Precious Grotesqueries: The Jewels of William Harper In Paris

Artist list

William Harper

So, what is the art of William Harper about? Having worked as a practicing artist since the mid-1960s, Wiliam Harper (b. 1944) has an extensive corpus that defies simple definition. His objects combine the precious with the utilitarian, the natural with the industrial world, the medieval era with modern times. They display a deep personal immersion in art history, yet they are by no means dryly academic or remotely historicizing. They are vivid fantasies, adventures into hidden realms, autobiographical reveries, homages to artistic heroes. Like the grotesques in the margins of medieval manuscripts they are often strange and mysterious, yet comic and pleasing. Vibrant colors are ubiquitous, for William Harper is a supremely talented enameller. Numerous group and solo exhibitions, as well as countless awards and prizes, attest to the esteem with which William Harper’s work is now held. Signature pieces can be found in major museums in North America and abroad, including the Met, LACMA, the MFA in Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, the Vatican Museum, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, and many others.

Two themes emerge in the works selected for the exhibition. One group of objects is distinctly medieval in inspiration: saints and their reliquaries. The cover image, a brooch of The Temptation of Saint Anthony as the Artist (1986) shows the desert saint with one eye, holding a book in the form of a mirror, wearing a halo composed of a pearl, his hand and feet made up of teeth. Like Anthony, William Harper works with but one eye due to operations following detached retinas. The beautifully complex cloisonné enamel is a tribute to his immense talent. Some saints lie in their own caskets. The brooch of Archangel Michael (1996, another self-portrait) nestles in a box with wood, leather, nails, bottle caps, buttons, and other found objects.

He’s visible through the openwork lid. The other group of objects consists of tributes to artists he admires: Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns and Edgar Munch, and Joseph Cornell. William Harper has been called the “master of the box,” and the reliquaries and casks pay obvious homage to Cornell. Ever the colorist, William Harper takes Twombly’s 1989 Petals of Fire to create his own exercise of petals in smoldering red enamel on a large brooch.


About Les Enluminures:
Founded by Dr. Sandra Hindman more than thirty years ago and with locations in Paris and Chicago, Les Enluminures has forged long-standing relationships with major museums and prestigious private collections throughout the world. Among its clients are the Met, the Getty, the National Gallery of Art, the Louvre, the Cluny, the British Museum, the British Library, and many others. lt exhibits at TEFAF Maastricht, Frieze Masters, and the Winter Show. The gallery is well-known for the level of its scholarship but also for the diversity, high quality, and provenance of the works it offers