María Félix’s Style And Cartier’s Heritage On View At Mexico City Museum Exhibition

The photograph of María Félix is as legendary as the Mexican and French actress herself. Taken in 1980 by British photographer, Lord Snowden, the style icon is seen in a large-brim fedora with the band lined with jewels. She is smoking a cigarillo with white plastic filter and ashes hanging off the end. Her upturned left arm and hand reveals a group of gold and gem-set bracelets and rings.

Her head is turned slightly sideways with the hat brim tilted to the right side, which reveals one of two leaf ear clips by Cartier that she commissioned. Around her neck is a necklace depicting two gold crocodiles by Cartier that she also commissioned. The one crocodile is covered with 1,023 brilliant-cut fancy intense yellow diamonds and it sees the world through two navette-shaped emerald cabochons eyes. The other is paved with 1,060 emeralds and completed with two ruby cabochon eyes.

Entirely articulated, the two crocodiles can be worn separately as brooches. Both crocodiles are just under a foot in length.

The jewels she is wearing and her stature in the image show her to be a true reptile lover and reflects her fondness for imposing jewels as part of her style.

Félix (1914-2002) is beloved in Mexico and France for films such as Emilio Fernandez’s “Enamorada” (1946), Jean Renoir’s “French Cancan” (1955), and Luis Buñuel’s “Fever rises in El Pao” (1959). The Mexican diva and archetypal Latin “femme fatale” carried on her acting career until the late 1960s.

The crocodile necklace and another piece, a large gem-paved snake she commissioned Cartier to create, are a significant part of the exhibition, “Cartier Design: A Living Legacy,” at Museo Jumex in Mexico City, which will run till May 14. The colorful snake made of platinum, white gold and yellow gold is nearly two-foot long and is fully articulated. It’s covered with 2,473 brilliant- and baguette-cut diamonds, weighing a total of 178.21 carats and is further highlighted with green, red and black enamel. It peers through eyes made of two pear-shaped emeralds.

Pierre Rainero, whose career with Cartier spans 40 years with the last 20 as Image, Style & Heritage director, knew Félix when she lived in Paris.

“She had an incredible sense of humor; very witty and incredibly cultured,” Rainero said of her. “She could speak French fluently, almost without an accent. And she had a perfect knowledge of what society is. She understood Parisian society perfectly. She knew how to act and behave. Her link with Cartier is from that period. And it’s very interesting how she started to buy pieces from stock, meaning already created by us, panthers by the way. Then she moved to special orders because she wanted panthers in her own style with different attitudes. Then she commissioned special orders representing different animals and things. You can see she understood that Cartier for her was a companion.”

You would be forgiven if you think the focus of the museum exhibition is on Félix’s jewels based on the publicity surrounding the event (or by reading this story up to now). In actuality, Félix’s pieces, though immensely impressive and expressive, make up two of the 160 Cartier jewels, watches and art objects in the exhibition. They were culled from Cartier’s inventory of more 3,000 historic pieces dating from 1860 to the latter part of the 20th century. Known as the “Cartier Collection,” these objects of high design and craftsmanship have been shown at museum exhibitions around the world since 1989. Each exhibition has a different theme created by a guest curator, who has access to the collection and the archives. The Mexico City exhibition is the 39th such exhibition for the collection.

Among his responsibilities, Rainero is in charge of the acquisition, management, archival information and the museum distribution of the Cartier Collection objects.

The exhibition is curated by Ana Elena Mallet, a Mexico City-based curator specializing in modern and contemporary design. She had access to the jewels plus the archival information, which as an art historian she was especially attracted to. She created a retrospective of the history of Cartier design and style by dividing the exhibition into five sections: “The Early Days and the Birth of a Style,” “Universal Curiosity,” “Jeanne Toussaint’s Taste,” “Wearing Beauty and Measuring Time,” and “María Félix and Icons of Elegance.”

“I really wanted it to be a narrative that you could understand from the first styles—that garland style—and how it evolved into Art Deco and then the ’20s,” she said. “Then looking at other cultures, and then learn how it changes in the ’30s with more volume and different stones when Jeanne Toussaint comes into the picture. It really helps to understand how this style developed. People at the end could understand why María Félix would choose Cartier as her house of preference because they were daring, and they were innovating in with different materials, aesthetics and techniques.

“At that time going to Cartier was like going to the doctor,” she added. “They would tell you what to wear and how to look. Maria understood that Cartier could do that. How Cartier can translate her style and her will.”

Mallet was especially excited to curate this exhibition because Cartier previously held an exhibition of its jewels in Mexico City in 1999 and she attended it in the beginning of her professional art career. She left the exhibition impressed that jewels can be used in a museum context.

“For me it was really important to understand that this material could also belong in a museum and multiple cultural lectures could be done with this amazing material that is jewelry,” she said. “Because of this, it was very exciting for me to have the opportunity to work with the Cartier Collection.”

Mallet had several challenges when it came to creating her vision for the exhibition. The main one was to tie the exhibition to Mexico and Latin America, which was no easy feat since the Cartier archives provided little in this area of expertise and inspiration.

“Why have a Cartier exhibition in Mexico right now? There should be Mexican links,” Mallet said. “I know Louis Cartier was looking to the orient and to China and India. But what about Mexico and South America?”

There was a jewel in the collection that looked like it could be of pre-Columbian inspiration, an unusual platinum pyramid clip brooch commissioned in 1935 with baguette diamonds coming out of its sides and a round old-cut diamond of more than four carats in the center. It appears to have been inspired by a Mayan or similar temple but there was no information to prove it. It became the first piece in the exhibition.

“We didn’t find any proof in the archive, but the pyramid was there. The first piece (in the exhibition). That was a South America or Latin America pyramid. This is proof they were looking here. And of course, the end of the show with Maria Felix there’s a connection. I thought we could tie the Mexican connection in the beginning and the end.”

“It is obviously very similar to Mayan pyramid,” added Rainero. “But our archives do not have the evidence that there was an image of a pyramid that led to this piece. In many other cases, we have the inspiration. This design is so obvious, it says a lot about the imagery of pre-Columbian architecture that was present in the minds of our people.”

Another association with Latin America is the Santos watch. It is believed to be the first wristwatch. Louis Cartier created this watch in 1904 for Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, who complained that he had difficulty flying while using his pocket watch. It was a simple solution to a serious problem that may have made the wristwatch fashionable. The fourth section of the exhibition relating to Cartier timepieces includes an area dedicated to the aviator and the Santos watch.

For Mallet, her favorite part of the exhibition was the third section, dedicated to Jeanne Toussaint (1887–1976), one of the most important artistic and design influences of Cartier. Louis Cartier named her the director of artistic design in 1933, an unheard-of post for a woman at that time. She was best known for panther jewels, an iconic symbol of the jewelry house. During her career she moved from Art Deco jewels to sculptural and three-dimensional panther creations, typically set with white and yellow diamonds, emeralds and onyx. Her first panther jewel—a gold and enamel panther brooch set with a cabochon emerald—was crafted for the Duchess of Windsor, Wallace Simpson, in 1948. Her influence at Cartier lasted until she retired in 1970.

‘For me, it was really important because I didn’t know anything about Jeanne Toussaint,” Mallet said. “Cartier having a creative director as early as 1933. And that she was a free-spirited woman, super independent with a mind of her own in in the 1930s was fantastic. How Jeanne Toussaint started looking at the world and trying to bring Cartier into fashion and fashion into Cartier. She was very good friends with Coco Chanel and with fashion editors at the time.”

It was also unusual for any single person, much less a women in the early 20th century, to have such an influence over the artistic style at Cartier. In 2017, Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier’s CEO, explained to me that while Cartier has some styles that have become iconic, such as Tutti Frutti jewels, the Panther and floral patterns, the luxury brand creates high jewels of all shapes, styles and creativity because each piece is developed around the gems they purchase.

“Basically, each work starts with a stone and goes through all sorts of inspirations and openness to the world,” he said. The results of this process are jewels of varying shapes, styles and motifs, that are still identifiable as Cartier based on the quality of the artistry and craftsmanship.

“Whether it’s figurative or non-figurative, whether it’s geometric or some kind of art style, or when it’s just a source of inspiration that is absolutely new.” he said. “All of them are Cartier in their way.”

Space plays an equally important role in the exhibition. Mexican architect, Frida Escobedo, created a darkened environment with recessed vitrines brightened with spotlights, allowing the bejeweled objects to standout in the darkness. It’s not the first such exhibition to use darkened space to focus on the jewels. Wallace Chan used this technique in his Hong Kong exhibition, and JAR’s 2013 exhibition space at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was so dark that people were bumping into one another. But this space at Meso Jumex is different in that it combines a spiritual experience and sense of discovery. Not only discovering the jewels but it’s as if you are in a cave discovering the materials as well.

“I’m interested in this idea of a ruin, but not the ruin in the sense of decay. More like something that is in perpetual construction, or in the process of being made,” Escobedo said. “I think quarries and some archaeological sites share that relationship.”

“To me the idea was of going deeper into the layers of history of the legacy of Cartier. The idea of going underground to the origin. And then you take these paths that takes you chronologically through all the pieces. You can see the references and how they influence each other throughout the history of the house.”

There’s also a frame of reference for each vitrine. For example, the first piece (the pyramid brooch that looks like a Mayan temple) is the first piece one encounters at the end of a long and darkened corridor. Escobedo says she tried to create this effect throughout the exhibition.

It was important for us to plan together with Ana (Mallet) from the logical order of the pieces, but also to always have a point of attention and tension so you can see a piece at the end of a corridor, or something that was framed that would pull you into the next section. It’s almost like a teaser to the next section of the exhibition.”

The design is based on photos of the ancient Tenayuca pyramid just outside Mexico City, taken in the 1930s by artist Josef Albers. The walls of the space were made of darkened concrete panels, quite large, poured individually, with textured vertical lines. They are mounted on an angle.

“It’s a monumental work. But also, what’s nice about it is that you can see the craftsmanship,” Escobedo said of the exhibition space. “You can see the nuances of each of the panels. At the same time, it is very subtle as a background. It’s rich, but it’s not overpowering the pieces. It’s just creating a backdrop for them.”

Cartier’s pieces in the exhibition combines exceptional materials, fine craftsmanship and historical importance. However, Mallet made a deliberate decision to include only the basic details of each piece in the exhibition. Rainero agrees with this decision so those in the exhibition can focus on the forms of the pieces and how the changing style of Cartier through the years relates to how the luxury brand has evolved.

“I think there’s a consistency, a coherence in the exhibition, which is self-explanatory,” he said. “And I think this exhibition is very interesting, because like art in general, but in many museums, the curators want to give as much information about the artist or whatever. And sometimes it’s at the price of the appreciation of each of the works. This exhibition for me combines the two because of the way the windows are separated one from the other, the number of pieces in each window, and the type of lighting. It allows the visitor to appreciate the beauty of each of the piece at the same time. You understand the message and the thinking of the curator. So, I think there’s a very good balance for the visitor when going through the exhibition.”