Another highlight of the recent show of my work at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris is this interview with Pierre de Montesquiou of Our Choices Art. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed giving it. This is a rare discussion of the familiar, the unfamiliar, and the familial in ways I have never quite gone in before.
Pattern and Decoration
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985 /
Robert Kushner, “Fairies,” 1980, acrylic on cotton (Chris Kendall)
THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES
ON VIEW: OCTOBER 27, 2019 - MAY 11, 2020
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 is the first full-scale scholarly survey of this groundbreaking American art movement, encompassing works in painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, installation art, and performance documentation. Covering the years 1972 to 1985 and featuring approximately fifty artists from across the United States, the exhibition examines the Pattern and Decoration movement’s defiant embrace of forms traditionally coded as feminine, domestic, ornamental, or craft-based and thought to be categorically inferior to fine art. Pattern and Decoration artists gleaned motifs, color schemes, and materials from the decorative arts, freely appropriating floral, arabesque, and patchwork patterns and arranging them in intricate, almost dizzying, and sometimes purposefully gaudy designs. Their work across mediums pointedly evokes a pluralistic array of sources from Islamic architectural ornamentation to American quilts, wallpaper, Persian carpets, and domestic embroidery.
Pattern and Decoration artists practiced a postmodernist art of appropriation borne of love for its sources rather than the cynical detachment that became de rigueur in the international art world of the 1980s. This exhibition traces the movement’s broad reach in postwar American art by including artists widely regarded as comprising the core of the movement, such as Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, and Miriam Schapiro; artists whose contributions to Pattern and Decoration have been underrecognized, such as Merion Estes, Dee Shapiro, Kendall Shaw, and Takako Yamaguchi; as well as artists who are not normally considered in the context of Pattern and Decoration, such as Emma Amos, Billy Al Bengston, Al Loving, and Betty Woodman. Though little studied today, the Pattern and Decoration movement was institutionally recognized, critically received, and commercially successful from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The overwhelming preponderance of craft-based practices and unabashedly decorative sensibilities in art of the present-day point to an influential P&D legacy that is ripe for consideration.
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 is organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Rebecca Lowery, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
To learn more about this exhibition, please click here.
Read the Reviews:
“More is more. Why the ‘Pattern and Decoration’ show at MOCA is pure pleasure”, Christopher Knight, LA Times, November 4, 2019
Robert Kushner: By My Window opens October 10 at DC Moore Gallery /
OCTOBER 10 - November 9, 2019
Opening Reception with the artist: Thursday, October 10th, 6 - 8pm
DC MOORE GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street, NY, NY 10011
Hydrangeas (Diptych), 2019, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 72 x 144 inches
ROBERT KUSHNER: BY MY WINDOW
- from the press release -
Robert Kushner’s ongoing fascination with decorative and modernist traditions, the use of fabric as a form of cultural expression, and the interfacing of ‘high’ and ‘low’ traditions is evident in this sumptuous exhibition of new paintings. Robert Kushner: By My Window October 10th – November 9th finds the artist in a complicated dialogue with the traditions of pure painting as well as a conversation with the artisans who created traditional textiles. This body of work also references his own early fabric installations and performance work from the 70s and early 80s. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition, with an interview by Manuela Ammer - curator mumok, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftlung Ludwig Wien — with Robert Kushner.
The Queen in her Boudoir, 2019, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 72 x 72 inches
At this moment in time, the issues brought up by the 1970’s Pattern and Decoration Movement, of which Kushner was a principal proponent, are newly relevant and essential. Global awareness, feminist inquiry, and traditions of the decorative have led to a re-examination of the ideals and concepts of the original P & D artists.
Kushner’s work will be featured in the upcoming Art Basel Miami Beach 2019 art fair along with those of artists Valerie Jaudon and Joyce Kozloff in a themed presentation Intrepid Guile: Pattern and Decoration Continuum. This presentation examines these artists’ early expressions and the ways they each have decided to integrate pattern and decorative content into their ongoing work.
Most recently, Kushner’s work has been included in several national and international museum exhibitions focusing on the Pattern and Decoration movement: Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise at Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung, Vienna, Austria; Pattern, Crime & Decoration at MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland, and Le Consortium, Dijon France; Les Chemins du Sud (The South Ways) at Musée Regional d’Art Contemporain, Serignan, France; Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; and With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Anemone Bouquet, 2019, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 72 x 72 inches
The artist states about his primary subject, "Flowers are always monumental, never trivial. They always bear witness to memories--flowers in our past, flowers casually encountered, sources of beauty, of nostalgia. Whether these recent compositions are anchored by the elaborate repeating patterns and textures of Indian textiles, or relate to floating fields of transparent colors, the flowers assert their importance and dictate the compositions. I want these paintings to be unapologetically decorative, celebrating a mixture of expansiveness, openness, and complexity. Color, line, drawing are the major elements in my painterly repertoire. My new works in this exhibition demonstrate a sense of grandeur, simplicity of composition and exploration of unexpected color harmonies.”
Robert Kushner’s works are included in many prominent public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Tate Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; The Con-temporary Museum, Honolulu, HI; Denver Art Museum, CO; Galleria Degli Uffizi, Florence; J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, CA; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA.
Robert Kushner's Sail Away (1983) at Dijon's Consortium in ‘National Review’ /
Thank you, Brian Allen, for visiting 'Pattern, Crime and Decoration' in Dijon, France and writing about it for the National Review. A pleasure to read these lines in amongst all of the other great ones!
"Robert Kushner’s Sail Away, from 1983, is one of the anchors....It’s a riot of pattern anchored by a pair of nudes in outline. It’s abstract, grand, very attractive, flat as a pancake, or wallpaper, and delicious."
Read the full article about this collection of Pattern and Decoration works at Le Consortium Museum, on view through October 2019.
Sail Away, 1983. Robert Kushner. (Courtesy the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY. "Pattern, Crime & Decoration" exhibition, Consortium Museum (Dijon – France), 2019)
Less is a Bore: Robert Kushner at ICA Boston /
Robert Kushner, The Wedding Dress, 1978
Robert Kushner’s “The Wedding Dress" (1976) and "Cincinnati C" (1978) are on view now at Institute of Contemporary Art Boston’s latest exhibition: "Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design" through September 22, 2019.
“Borrowing its attitude from architect Robert Venturi’s witty retort to Mies van der Rohe’s modernist edict 'less is more,' 'Less Is a Bore' shows how artists, including those affiliated with the Pattern & Decoration movement of the 1970s, have sought to rattle the dominance of modernism and minimalism. Encouraged by the pluralism permeating many cultural spheres at the time, these artists accommodated new ideas, modes, and materials, challenging entrenched categories that marginalized non-Western art, fashion, interior design, and applied art.” — ICA/Boston
Robert Kushner, Cincinnati C, 1978
Robert Kushner, "Les Chemins du Sud" at MRAC Occitanie, Sérignan, France /
"Les chemins du Sud" - (Journey to the South)
June 23 - November 3, 2019
Musée Regional D'Art Contemporain, Serignan, France
Curated by Emmanuelle Luciani & Charlotte Cosson with Southway Studio
(Journey to the South) focuses on the heritage of Matisse, Bonnard, Dufy and other historic artists who "traveled South" and their connection to contemporary and young artists that could be seen as the heirs. The project will regroup more than 50 artists and will travel through the 20th century to today, connecting these times but also Europe to the USA.
Featured are artists from the Pattern and Decoration movement (Betty Woodman, Robert Kushner, Joyce Kozloff ) who, from the 1970s, embraced so-called minor arts.
Below: Robert Kushner guides the installation of “Aida,” 1979, at MRAC Serignan
Pattern, Crime and Decoration at Le Consortium, Dijon /
“Pattern, Crime and Decoration” travels from MAMCO Geneva to Le Consortium in Dijon, France.
16 May 2019 – 20 October 2019
Opening: Thursday, May 16, 6:00pm
Le Consortium Museum
Pattern, Crime & Decoration, curated by Franck Gautherot and Seungduk Kim, takes a look back at a 1970s-1980s art movement that met with international success in the 1980s. Most of the artists involved were reacting to Postwar dominant schools of thought, most notably to Minimalism and Conceptualism while also criticizing the Western, patriarchal domination that generally permeates Modernism. This group gathered around “pattern” and “decoration” reconnected with forms regarded as marginal and claimed the concept of decoration was a truly repressed form of modernity. A mainly American movement, Pattern & Decoration was supported by Holly Solomon Gallery in New York and Bruno Bischofberger in Switzerland. It gathered artists such as Valerie Jaudon, Tina Girouard, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, Tony Robbin, Miriam Schapiro, Ned Smyth, Mario Yrisarry, Robert Zakanitch, Cynthia Carlson, Brad Davis, Richard Kalina, Jane Kaufman, Rodney Ripps, Betty Woodman, George Woodman and Joe Zucker.
Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise /
Now on view in Vienna: Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise
Saturday, February 23, 2019 to Sunday, September 08, 2019
‘Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise’ at Mumok, Vienna.
Pictured from left to right: Karola Kraus, Manuela Ammer, Curator, Ned Smyth, Robert Kushner, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Zakanitch
Image credit: Niko Havranek
Robert Kushner, Pink Leaves, 1979
Ornament as Promise was the premise of the Pattern and Decoration movement in the United States (1975–1985). In this exhibition, mumok, vienna presents the rich collection of works from this movement of Peter and Irene Ludwig, in the largest presentation of Pattern and Decoration in German-speaking Europe since the 1980s.
With oriental-style mosaics, monumental textile collages, paintings, installations, and performances, in the 1970s committed feminist artists like Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, Valerie Jaudon, and Robert Kushner aimed to bring color, formal diversity, and emotion back into art. Decoration played a key role, with its connotations of the techniques of artisanship.
Various ornamental traditions, from the Islamic world to North American Indians to Art Deco, were incorporated in their works, opening up a view beyond geographical and historical boundaries. A proximity to folk art was sought as a deliberate counter to the “purism” of the art of the 1960s.
With works by Brad Davis, Frank Faulkner, Tina Girouard, Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Kim MacConnel, Miriam Schapiro, Kendall Shaw, Ned Smyth, Robert Zakanitch, and Joe Zucker
Curated by Manuela Ammer
To order a copy of the catalogue, visit here.
For more background, please consider reading: “Funky, Funny and Fussy: Reassessing the Pattern and Decoration Movement” by Jonathan Griffin
The project was initiated by the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Aachen and realized in cooperation with the mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. Following the venues in Aachen and Vienna, the exhibition will be on view at the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest.
Some photos from the artists’ talk on February 23rd, 2019. Images: Niko Havranek
