Medallic art is the stepchild to numismatics. No one seems to know where to place it. Coin collectors don’t generally collect medallic art, but art collectors generally ignore it as part of coin collecting.
Adding to this is the controversy regarding when such work is a medal and when it becomes sculpture, since some of the work is free-standing.
New Ideas in Medallic Sculpture, an illustrated fixed-price catalog recently released by Medialia in New York, offers the latest medallic work by sculptor-engravers, some of whom may later design coins and standard medals for Mints. Some of the items in the catalog can easily be identified with as medals, while others look more like they belong in a fine arts gallery. Here lies the confusion.
There are very few dealers in medallic art. Those whom have studied the marketing for this merchandise have dubbed it as “bas-relief.” The word “medal” seems to be the kiss of death for medallic art. You can’t get coin collectors to look at it, but you can’t get art collectors to look at it either.
What’s more, bas-relief is evolving. It began in 1438 in Renaissance Italy, when painter and sculptor Antonio di Puccio Pisano (better remembered to history as Pisanello) first cast a magnificent medal of Byzantine Emperor John VIII. The medal is round, of high relief and strongly resembles a coin in design and shape.
Medals produced from this point forward were typically round with iconographic designs very similar to their coin counterparts. Many coin collectors collect medals, both Renaissance and modern, that strongly resemble coins. Some examples are the Indian Peace medals distributed in the American colonies, Proclamation medals issued by Spain and various U.S. Mint medals.
Medals were and often still are designed by the same die sinkers, engravers and sculptors who design our coins. Medals by Victor D. Brenner, Augustus Saint-Gauden and others are of particular interest to coin collectors because of their well known coin designs.
Contemporary medals with designs similar to those seen on other forms of modern art are the next step in the transition of the medal to bas-relief. These contemporary design medals appeared by the time of the establishment of the Circle of Friends of the Medallion in 1909 (disbanded in 1915) and the 1910 American Numismatic Society exhibit “International Exhibition of Contemporary Medals.”
In 1947 La Federation Internationale de la Medaille (FIDEM) held its first international exhibition. The modern art medal was now evolving from the standard numismatic medal. The medal in fine art form continued to evolve into an art form of its own similar in iconography to modern art forms, but retaining its stigma as strictly a numismatic item.
The true modern art medal or bas-relief was unveiled in 1971 at the FIDEM congress in Helsinki, Finland. A major launch point for this bas-relief art form in the United States was the 1987 ANS conference “Medal in America.”
Now, according to ANS Curator of Medals Alan M. Stahl, “The Japanese medal has grown out of metalworking traditions far removed from the commemorative and numismatic origins of its European counterparts.”
The Japanese art medal is publicized by Medialia in New York in addition to medals designed by American and European artists.
The current Medialia catalog features current Japanese bas-relief artists while acknowledging the medal in Japan has the netsuke and tsuba against which to compete, in much the same way as the European and American bas-relief work must compete with true sculpture. Medalia and other dealers in bas-relief also sells medals or bas-relief by known coin designers from around the world. Almost every coin designer has produced a medal at one time or another.
The people whose work appears in the “New Ideas in Medallic Sculpture” catalog are artists from Osaka University of Arts and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The catalog does not indicate any of them are coin designers. Don’t let this fool you. Some of them could be coin designers in the future. They are following in the footsteps of such numismatic household names as Brenner and Saint-Gaudens.
Today’s bas-relief designer might be the designer of tomorrow’s coin.
Richard Giedroyc is a numismatic writer, researcher, auction cataloger and coin dealer. He has been in the hobby and business most of his life, now having more than three decades experience in this fascinating hobby field. During this time Giedroyc has been the owner of Paris Bergman Galleries, owner of Classical Coin Newsletter, international editor of Coin World and owner of Giedroyc-Anderson Interesting World Coins. He is currently a numismatic consultant. He has written more than 2,000 byline numismatic stories and contributed to several coin catalogs.
Richard Giedroyc is a numismatic writer, researcher, auction cataloger and coin dealer. He has been in the hobby and business most of his life, now having more than three decades’ experience in this fascinating hobby field. During this time Giedroyc has been the owner of Paris Bergman Galleries, owner of Classical Coin Newsletter, international editor of Coin World and owner of Giedroyc-Anderson Interesting World Coins. He is currently a numismatic consultant. He has written more than 2,000 byline numismatic stories and contributed to several coin catalogs.
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