Masterpieces of Modernism: Swatch Debuts Guggenheim Collaboration
Having previously collaborated with almost every major art museum in the world, from MoMA to the Louvre, Swatch has licensed four masterpieces of 20th-century art from the Guggenheim, including works on display in New York and Venice. Accessibly priced, non-limited and available online, the Swatch x Guggenheim collection brings works from Monet, Degas, Klee, and Pollock to a wrist near you. Initial thoughts Painted dials have a long history in watchmaking, but the difficult nature of the work meant that for most of history they remained out of reach for all but the wealthiest clientele. While hand-painted dials are vanishingly rare and breathtakingly expensive, modern production methods mean that legendary masterpieces can now be easily scaled down and mass produced. Swatch was a pioneer in this regard, introducing its first artist collaboration with Kiki Picasso in 1985, just two years after the company launched its revolutionary plastic watch. The Picasso collaboration was the first of many, and since then there’s hardly a major art museum that hasn’t licensed selected works to Swatch. The works selected for this collaboration come from two different Guggenheim collections. Three of them are famously on display at the Guggenheim New York, while the fourth may be seen at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The odd-looking double-length seconds hand is an homage to this transatlantic duality. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Functionally, the four quar...
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