Lot Essay
Cf. Daniel Brush, "Gold Without Boundaries", Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1998, illustration 38
"Gold is a material that has a beautiful light and you can't understand it and it has a history about it and it becomes transformed and it's just like red paint and every other material in the hands of an artist."
-Daniel Brush
The artist as jeweller, Daniel Brush is exemplary. His early oeuvre derives inspiration from the ancient world: meticulously crafted fibulae and domes. Fascinated by ancient techniques as few have been since Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794-1865), Brush has filled his studio with thousands of tools used to create objects in the manner of artisans many millennia ago.
Intrigued by unusual materials, Brush's work of the late 1980s and early 1990s - in the neo-realist vein - often incorporates bakelite exquisitely engraved with animals and adorned by delicate beading. His objects, above all, revel in the tactile. Intrigued by the aesthetics of the Far East, his more recent, highly scuptural production in steel and gold - created in the tradition of Chinese scholars' tablepieces of the 17th Century - is meant to be touched and contemplated from all angles. The steel, reminiscent of the roughness and unevenness of Chinese landscapes, is rendered more beautiful by gold mosaic. The ingenious craftsmanship involved, with its beautiful results, conceals the extreme difficulty of execution, appearing effortless.
"Gold is a material that has a beautiful light and you can't understand it and it has a history about it and it becomes transformed and it's just like red paint and every other material in the hands of an artist."
-Daniel Brush
The artist as jeweller, Daniel Brush is exemplary. His early oeuvre derives inspiration from the ancient world: meticulously crafted fibulae and domes. Fascinated by ancient techniques as few have been since Fortunato Pio Castellani (1794-1865), Brush has filled his studio with thousands of tools used to create objects in the manner of artisans many millennia ago.
Intrigued by unusual materials, Brush's work of the late 1980s and early 1990s - in the neo-realist vein - often incorporates bakelite exquisitely engraved with animals and adorned by delicate beading. His objects, above all, revel in the tactile. Intrigued by the aesthetics of the Far East, his more recent, highly scuptural production in steel and gold - created in the tradition of Chinese scholars' tablepieces of the 17th Century - is meant to be touched and contemplated from all angles. The steel, reminiscent of the roughness and unevenness of Chinese landscapes, is rendered more beautiful by gold mosaic. The ingenious craftsmanship involved, with its beautiful results, conceals the extreme difficulty of execution, appearing effortless.