Bizarre Beauty. The Art of William Harper

William Harper combines noble metals and expertly worked enamel with found objects made of tin or plastic. He contrasts the antique with the industrial, natural objects with flotsam and jetsam. Extremities of animal bone, for example, are entwined with wire made of gold or aluminum. Irregularly formed pearls are inserted into coffee jar lids or onto plastic bicycle reflectors.

Over the years Harper has developed a personal iconography reflecting influences from African sculpture or medieval art as well as inspiration taken from modern dance. And he does not limit himself to just jewelry. His repertoire ranges from paintings and ornamented vessels to artist’s books.

Yet for all his thematic and formal diversity, he has succeeded in creating an instantly recognizable and highly original oeuvre. That Harper studied paintings is evident throughout. The fields of richly colored enamel applied using innovative techniques give forth an abstract effect, and are at times opalescent, other times radiant, bringing forth hypnotic rhythms. “They are as much indebted to Kandinsky and Rothko as to Byzantine metalwork,” concludes Abraham Thomas in his foreword, describing Harper’s objects as deeply personal studies of art history that nevertheless elude all chronological classification—like some “fever dream, in which René Lalique is fused with Anselm Kiefer.”

The fascinating objects featured in the large-format monograph Bizarre Beauty are presented on a black ground. Thanks to their radiance, the brilliant reproductions repeatedly inspire journeys of discovery through Harper’s multilayered universe. In an in-depth biography, co-editor Glenn Adamson introduces Harper’s career, while essays by Arthur C. Danto, John Perreault, and Toni Greenberg, among others, provides insights into Harper’s artistic production and establish his objects within the history of jewelry and art. The elegant cloth binding and golden embossed script creates the perfect backdrop for this comprehensive review of the American artist’s unique work.


The book includes a conversation with Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, and forewords by Martha J. Fleischman and Abraham Thomas.