A Ravenous Obsession
"Rococo Exotic" at the Frick Collection spins rich layers of historical, cultural, and visual narratives from a few well-curated ingredients: a pair of gilt-bronze mounted porcelains, a display of seashells, two prints, and a drawing. From these spring ideas of Europe's ravenous obsession with the alchemical mysteries of Asia's "white gold," porcelain; the mercantile practices of the 18th-century marchand-mercier, or luxury merchants, and their relationship with the strict Parisian guild system; France's fascination with the exotic East, and the rococo's ultimate rejection of truth in nature in favor of a free-form fantasy combining the man-made with the natural.
Curator Kristel Smentek achieves this nautilus-like expansion of concepts by focusing the exhibition through the lens of a spectacular pair of mounted jars, letting the other objects in the gallery reverberate around them. Her surprising, yet deeply satisfying, decision to install one of these jars as its disassembled parts — attaching the pieces to the wall so the jar's lid appears to hover over its body, the mounts as if calligraphically drawn clouds in the air — allows the viewer a rare chance to study the intricate mechanics behind its making.
The porcelain is Chinese in origin, dating to the first half of the 18th century and most likely from the early Qianlong period (1736–95). The exteriors are glazed a deep monochrome blue, which seems to sit just below a glass skin; the interiors are delicately mottled, resembling speckled eggshell. Based on the presence of the crowned-C tax stamp, the French mounts can be dated to before 1749. These mounts are made of gilt-bronze, or ormolu, and designed in the shape of bulrushes, rocaille scrollwork, and sea forms such as shells, fans, urchins, and corals.
Adding metal mounts to prized objects was not unique to the 18th century. What was unique — and specific to France in this period — was the confluence of factors that made it acceptable, even desirable, to radically saw apart rare Asian porcelains and reassemble them with excessive ormolu mounts. The rococo demand for ever greater and more extravagant examples of objects fusing nature with artifice dovetailed with a rapidly growing and lucrative market for luxury wares imported from the exotic East.
At the center was the marchandmercier. Described by Diderot as "makers of nothing, purveyors of everything," the mercers occupied a special place in the world of the highly regulated Parisian guilds. Although forbidden to manufacture goods, the mercers were allowed to order components from the various guild artisans and supervise their assembly into opulent hybrids of porcelain, bronze, lacquer, and ormolu. If not for their aplomb in devising creative solutions to satisfy collectors' highly refined tastes and constant demands for singular beauty, mounted porcelains like those in the Frick might never have existed.
Creating this type of aggressive amalgamation from two polar aesthetic camps — the quiet austerity of the East and the flamboyant rollick of the West — did not leave much room for a middle ground. Objects were either transformed into magical theaters from another world, or disastrous Frankensteins covered in flashy barnacles. The Frick jars are an example of harmony.
The mounts forming the handles and base strike a balance between architectural stability and ribbonlike lightness. The band forming the transition from body to lid looks as if it was made by the repeated pushing of a thumb into wet clay. Its rounded movements push the eye up to the finial while making reference to watery currents. Motion is also enhanced through the play of light generated by detailed chasing on the bronze, uncovering intricate patterns and textures.
These scrolling motifs are rooted in the rococo artist's fanciful extrapolations from forms seen in nature, specifically sea forms. On the wall adjacent to the mounted jars are a pen and brown ink drawing by Pierre-Edmé Babel (1720–75), an etching with engraving by Claude-Augustin Duflos le jeune (1700–86), and an etching by Pierre-Quentin Chedel (1705–63). Ranging from Babel's more straightforward rocaille study to Chedel's water-spouting sea serpent, each of these works displays, to varying degrees, elements that informed the design of the mounts on the Frick jars.
The abundant bouquet of sea forms in Duflos's etching references the gilt-bronze finials garnishing the lids of the Frick's jars. Conceived as miniature tableaux of various familiar and alien sea forms, the contemporaneous viewer would have immediately recognized this motif, because the vogue of exotic sea forms was widespread in the 18th century. Seashells represented the pinnacle of inventive, exotic design, and no distinguished collection would have been complete without them.
A sampling of the type of seaform specimens typically collected is displayed on one wall of the exhibition. Craggy, colorful, and weird, these shells are arranged as they would have been in the 18th century: according to a purely aesthetic logic, not scientific taxidermy. Because, of course, the ultimate goal of the rococo was pleasure for the eye, at any cost.
Until June 10 (1 E. 70th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, 212-288-0700).
