Display
Kevin Coates - A Notebook of Pins
Friday 7th September, 2007 - Sunday 30th September, 2007
- Price: Admission Free
A Notebook of Pins will provide a more detailed glimpse for Wallace Collection visitors into the intricate and searching work of the Wallace Collection’s new Associate Artist, acclaimed goldsmith Kevin Coates. This display of his latest collection will open at the Wallace Collection in September, before moving in October to America’s Mobilia Gallery. Of the twenty pins in the display, all designed to be worn, eight are directly inspired by the Collection, some by iconic pieces such as The Swing, others by tiny treasures many may never have noticed.
The unique status of the pin has long fascinated Coates. Originally attracted by the purity and economy of a form which does not need to make concessions to the practical problems of function in jewellery, Coates soon found his ideas growing in complexity and significance. Whilst maintaining the simplicity of the form, he has given free reign to a grander vision, by placing the pins in hard mounts. Based on the drawings from the notebooks in which the jewels were originally conceived, these mounts offer a comfortable home for the pins and bear the thought process and workings which went into their creation – allowing the viewer a snapshot into another world – that of the maker, and thus changing the perceptions of adornment normally associated with jewels.
Whilst some jewels are inspired by long term fascinations, such as Time and Mozart (Coates is also a musician) many of the pieces in A Notebook of Pins take their cue from Wallace Collection artworks, but with interesting twists. The Wallace Collection influences are eclectic and fully traverse this exceptionally wide-ranging collection. Starting points can be as simple as the romantic ideal of a Tuscan landscape on a maiolica bowl leading to Castle-in-the-air, a tiny German bronze lion (The Lion within…) evocative for Coates through its association with Venice’s guardian lion of St Mark, to the many images in the Collection of dead hares, especially in the remarkable family portrait by Van der Helst. Coates’s Lunar Hare, in contrast, however, is safe and living.
Three pins take their inspiration from some of the most celebrated artists and most iconic images, but explore hidden and lesser known details. Fragonard’s The Swing is a famous example of a system of mystery and gradual unveiling, a process favoured by Coates himself. The Lady on the Swing is in many ways a type of 18th century tease… In his pin Fragonard’s L’Amour volé, Coates appropriates the carved figure of L’Amour in the background of the painting, itself stolen, or at least borrowed from an earlier artwork.
Watteau’s commedia dell’arte figures have long been present in Coates’s work; the Harlequins immediately involving, iconic, accessible and inviting, but infused with the vulnerability which was the true foundation of the Arcadian world of the fête galante. In Variations on a Garden of Love, Coates reconstructs the façade of the rusticated temple from Gilles and his Family and installs Columbine and her over-amorous suitor from Harlequin and Columbine.
The display will close with Poussin’s thumbprint, inspired by Poussin’s great canvas, A Dance to the Music of Time, a painting which has stimulated artists throughout history (see Anthony Powell’s cycle of novels).) The focus of the pin however, is not just the dancers or putti, but Poussin’s thumbprint itself, recently discovered on the canvas by forensic examination – a lasting remnant of his painting techniques and a symbol itself of fugitive Time.
