From Calder to Koons

Date: Parigi, 7 - 31 Marzo 2018

Con Giancarlo Montebello - "from Calder to Koons”

Before the dawn of windshields, Man Ray sought out durable lenses to wear while driving. (Diane Venet, a jewelry collector who guest curated a 2011 show at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, says he was “always breaking his glasses and he loved to drive fast.”) Man Ray and his collaborator, the Italian goldsmith GianCarlo Montebello, spent months in the early 1970s perfecting a design: the Optic-Topic gold mask, which features a dense network of pinholes where one would expect to find cutouts for eyes. Although a few small dots wouldn't seem to do the trick, Venet, who owns the gold mask, has revealed, “You see through them as well as with glasses.”

Another GEM Montebello collaboration, Pendants Pending (1970) are more fondly remembered as “the lampshade earrings” because they allude to Man Ray's 1919 spiral lampshade. Forever immortalized by French actress Catherine Deneuve, the artist designed them to be placed over the ears, so as not to weigh down the wearer's lobes with five-and-a-half-inch spirals.