Daniel Brush, reclusive artist who crossed boundaries, dies at 75

For greater than 4 a long time, this bewildering 5,000-square-foot area within the Flatiron district was the place Mr. Brush, who died Nov. 26 at age 75, labored as a painter, sculptor and jeweler. He spent months or years on a single mission, which he typically shelved for even longer, solely promoting to collectors who displayed a considerate connection to the item — and the flexibility to pay upward of six figures per piece.

In a metropolis of characters, Mr. Brush was definitely one. Sporting a brown leather-based apron and metal armored gloves, he continuously went months with out leaving his studio, beginning daily with a bowl of Cheerios, adopted by hours and hours of sweeping. He broke just for lunch — pea soup, all the time. Most days he labored for 18 hours.

“Daniel Brush is indistinguishable from many madmen in New York Metropolis,” a good friend, the novelist and journey author Paul Theroux, wrote in an introduction to an illustrated collection of the artist’s work. “I emphasize the place, as a result of a New York nutter is world-class — one thing to do with the way in which the town, so mobile, so like an asylum, an island of vertical compartments, isolates individuals and intensifies psychosis.”

Mr. Brush spoke divinely of his work, particularly with treasured metals. “I work with it as a result of I don’t perceive it,” he told “CBS Sunday Morning” in 1998 as he melted gold pellets. “I work with it as a result of I just like the purple glow that comes off of this as I dream about all the those who possibly three or 4 thousand years in the past noticed the identical factor.”

Lots of his most well-known works have been high-wire acts of artistry utilizing instruments he made himself.

A chunk he known as “Second Dome” took six years to make. It has 78,000 gold spheres no bigger than a grain of sand drilled into tiny holes. Every gold ball, Mr. Brush as soon as wrote, “is .008 of an inch in diameter, plus or minus .0001 of an inch. I made all of them. Individually positioned all of them. I don’t use tweezers. I take advantage of a brush. I pull all of the hairs besides one, then decide every one up and place it. In case you eat pea soup, there’s sufficient viscosity in your spittle to stick it to the floor.”

It took Mr. Brush a number of years to work up the braveness to complete the piece by firing it with a torch. “At 30 seconds it succeeds,” he instructed Departures journal in 1997, “at 29 it fails and at 31 it melts.”

Along with his work with treasured metals, Mr. Brush was additionally identified for his one-of-a-kind items of jewellery.

“Over the previous 5 a long time, Daniel has established himself as probably the most modern artists of our time,” Rahul Kadakia, worldwide head of Christie’s Jewellery, told the New York Instances in 2020. “With out outdoors influences or consideration of the mainstream, he has produced a distinctly singular imaginative and prescient and completely distinctive physique of labor.”

Daniel David Brush was born in Cleveland on Jan. 22, 1947. His dad and mom owned a youngsters’s clothes retailer. His mom was additionally an artist and author, and when he was 13 she took him to London to go to museums and galleries. On the Victoria and Albert Museum, he stood in awe of Etruscan goldwork. “My coronary heart pounded the way in which it has not since then,” Mr. Brush instructed Departures journal. “I used to be insane to study the way it was made.”

In 1965, Mr. Brush enrolled on the Carnegie Institute of Expertise (now Carnegie Mellon College) in Pittsburgh, the place he met Lynn Alpert, who goes by Olivia. They married in 1969, the identical 12 months Mr. Brush acquired a bachelor’s of high quality arts diploma. They then moved to Los Angeles, the place he accomplished a grasp’s of high quality arts diploma from the College of Southern California.

Mr. Brush, then an summary painter, landed a educating job at Georgetown College. Whereas in Washington, Mr. Brush had solo exhibitions on the Phillips and Corcoran galleries. He bought a number of items however rapidly regretted it. “I used to be so unnerved,” he told the Instances, “that I purchased each single factor again from each individual and I destroyed all of the work.”

In 1978, Mr. Brush and his spouse moved to New York, bought a loft within the Flatiron district, and transformed it right into a mixed residing and studio area. There, Mr. Brush turned his focus to metals and jewels, crossing inventive boundaries with a steadily rising assortment of vintage lathes and instruments. He learn a whole lot of books about them.

“I didn’t know the right way to run them,” Mr. Brush instructed “CBS Sunday Morning.” “I met an older man, 85 years previous. He mentioned: ‘Put the books away. Put the images away. Let the machine let you know what it has to say.’ So the machines, with a little bit little bit of my assist, made the items they wished to make.”

Mr. Brush by no means employed a vendor. He and his spouse, after which their son Silla, born in 1982, subsisted on a good circle of rich collectors who bought his work “from heat hand to heat hand,” as Mr. Brush known as the transactions. Although Mr. Brush by no means recognized his consumers, some names emerged in articles about him. One patron was reportedly Marsha Garces Williams, a collector as soon as married to actor Robin Williams. One other was jeweler Ralph Esmerian. “CBS Sunday Morning” mentioned the Aga Khan owned a Brush.

Within the late Nineteen Nineties, Mr. Brush’s spouse and others in his inventive orbit started gently suggesting that he exhibit his work extra broadly. He agreed. In 1998, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Artwork Museum placed on an exhibition of his work.

“Brush’s mastery is nearly incomprehensible,” Washington Submit journalist Hank Burchard wrote concerning the exhibit. “His golden domes are beautiful and his jewellery is sensuous. His whatnots (which embody a yo-yo and a confection he calls Jelly Bean Suite) are great. His butterflies, bottles and packing containers are needful extravagances, workouts in what the artist calls ‘centered frivolity.’”

Burchard’s solely lament was that “the Renwick does not provide magnifying glasses to assist patrons recognize the vanishingly small particulars.”

Mr. Brush is survived by his spouse and son. They mentioned he died at a New York hospital however declined to quote a trigger.

Although he labored alongside his spouse for many years — she made intricate packing containers for the items he bought — Mr. Brush by no means employed any assistants or laborers. He by no means took commissions. He by no means made the identical piece twice.

“I stand up and fear about, what’s there to say?” Mr. Brush mentioned at his studio throughout a 2017 conversation about his work. “Do I’ve something to say? Do I do know sufficient? Can I engrave in addition to the armourers in Napoleon’s court docket? I learn, I research, I fear. Is it a battle? Yeah, certain.”