Chapter two - article two
Moving
the eye
Where does this idea that Cartier jewelry is alive come from? To better understand it, 365, a Year of Cartier has brought together Pierre Rainero, Director of Image, Style and Heritage at Cartier, and Matthieu Poirier, an art historian and kinetic art specialist. Together, they explored this vast creative field.
Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp, 1913/1914
Bringing the stationary to life
In 1913, Marcel Duchamp said goodbye to classic painting when he attached a (mobile) bicycle wheel to a stool. And as such, a seminal work in kinetism was born: when the piece is positioned next to the window, the sunlight shining on it refracts through the wheel’s spokes as the artist spins it with his hand. And so movement and light become the materials of creation. A real pedal towards modernity, this piece opened up a vast creative field, which would become known as kinetic art in the 1950s.
Achieving the impossible...
… is possible for jewelry! These precious, static creations adopt movement through their relationship with the body and their ability to seamlessly adapt to the wearer’s movements, which, for Pierre Rainero, is “a fundamental and invisible signature of the Maison.” Beyond the talent of Cartier artisans making pieces with remarkable finesse, movement is also found in the designers’ expertise. Their knowledge is based on an in-depth understanding of materials, interplays of light, and volume effects specific to each gem. “A designer’s eye is trained to spot this phenomenon where light refracts, scatters, and penetrates matter,” explains Pierre Rainero. Finally, the design, which, aside from working on the line of each piece, introduces articulated designs, plays with the ideas of fullness and emptiness, and sometimes adds mobile elements, such as moving tassels or rolling balls that aid the optical illusions. In kinetic art, movement is seen as the center of an experience in which the spectator loses their bearings and has their visual and sensory emotions disrupted. Perception and participation are key to kinetic art. Everything moves, and nothing is stable for the spectator, who experiments and comes face to face with randomness. Their curiosity is projected towards the unknown. Only the eye provides a constant and a point of stability. According to Matthieu Poirier, “perception is the true medium.“
Cartier creations and works of kinetic art in resonance.
Plaque de cou, 1903, Cartier Collection
Licht-Relief, Heinz Mack, 1958
Cartier creations from the beginning of the 20th century explored a creative territory that anticipated the fundamentals of kinetic art. Equipped with Louis Cartier’s notebooks of ideas, the Maison’s designers began creating jewelry which, through continuous abstract motifs, evoked the fluidity of waves. This vibration effect was seen again in the work of Heinz Mack. “I no longer saw the metal relief, but instead a shimmering, vibrating structure of light”, explained Mack.
The movement inherent in this bracelet is defined by the design. An infinite spiral emerges from the center of the stone and endlessly spins round itself. The jewelers created this chromatic explosion using small onyx, sapphire and openwork elements. In the 1920s, to create the illusion of volume, Marcel Duchamp designed the Rotoreliefs: a collection of six cardboard discs printed on both sides and placed on a phonograph which, when rotated, creates a moving image brought to life by the 3D effect of the reliefs and dips.
Escargot Rotorelief - Poisson japonais, Marcel Duchamp, 1953/1965
Bracelet, 2014
Necklace, 2023
Untitled (black), Philippe Decreuzat, 2008. Acrylic on canvas, 99 × 99 cm
Combining rigorous geometry with finesse, this necklace's structure is built around a line of sapphires. The eye is both drawn to the center and then led outwards again along an infinite line of tiny sapphire, onyx and emerald elements. The repetition of these shapes only encourages this movement. A sense of diffraction and rupture pervades this painting by Philippe Decrauzat: from the center, an echo resonates and gradually changes.
Ring, 2006 Cartier Collection
Fontaine, Palais Royal, Pol Bury, 1985
Shaking at the slightest movement, the tassels on this ring recall those of the Pol Bury fountains through their sound. For Matthieu Poirier, kinetism is “obsessed with movement and inner workings, as if waves were being transmitted between kinetic mechanisms and the brain, itself a machine.”
Watchmaking also lends itself to these creative explorations. This Tank watch, one of Cartier’s watchmaking icons, transports us to another dimension. Through a window into a world about which we can only speculate, we are drawn in as much as we are rejected: we have no way of understanding the reference system it uses. François Morellet’s stained-glass windows create a feeling of displacement: the center, being the point of reference, is blurred, dispersing the gaze
Vitraux, François Morellet, 2010. Lefuel staircase, Richelieu wing, the Louvre Museum
Wristwatch, 2010 Cartier Collection
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