. Stunning.

[WendyB]

^^I'm jealous too!

[Betty B]

Thank you for sharing with us this exquisite exposition. I just love your pithy reportage!

I live in a small town in North Dakota, and we don't get many opportunities to see such fancy things.

When will you write about Michelle Obama and her impact on fashion??

Betty B

[Mariana]

Perhaps it was an attempt to make permanent the fleeting objects of nature; and proof that the more realistic and true to life, the more decadent the result? Maybe art that takes inspiration from nature should just try to evoke its essence, in an impressionistic way. That is of course if one dislikes decadence in art. :) These are lovely!