Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity

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“Islamic art was a formative inspiration for Louis Cartier and the Maison Cartier in the early 20th century. This major exhibition explores the analysis and adaption by Cartier’s designers of shapes, techniques, and materials from India, the Middle East, and North Africa. Through the lens of the Maison Cartier, these elements are part of the creative evolution of the modern stylistic language that continues to inspire new designs.”

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May 14 - September 18, 2022

“Cartier and Islamic Art ” requires a paid ticket for adults, with discounts for seniors, students, and military. DMA Members and children 11 and under are free. All visitors must first reserve a free general admission ticket for the DMA on their selected date. Guests will then be able to add on a matching exhibition ticket. An exhibition ticket alone will not permit entry to the DMA. Tickets will typically be released on the third Monday of every month for the upcoming month.

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“Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity” is co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre and with the support of Cartier. The architecture firm DS+R (Diller Scofidio & Renfro) was commissioned to design the exhibition’s scenography.The Presenting Sponsor for this exhibition is PNC Bank. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.

Animations courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro © Dallas Museum of Art

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Animations courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro © Dallas Museum of Art

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In search of modernity

We are proud to partner with the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, and with Cartier on a magnificent exhibition that seeks to investigate and better understand the processes through which Islamic art, in particular, inspired a new style of jewelry, suited to the modern moment and formative of an influential, and much imitated, mode of self-adornment.

About the exhibition

Agustín ArteAga

—Agustín Arteága

The Eugene McDermott Director

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

SARAH SCHLEUNING

The Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts & Design

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

The Dallas Museum of Art is a relatively young institution, founded in 1903 as the Dallas Art Association at about the same time that Cartier moved to its prestigious residence at 13 rue de la Paix. It was also the moment that Louis-Joseph Cartier assumed the creative directorship of the Maison, securing its renowned position as one of the finest designers of “high jewelry” and by extension, definers of taste, in the world. Across the Atlantic, the modest beginnings of the city of Dallas and its newly founded art museum could not have anticipated that less than a century later the Dallas-Fort Worth region would be home to over five million people of all nationalities and origins (one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the United States), and that the DMA would lead in the museum field through its magnificent collections and thought-provoking exhibitions, such as “Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity.” Unlike some of its peers, the DMA did not collect high jewelry in its early years, although it systematically sought precious, wearable, ancient, and non-European works. These objects became potent symbols, both to their wearers and to those who beheld them, expressing status and taste in the same way as jewels worn in Europe by monarchs and growing numbers of the bourgeoisie after the ruptures of the Industrial Revolution. They include exquisite works in gold from Mesoamerica and the Andean region, Island Southeast Asia, and Africa, such as the Asante sword ornament in the form of a spider that was the seed for the exhibition ”The Power of Gold: Asante Regalia from Ghana,” presented in 2018. In the past several decades, the DMA has hosted a number of temporary exhibitions dedicated to the art of jewelry. In 1990, ”Gold of Three Continents” was a milestone, followed by the more archaeologically focused “Golden Treasures from the Ancient World,” and “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” which, in 2008, broke attendance records for the DMA. The Museum’s interest in design continues to evolve, diversifying into new materials, makers, and meanings, including the ground-breaking 2014 exhibition “From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith,” where the DMA became one of the first museums in the world to exhibit the work of an African American jewelry designer. In 2015, the Rose-Asenbaum Collection of Jewelry, consisting of over 700 objects by more than one hundred artists, came to the Museum, invigorating our jewelry collecting efforts. Our collecting of modern and contemporary jewelry is now concentrated in the pursuit of a wearable art, where the finest precious or unexpected materials give birth to unusual sculptural creations melding form and function. We are committed to exploring contemporary visions of jewelry, not only as historic signifiers of wealth and taste, but also through a spectrum ranging from the embodiment of personal ideals to conceptual global statements. .... READ MORE ›

ELIZABETH DILLER

Partner

DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

Quiere la boca exhausta vid, kiwi, piña y fugaz jamón. Fabio me exige, sin tapujos, que añada cerveza al whisky. Jovencillo emponzoñado de whisky, ¡qué figurota exhibes! La cigüeña tocaba cada vez mejor el saxofón y el búho pedía kiwi y queso. El jefe buscó el éxtasis en un imprevisto baño de whisky y gozó como un duque. Exhíbanse politiquillos zafios, con orejas kilométricas y uñas de gavilán. El cadáver de Wamba, rey godo de España, fue exhumado y trasladado en una caja de zinc que pesó un kilo. El pingüino Wenceslao hizo kilómetros bajo exhaustiva lluvia y frío, añoraba a su querido cachorro. El veloz murciélago hindú comía feliz cardillo y kiwi. La cigüeña tocaba el saxofón detrás del palenque de paja.

PIERRE RAINERO

Director of Image, Style & Heritage

MAISON CARTIER

Cigarette case, Cartier Paris, 1930. Cartier Collection. Vincent Wulveryck, Cartier Collection © Cartier

EXHIBITION PROVENANCE:

cont'd.

CARTIER AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

The Dallas Museum of Art is dedicated to representing the arts of global cultures in all of their traditional and emergent forms. In a city with a growing population of people of Middle Eastern origin and of the Muslim faith, over the past decade we have steadily built our representation of Islamic arts through exhibitions and, most importantly, through the presence of the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, which has been on loan since 2014. Exhibited in a privileged gallery space on our main concourse, exceptional works of art from this collection are rotated every four months. More recently, we have also started to incorporate the work of contemporary artists from the Islamic lands and their diaspora within the same space, placing historical and modern art in dialogue. It is within this context that we are proud to collaborate in presenting “Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity,” an undertaking that springs from a shared wish to explore the consequential influence of Islamic arts and architecture on European and American design. In an important sense, Islamic art, sometimes removed from its origins, was a fundamental source for Modernism. This oft-cited phenomenon, supported famously by Owen Jones’s “Grammar of Ornament” and the work of nineteenth-century French theorists and craftsmen, has not been widely explored at the level of sources and mechanisms in the twentieth century. “Cartier and Islamic Art” does not pretend to encompass all of modern design, but rather the microcosm of a single creative source: Maison Cartier. We are proud to partner with the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, with Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, and with Cartier on a magnificent exhibition that seeks to investigate and better understand the processes through which Islamic art, in particular, inspired a new style of jewelry, suited to the modern moment and formative of an influential, and much imitated, mode of self-adornment. We did not know when we began to work together on this project that we would experience a pandemic, with its concomitant economic downturn and political discontent, and an accompanying unprecedented public call for universal equality. It has been a stark reminder of the conditions under which the modern age emerged, which were sometimes cataclysmic. The limitations under which much of the work on the exhibition had to be carried out served to recall those earlier times. More than ever, in this time of constraint and uncertainty, I wish to acknowledge each and every colleague, friend, and collector who participated in the conception and realization of the exhibition at a moment when many institutions, like ours, had to find new ways to work outside our physical spaces and comfort zones, and under extraordinary stresses and pressures. For their generous support in serving as presenting sponsor of the exhibition in Dallas, I extend my deepest gratitude to PNC Bank. I am thankful for their steadfast advocacy in providing rich artistic experiences and expanded arts access in Dallas and communities across the United States. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture. In closing, I offer my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Pierre Rainero and the Cartier Heritage Department, to Olivier Gabet and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, our co-organizing partner, to the four curators, Heather Ecker, Judith Henon-Raynaud, Évelyne Possémé, and Sarah Schleuning, and to our dedicated staff (for a full listing of individuals from all three institutions, please see the exhibition catalogue). Their enthusiasm for this exhibition has been crucial to its success. This project brings not only new ideas, but also joy and delight, at a moment when they are much needed, and I am sure that, like us, our visitors will be seduced by the astounding beauty of Islamic art and the astonishing creative genius of the Maison Cartier.

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Cigarette case, Cartier Paris, 1930. Cartier Collection. Vincent Wulveryck, Cartier Collection © Cartier

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EXHIBITION PROVENANCE: CARTIER AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

Agustín ArteAga

The Eugene McDermott Director

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART

Animations courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro © Dallas Museum of Art

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cartier

islamic art

In search of modernity

The design strategies in this exhibition—motif, pattern, color, and form—reveal the inspirations, innovations, and aesthetic wonder present in the works of the Maison Cartier. Focused through the lens of Islamic art, it reveals how the Maison migrates and manifests these styles over time, as well as how they are shaped by individual creativity.

—Sarah Schleuning

iNTEGRATED influences

THROUGH THE LENS OF SARAH SCHLEUNING, THE MARGOT B. PEROT SENIOR CURATOR OF DECORATIVE ARTS

Lexicon of FORMS

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© Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit, © Cartier image credit,

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Cartier’s Hidden Debt to Islamic Art Unearthed in New Exhibition - Bloomberg Exhibition to Examine Islamic Art’s Influences on Cartier - The New York Times (nytimes.com) How Islamic art inspired Cartier’s era-defining Art Deco pieces | Financial Times (ft.com) Paris Exhibition Explores Influence of Islam’s Arts on Cartier Design – WWD

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“París acoge una exposición sobre la influencia del arte islámico en Cartier” -Harper’s Bazaar Spain “Comment les arts de l’Islam ont-ils influencé la haute joaillerie?” -Vanity Fair France “Musée des Arts Décoratifs opens ‘Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity -Art Daily “The Influence of Islamic Art on Cartier’s High-End Jewelry” -Arab News

Regional

Preview — Inside the Dallas Museum of Art’s Diamond-Studded Cartier Exhibit (papercitymag.com) “Dallas Museum of Art Will be Only U.S. Stop for ‘Cartier and Islamic Art In Search of Modernity”

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