Please enjoy this Zoom conversation with Jenelle Porter recorder on May 13, 2021.
Robert Kushner: I ❤ Matisse runs through June 19, 2021
at DC Moore Gallery.
Robert Kushner
Robert Kushner, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, FIAC Paris /
Robert Kushner, Seven Seraphim, 2020, Oil, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas 182,9 x 182,9 cm (72 x 72 in.)
I am very pleased to be joining these artists and the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in the online viewing rooms at the FIAC this year!
MARTIN BARRÉ
VALÉRIE BELIN
CAROLE BENZAKEN
ROSSON CROW
FABRICE HYBER
ROBERT KUSHNER
BENOÎT MAIRE
LAURE PROUVOST
FIONA RAE
BRENNA YOUNGBLOOD
Download the preview here.
Access the Online Viewing Room here.
VIP PREVIEW: MARCH 2 & 3 | PUBLIC DAYS: MARCH 4 - 7, 2021
"August," 2020 /
Robert Kushner, August, 2020, 72 x 72 inches, oil, acrylic on canvas
Since the beginning of quarantine waaay back in March, I have worked hard in the studio as my mental and spiritual salvation. At first the paintings were a continuation of their pre covid predecessors, Then a large bouquet of flowers intervened. Subsequently the works bounced back and forth between compositions of one or two huge isolated flowers and a complex, diverse cluster, a community of varied flowers. it has been a fascinating pendulum. This most recent painting, August, is in some ways a summation of summer itself, distilling the ideas of the various bouquet paintings into this one canvas. Sunflower, cosmos, zinnias, odd wild things whose names I don’t really know. It has finally occurred to me that my community of friends which has been relegated to isolation, has reformed itself in these bouquets. These are my friends, not literally represented, but in communion, brushing shoulders, celebrating their upward ascent and the abundance of summer.
Robert Kushner's 'Orient Express' at ArtBasel Miami /
Robert Kushner, Orient Express, 1982, acrylic and mixed fabric on cotton, 100 x 130 inches
Now on view: ‘Pattern & Decoration Continuum: Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, and Robert Kushner’ at the DC Moore Gallery booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair is open to the public through Sunday, December 8.
Robert Kushner at Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery /
Please stop in to Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery in Osaka, Japan to see ‘Robert Kushner - New Paintings’ on view now through December 25th.
For more information, please click here.
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'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