Cindy Sherman’s Anna Hu Hand Ornament Enters Musée des Arts Décoratifs
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FOREVER AND A DAY: After more than a decade with American artist Cindy Sherman, the duo of snakes designed for her by jeweler Anna Hu have moved to a forever home — the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
“In France, an acquisition for a museum is forever, which means that forever this incredible work will lay here at the museum and will [be] for so many visitors — for years, decades and centuries to come — a testimony of your work and talent,” said the institution’s director Olivier Gabet at a ceremony marking her design’s entry into the Paris museum’s permanent collection.
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“These serpents have their own fate,” said Hu, who trained as a classical cellist and studied art history before veering toward jewelry design.
This path convinced her that her mission is to “use jewelry as a piece of music that connects past, present and future” while also serving as a bridge between East and West — one of the very elements that Sherman had wanted for her jewelry piece.
Hu recounted how, fresh out of her job at Harry Winston, an initial meeting with Sherman at a charity gala led to an invitation to visit the jeweler’s first store at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
When Sherman arrived without makeup, “completely different from her very strong staged photo work,” Hu was struck by the dichotomy. Their conversation turned to the harmony that emerges from opposing elements or contrasting qualities coming together and eventually led the American artist to want “a duet” to create a piece together.
After agreeing to use the snake — their shared Chinese zodiac sign — as a symbol of the connection between East and West, Sherman requested a motif connecting both elements.
David Katz/Courtesy of Anna Hu
Hu eventually proposed the yin-yang, which she explained was not only a symbol for day and night but also reflected duality in a person, which satisfied Sherman so much that she “literally screamed out of happiness,” the jeweler revealed, adding that the artist liked it so much she wore it even when sleeping.
“For me, jewelry isn’t just a beautiful object. It has symbolic meaning and [embodies the] love between the collector and the creator,” she said.
In the case of the hand ornament, two snakes with diamond and gemset backs and garnet eyes biting into either side of an onyx and agate yin-yang symbol, it embodied the creative dialogue between “one great artist and another great artist,” Gabet said.
During the ceremony, he revealed that the acquisition board had been unanimously approved the donation made by Sherman, who is also a board member of the New York-based Friends of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs association.
He described Hu’s work as “totally consistent” with the history of jewelry, spanning from “ancient times to yesterday morning, that the museum and its Galeries des Bijoux bear witness to.”
The piece’s inclusion also made sense in light of the changing face of Western luxury. “There is such a vibrancy, a dynamism to the Chinese high jewelry scene that it was high time [for] an artistic capital like Paris to recognize and pay attention to it,” he continued.
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