I go with my sister and some friends to the Dallas Museum of Art’s exhibition titled: Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity.
One of the friends is thrilled because Cartier is his favorite jewelry maker. Having lived a sheltered life (perhaps more to the point, an unfashionable one), until this moment, I’ve never heard of Cartier. Neither the French luxury goods conglomerate nor Louis-François Cartier who founded it. Also, for no good reason at all, I really don’t know all that much about Islamic art. So I’m not sure what to expect.
No one hands us the exhibition catalogue as we go in and in my usual way, I plan to scan the explanatory plaques, take pictures of the words and art that I might want to review afterwards, and wander through the rooms, experiencing first and then maybe, if needed, learning more later.
Recently I’ve been reading more than viewing or contemplating art. I’ve only just finished reading an eight-book series by Dorothy Dunnett about an aspiring merchant based out of the Flemish region of Belgium starting in 1460. In one of the books, a few years later, the character goes off to Africa in search of trade routes and gold. He finds himself led or, more possibly, manipulated to Timbuktu. At that point in history, Timbuktu was a major trade hub and a thriving center of Islam which drew artists, intellectuals, and leaders to its universities and schools.
Contrasted against the Crusade-mongering monks, political leaders, and war-seeking Christians, Timbuktu (at least in the novel) presents an image of Islam as being as stimulating, creative, and culturally influential as Christianity was for the Renaissance in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. Of course, outside Timbuktu (and even inside its walls with the differing factions seeking power and control) the Islamic war-mongering leaders and captains were also venturing out with bloody force on their own territorial rampages and world-conquering quests.
When – spoiler alert – after the character has returned home, he finds out that Timbuktu has fallen to the Songhai empire which, ill-disposed to Islamic culture, has destroyed the schools, killed the leaders, and tried to rub the shine off of Arab influence, he is heartbroken (as was the reader). Not on behalf of the religion as a religion but on behalf of the beauty of the minds who had thirsted for and drank of knowledge and are now gone, for the lost artwork and writing, and for the abrupt end of peace, and the death of so many futures and dreams.
It’s with this
flavor still lingering – almost a taste, certainly a sense of travel with the
smell of dust, dye vats, battle, and horse strong in the air, the waiting for
letters to arrive by sea with news that is months old – that I enter the museum
and step into the first display area which showcases a glinting tiara, a
tapestry, and the first plaque that tells about the exhibition and what it
explores. Which is: “the formative influences of Islamic art on Louis Cartier
as a collector and, more significantly, on Maison Cartier’s production of
jewelry and precious objects from the early 20th century until today”.
It’s not the jewelry that draws my eye as much as the paintings, the etchings, the tapestries, and the tile work. For me, at this moment, I’m more fascinated with what influenced Cartier rather than what he did with it. Likely because it takes me back to the books. Ah, I think, this is what the character saw. These types of things are what he touched, learned about, traded in. The people, and himself, wore clothing like this, had weapons like these, decorated themselves in extravagant jewels like those. The motifs, materials, and colors would have been similar. Although these things that I’m seeing didn’t come from Timbuktu, but from Persia, India, Iran, and other unspecified Arab lands.
Much as in the story where the character in many ways was the trade bridge between the east and the west. Between Christianity and Islam. Between his inner self and the outer world. Here too, Cartier uses the forms and figures, adapts designs and shapes from architecture, textile, paintings, and drawings as inspiration for jewelry, for clocks, and as a bridge from one form to another. The arches of that building become the setting for these jewels in this tiara. The geometric pattern in the center of that painting becomes the shape for this necklace’s pendant.
Another plaque (quoting Louis Cartier, I assume, though the words aren’t cited, and I have no catalogue to verify this by) states, “I study the ornaments of the period of the production for which I am designing; I choose which is the most significant element; I adapt it and repeat it in the textiles, the architecture, the jewelry. The ornamental device thus becomes a leitmotif, and I achieve a unity not only of color but also of line.” In other words, the ornamental device becomes a recurring, repeating theme. A shape that becomes powerful apart from its origin and gains its own importance through the jeweler’s touch. If not a bridge, a tip of the hat to, an acknowledgement of, a sign of reverence for, a reusing of form, an artistic thank you to the original piece.
For what else is art, but the slight altering of an idea to make it something new? Not stealing, but close. Not plagiarizing, but renaming the way magicians rename. A type of wizardry in which one uses an old spell to cast a new enchantment.
My favorite piece from the exhibition is not a piece of jewelry (the friend and even my sister find ones that they love the most, so the jewelry is not underappreciated). My favorite piece is a painting of a harem perhaps. Perhaps. What it is isn’t exactly clear to me. For there are images that looks like shadowy demons, a figure that is either extolling with enthusiasm or brandishing a whip. Reposing figures, pillars that glow orange as if with fire, a triad of statues, a staircase that going up would lead one under the soft folds of a giant, draping ceiling cloth. It’s the colors, the composition of the lines and folds that draws the eye from one place to the other, the mystery of the figures, the story behind it all that I might never know, the bird in the top right hand corner pecking at a large, golden tassel. It’s the overall effect that I like.
I stand in front of the painting, staring at the folds of the giant, draping ceiling cloth. “I can’t tell if it’s painted or if it’s real material,” I say to the friend. He stares at it too and gives his opinion that it’s actual cloth. “No,” I say, unconvinced. Later, the friend says it is cloth, that he asked one of the museum staff and they said it was.
Still, like doubting Thomas in the Christian scriptures, I don’t believe it. Unless I read it with my own eyes in the exhibition catalogue, I think. Unless I get behind the protective glass and touch it with my own hands. But I don’t argue. And, in the end, there is no exhibition catalogue for me. No proof, only belief or disbelief.
In the last room, a brooch with fine lines etched over the silver hangs at the beginning of a row of brooches against a bed of black. I put my face as close to the covering glass as I can. Words, I think, words I can’t read. An alphabet and words that the character learned to read, learned to speak when he was in Timbuktu. But to me they are just lines. Lines with meaning that I can’t grasp.
I leave the exhibition with a strange sense that the fictional world I had inhabited for several months in some ways came alive through the artwork that I’ve just seen. With a sense of something not quite as painful as loss, but almost like loss; the knowledge that there is so much I don’t know. So many words I’ve never read, cannot read. So many languages that are outside the boundaries of my understanding. That there are things I will never know. Can never know. It’s not a sense of loss, but rather a soft tugging, an impression, a glimpse into the mysteries of the world, a taste of the infinite nature of knowledge, and the joy of knowing that there will always be something to stop me in my tracks, make me feel or think, and to show me the beauty of both the real and the imagined.
[If you want to explore various parts of the world including Europe, parts of Africa, and Iceland (among other places), get embroiled in political, commercial, and religious-based intrigue, put off all your other obligations in order to read obsessively, and have your heart wrung dry with hope, amusement, exasperation, and despair then I’d recommend Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolò Rising series.]
[The Cartier and Islamic Art exhibition runs at the Dallas Museum of Art until September 18, 2022 https://dma.org/press-release/major-exhibition-exploring-cartier-s-inspirations-islamic-art-and-design-makes-north ]
