Art & DESIGN the
Art & DESIGN the exhibition Far left: This image was lost along with the ill-fated Andrée Expedition in 1897, and discovered only in 1930 Left: A fanciful 1595 map by cartographer Gerardus Mercator, who imagines the North Pole as consisting of four islands there. Still nobody, or hardly anybody, has.” The popular imagination of the Arctic usually relies on visuals of harsh white landscapes. But one of the most compelling elements in the exhibit is a pitch-black room dedicated to a soundscape designed by the Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Recordings of ice sheets falling into the sea, melting or scratching against one another rise from precise points on the floor. Even if the deadly cold is absent, standing there in the dark listening to the otherworldly sounds might be the closest thing to travelling to the Pole. The experience offers a shockingly new, aural dimension to our conception of the region. “You talk about Arctic cli mate as a very delicate thing, almost like it’s a small polar bear, something we have to take really good care of because it’s really fragile. And when you go there, it’s so uninterested in us!” says Tøjner, who travelled recently to Greenland. “And the scale is so crazy! If you fell down with the helicopter and weren’t killed by that, you would survive for a day, and then you’re gone.” As the Arctic becomes the last frontier of globalisation, we will increasingly confront this feeling of smallness. It’s why the stranded polar bear works as an image – because it gives us the illusion that we’re in control of global warming and that the Arctic, no matter how massive and deadly it may be, is waiting to be rescued by us. Yet, as Seeberg says, “the less mystical it is, the more scary it becomes. The fact that we know what it is and [what] it represents makes it scarier, because now we’re so afraid we’re going to lose it.” The Arctic – Image and Desire runs until 2 February 2014 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; louisiana.dk. A grande histoire The story of Cartier comes to Paris this winter, with more than 160 years of magnificent creations on display Prince Ranier of Monaco proposed marriage to Grace Kelly with a Cartier eternity ring of diamonds and rubies, sealing the contract, once she had said yes, with a 10.5ct emerald-cut diamond from the same Parisian jeweller. Wallis Simpson loved Cartier too, most famously a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet shaped like a panther from its Bestiaire collection of wildlife-inspired designs. Cary Grant favoured Cartier cufflinks. Vivien Leigh carried a Cartier powder compact. No wonder Kate Middleton married in Cartier: the 1936 Halo tiara, commissioned for her great-grandmother–in-law, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. But if the name is synonymous with sparklers, the jeweller’s first truly significant commission was more workaday: a silver tea service ordered by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, who had happened on a little workshop on Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs in 1847. Its proprietor was Louis-François Cartier, who’d inherited the skills of his accomplished metalworker grandfather, but had an eye for finer things. This season in Paris, a major exhibition at the Grand Palais will tell the story of the brand he founded by means of an unprecedented display of haute joaillerie, supported by archival drawings, photographs, ledgers and even the plaster casts made of pieces in order to keep three-dimensional records of orders. It’s enough to create devotees of us all. Cartier: Style and History; 4 Dec to 16 Feb; grandpalais.fr Claire WrAThall Photos clockwise from top left: Nils Strindberg of the Andrée Expedition; Fotografisk Atelier/Det Kongelige Bibliotek, København; © Cartier (4) 84 CENTURION-Magazine.COM
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