Sculpture to Wear

For decades the American artist Marjorie Schick has been a pioneering exponent of avant-garde jewellery. Her dynamic objects, charged with energy, are rooted in the revolutionary late 1960s European conception of jewellery and transgress the conventional boundaries of form, material and colour. The artist regards the human body as ‘living sculpture’ and constructs works of sculpture in a wide variety of materials to extend the body. Her works are often on an excitingly grand scale: a brooch that stretches far across the wearer’s shoulder to occupy the surrounding space; a neckpiece so large that it creates its own physical environment; an object that is worn on the shoulders yet envelops the entire head. Marjorie Schick’s jewellery relates to 20th-century abstract art, especially Constructivism. Here, body sculpture is created that must be classified as abstract art. Text in English and German.