A Vestimentary Collaboration /  by Robert Kushner

Anemone Bouquet (2019), oil, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 183 x 183 cm


One of the unique things about the world we live in is being able to witness (at great speed) how far your work can reach and inspire. Not too long ago, a young woman named Ingrid Wu from Guangzhou, China approached me to see if I’d allow her to create dresses with my artwork. After some thought, I agreed and I’m so pleased with the results, as is she. We are going to go for some more! The neo-Chinese cheong sam is made for the brand ‘Wet-Tail’. They can be found on instagram, here. I encourage everyone to take a moment to appreciate all of her beautiful designs that incorporate nature and florals.

This Lunar New Year, Wet Tail drew inspiration from “Anemone Bouquet”, bringing the vitality of plants, the festive spirit of the Chinese New Year, and the energy of womanhood into their upcoming collection.

In “Anemone Bouquet”, the blooms of flowers are bright and vivid, opening outward together, carrying a sense of early spring arriving ahead of time. Red, purple, green and other colors appear side by side, creating a lively, celebratory atmosphere—just like the unmistakable joy of the New Year.

Wet Tail extends the flourishing energy of “Anemone Bouquet” into clothing: the unfolding petals become the rhythm of body, the interwoven colors become a source of feminine strength, allowing the life force within the painting to continue in a new, wearable form.

Our first communication resulted in this beautiful top which I proudly wore in April to the opening of “Dahlia Fields of Stadfastness” at Luis De Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles.

I look forward to sharing a new collaboration very soon!


Robert Kushner: Antella Windows and Curtains, DC MOORE GALLERY /  by Robert Kushner

Antella Curtain and Window: Lemon and Poppies II, 2023
Oil, acrylic, conté crayon, and pencil on canvas
36 x 48 inches

Robert Kushner: Antella Windows and Curtains

March 21 – April 27, 2024


DC MOORE GALLERY
OPENING RECEPTION
MARCH 21, 6-8pm

DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present Robert Kushner: Antella Windows and Curtains, an exhibition of new still life paintings. In April and May of 2023, Robert Kushner visited the Woodman Residency Foundation, the former home and studios of Betty and George Woodman outside of Antella, Italy. Working in George Woodman’s former painting and photography studio, surrounded by olive groves and blue hills, Kushner began the series of paintings on view, completing the works when they were shipped back to his studio in New York. Incorporating still life subjects from the surrounding gardens, fields, and kitchen cabinets, Antella Windows and Curtains explores the relationship between interior and exterior.

VIEW WORK HERE

A long-time friend of Betty and George Woodman, Kushner had visited them at their Tuscan retreat over the years. The home is filled with ceramics formed and glazed by Betty, including everyday objects such as cups, bowls, and vases. Outside, there were blooming flowers and trees in the gardens planted by the two artists. Striped fabric curtains hung in the windows. Gathering these elements together, Kushner created complex harmonies of color and form, later adding Japanese textiles from his New York studio. The works are diaristic, integrating the objects Kushner used daily, the flowers in bloom, and the changing sky and light. 

The bright, sun-drenched colors and floral forms are contrasted with the use of white space. The open space of the window and the lines of the curtain are abstracted into blocks of solid color, dividing the background into quadrants. Within these grids, Kushner introduces decorative patterns from textiles, complicating the relationship between flatness and depth. Using simplified, graphic lines and curves, Kushner continues his longstanding exploration of relations between organic and geometric space.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring Robert Kushner’s writings about his time spent in Antella.

Since the 1970s, Robert Kushner has continually addressed controversial and often subversive issues involving the interaction of decoration and art. Kushner’s work has been exhibited extensively internationally, with recent museum exhibitions including Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (travelled to Seattle Art Museum, WA and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO); Risarcimento. Per non dimenticare, Uffizi Galleries, Florence; Somewhere Downtown: Art in 1980s New York, UCCA Beijing, China; Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany (traveled to mumok Vienna and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest); Pattern, Decoration & Crime, Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA and the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and Greater New York at MoMA P.S.1.

For press inquiries, please contact Caroline Magavern at cmagavern@dcmooregallery.com. 

Our Choices Art Interviews Robert Kushner /  by Robert Kushner

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.

"Summer Scattered," First Public Showing at Mobilier National, Paris /  by Robert Kushner

Every year Manufacture des Gobelins commissions several artists to create a design for a tapestry to be woven in this venerable studio. Some of their commissions have been Picasso, Matisse, etc, so it is a rather intimidating proposition. I first started talking with the representative of Gobelins in 2011 at the introduction of Shirley Jaffe. I visited their workshops and learned more about their techniques, It felt like a trip to the early Renaissance. 

The composition of “Summer Scattered” is based on chance operation as developed by the composer/artist John Cage. John and I met at an artists' conference in 1980. He lived two blocks from me and we became good friends. Of course I had known about his thoughts on indeterminacy and composition from college years. But when we became friends, his ideas started to enter my work more and more.

In the tapestry design, each flower appears exactly three times. The exact position and orientation of the flower is arrived at through chance operation. To locate each element, I placed the paper on the floor, stood up and dropped three squares of paper onto the drawing surface. Each small square of paper fluttered to the floor following its own route through the air and landed where it wished. Each square had a mark on it indicating the directionality of the flower. 

I divided the paper into four equal stripes, adding gold leaf to one and an iridescent green to another stripe.  The technicians at Gobelins translated these brilliantly into their ancient techniques utilizing many different shades of metallic threads.

I visited Gobelins several times during the long weaving. This 3 meter by 4 meter tapestry wouldn't be possible without Marguerite Aniotz-Trunel and Diane Barret who have been sitting side by side for six years. Speaking as someone who has woven, I particularly want to thank these two amazing craftspersons who brought skill, patience, and endurance to this huge project. In October 2022, the tapestry was finally completed. 

In May 2023, I traveled to Paris and was delighted to see “Summer Scattered” on display at the Gala Dinner marking the start of Paris Gallery Weekend, held by Mobilier National. My tapestry, publicly shown and the first time I’ve seen it unrolled, myself! I was awed and stunned at how beautiful it looks. The colors are radiant.

The Fabric of Gods and Goddesses at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris /  by Robert Kushner

The Fabric of Gods and Goddesses
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France
23 May - 22 July, 2022

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
This exhibition brings together compositions from the eighties in which the human figure appears as a decorative motif. This exhibition demonstrates the artist's powerful syncretism to a singular oeuvre which acknowledged its overtly decorative function. When minimalism and conceptual art dominated the American art scene, Robert Kushner took a completely different direction: he chose to situate himself in a daring interval, mixing fine arts and decorative arts, which were then considered a minor art form. This return to motif and ornamentation allowed him to raise questions about the very concept of beauty in contemporary art, at a time when the United States bathed in a puritanical atmosphere where making beautiful things was suspect.

Using a vivid color palette, the artist nourished his works with a blend of Eastern and Western cultures, combined with transdisciplinary artistic practices - let us recall that Robert Kushner's beginnings were marked by performance and theater costume design. These different facets allowed him to compose work rich in hybridities, resolutely contemporary: with its sophisticated aesthetics and the philosophical messages it conveys, his work resonates in the present world.

photography © Aurélin Mole for Galerie Obadia

Robert Kushner: Then & Now at DC Moore Gallery, 2023 /  by Robert Kushner

In addition to walls adorned in surprising pairings of artwork decades apart, the opening of Robert Kushner: Then & Now (February 16 - March 25, 2023 at DC Moore Gallery) offered an art “re-happening”. Family and friends participated in a conceptual reprise of “New York Hatline.” The 2023 version has been named "New York Hat Line: The Beat Goes On."
I’ve included some images of the evening here, plus a truly must-see seventies film clip where Ed Friedman and I not only model our mesmerizing, fantastical hat collection, we describe each one in lush, scintillating detail. In keeping with the theme of Then & Now, what an honor to have my ‘collaborateur-extraordinaire’ participate in the 2023 reprisal. Every time the hats come out, everyone has fun.
Thank you to everyone in attendance!


For more information, you may visit DC Moore Gallery and my instagram page.

 

ROBERT KUSHNER AND ED FRIEDMAN
September 15, 1977
Public Access Poetry

The Viscount and Me /  by Robert Kushner

Robert Kushner, Deco Vase, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon on board, 24"x18"

Viscount Kuroda Seiki and I grew up together in the Southernmost tip of Kyushu. We were two Japanese boys, the same age, and we were friends despite the difference in our social status. My family had always served his family. When we moved to Tokyo at a young age, I went with him. And when he went to Paris in 1886 to study law, which very quickly turned into a serious study of art,  I went with him as his valet.

Those seven years in France were the most exciting years of my life. Viscount was immersed in classes at the Academie Colarossi where he studied with the academic painter, Raphael Collin. So did most of the Japanese artists in Paris. There were so many young, gifted artists studying. They came from all corners of the world. The Parisian air itself was electric.

The Viscount was a kind man. At home, he allowed me to study Japanese language with him and his tutors, so that I could read and write. And when he began to learn French at age 17, so did I. This was very useful when I served him in Paris. New language, new clothes, new food, new customs. I went with him and his friends to visit the established artists and even to sit in on drawing sessions. I too drew and sometimes painted, but I was very careful to keep my own experiments secret.

We returned to Tokyo in 1893 and traveled through our rapidly changing native country, visiting various sites, including Kyoto, a treasure house of visual inspiration.

Within a short time Viscount Kuroda established a studio and began his prestigious career of teaching Yo-ga, Western Style painting. He founded his own academy in Tokyo, he served in the House of Lords. His life had grown. I was no longer needed in Tokyo.

Robert Kushner, Winter Light, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon, ink, 18"x 24"

I returned to my family in Kagoshima. As acknowledgement of my service to Kuroda, I was given a small stipend. More importantly I was given a modest storage building where I could live and paint. My “atelier” was a shed on the grounds of a local temple on top of a hill outside of our town. Between the trees you could see the bay, the trees filled with shards of brilliant sunlight. There was a long flight of stone steps, then my home and work room beside a lotus pond. The changes of my lotus pond, its reflections of the sky have fascinated and fulfilled me for decades. You see, I had looked carefully at one of the greatest French masters, Mr Claude Monet. I revived an old persimmon tree and it gave me its fruit. The orange orbs reminded me of Sakai Hoitsu. There was also a very old plum tree that offered both spring flowers, summer fruit and visions of Ogata Korin painting its pure white blossoms. Around the trees, I planted a small garden filled with food and beauty which supplied me sustenance and eternal wonder watching the minute changes in the year’s cycles. My few laying hens reminded me of another master by constantly clucking: “Jakuchu, Jakuchu…..”

Viscount Kuroda's painting style was a very good adaptation of Raphael Collin’s academic nudes in landscapes. Working so conservatively no longer appealed to me. Especially after having seen some of the most experimental paintings in Paris. I wanted to embrace a new art filled with bold color, symbolism, and meaning. Paintings that could only be made at this precise moment in time. I knew this emerging, vibrant voice was the path for me.

My stipend and my garden allowed me to live and eat. I also worked as a weaver in a kimono workshop. The radiant skeins of silk threads slipping through my fingers awakened color harmonies for my paintings. I memorized the patterns and designs I wove every day and they began to appear in my paintings.

Every bit of money that I could save, I used to buy my precious materials. Rare and expensive as fine gems: oil paints and canvas. Since I could read French, and missed the vibrant dialog that had existed in my previous life in Paris, I subscribed to l’Illustration Journal Universel. Each issue took half a year to reach my hut in Kyushu, but when they came, I was ravenous to devour the newest developments in European art. L’Illustration reproduced artwork with color photography which was a miracle. It was my lifeline to the world I had known, the world of Paris, of wild experimentation of artistic courage and constant change.

I followed the work of many of the great painters, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and the many talented and strong women, particularly from Russia and America. My favorite artist was Henri Matisse. To me, he was a true Wild Beast. He had earned the name “Fauve”. One foot in the past but staring resolutely into the future. I loved to imagine the true vividness of his colors, the boldness of his line, his rectitude of form and space. The most satisfying to me were his still lifes. Ordinary objects filled with inner life and color. My mind could stretch and my hand could innovate. An Oribe dish, an urushi plate, the silk from an antique kimono or obi, a flower, some fruit from my own garden became a series of still life arrangements. The entire world came to me in my studio. And my still lives expanded out the door to link me to the whole world.

Robert Kushner, Oribe Raspberries, 2022, oil, acrylic, conte crayon on board, 24" x 18"

Robert Kushner, Night Window Blackberries, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon on board, 24"x18"

Of course I painted in secret. People might think my experiments to be madness. But for me, the paintings gave me life, they tied me to those years of excitement and discovery in Paris, so many decades ago.

My work has continued to grow and change, but now I am too old to care whether anyone would think me insane. So now I allow a few trusted friends to see what has obsessed me for all of these years.  That entire first generation of courageous and brave Japanese painters, drinking from the wellspring of the avant garde has all gone. Only I am left. But so long as I can paint, I will do so. As I continue to work, my reds become redder as I place them near veridian, my ultramarine blues are deeper next to olive green, my grays are softer, my blacks luminous in the way that only the darkest shadows can hold and savor the light entrusted to them.

You, yes you, you who have journeyed to the far southern tip of Kyushu to meet me. Won’t you enter my studio  and join me in a cup of green tea? Or should it be red wine?

Robert Kushner, Wine or Sake?, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon, ink on board, 18" x 24"

"Fall" and "Winter" Installation at UC San Diego /  by Robert Kushner

In 1990, I was commissioned to paint "Four Seasons" for Tower Place, a retail mall in Cincinnati, OH. As happens from time to time, Tower Place changed its function, the murals were no longer needed and returned to me.

Each of the four paintings on canvas is 9 x 27 feet, designed to fill the enormous atrium space they were commissioned for. They were painted in oil and acrylic on canvas, with gold, silver, and copper leaf, and glitter. Depicting flowers and plants emblematic of the four seasons, they represent: Tulips, Geraniums, Chrysanthemums and Evergreens.

“Spring” was packed off to MUMOK Vienna this year, and, just recently, “Fall” and “Winter” have arrived at my alma mater, the University of California, San Diego, where they have been installed in the Great Hall.

Unboxing them is to appreciate the details.

These paintings were a very clear transition in my studio development. After many years of painting with acrylic paint on unstretched cotton fabric, I began to switch over to oil on canvas in 1988. After several years of experimentation with smaller compositions, there were a few larger paintings, and then “Four Seasons” occurred. They represent a unique turn in my work toward an acceptance of the conventions of painting on canvas, as well as a rich exploration into the expressive possibilities of oil paint. Nearly all of my subsequent work is the result of the discoveries that occurred working on these pieces.

Watching the installation of "Fall" and "Winter" is to appreciate the choreography of precision that an artwork measuring 9’ x 27’ requires. These are the largest works on canvas I have done and I am quite sure I will not work at this scale again. When seen directly, there is a very strong sensation created by the sheer panoramic scale of the painting in relation to the viewer. I executed these paintings in a series of steps: small proposal sketches on paper, a scale model 24” x 72” for each of the four compositions, from which I scaled up to the full size. Once blown up, I painted the flowers free hand with a good deal of change and improvisation. It was important to me that I executed all the paintings personally.

Robert Kushner, “Fall,” 1991, 9’ x 27’, oil, acrylic, copper leaf, 22 karat gold leaf. Installed at UC San Diego’s Great Hall, 2021.

Robert Kushner, “Fall,” 1991, 9’ x 27’, oil, acrylic, copper leaf, 22 karat gold leaf. Installed at UC San Diego’s Great Hall, 2021.

When thinking about iconic flowers for Fall, the chrysanthemum leaps to mind. Mum plants, winter hardy and almost indestructible, wait, and wait, and wait. Finally when their flashier cousins are petered out, the mums come into their own in October and November. What a show they provide. I have always loved spider mums with their long sinuous petals. One huge spider mum became the central image for Fall and the opportunity to let my brush cut loose on a grand scale.

Robert Kushner, “Winter,” 1991, 9’ x 27’, oil, acrylic, copper leaf, 22 karat gold leaf. Installed at UC San Diego’s Great Hall, 2021.

Robert Kushner, “Winter,” 1991, 9’ x 27’, oil, acrylic, copper leaf, 22 karat gold leaf. Installed at UC San Diego’s Great Hall, 2021.

Winter is a very tough time for a flower painter. But there is something comforting about evergreens. They are polite. They don't show off. They survive. A branch of pine and another of spruce became the representatives of Winter, holding a quiet, serene space all their own.

The donation was made in recognition of Pauline Oliveros, a former Professor at UC San Diego. Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was a noted composer, performer, writer, educator and a powerful mentor to me. She was Professor of Music at UCSD from 1967-1981, and served as a force of nature for many students and colleagues. I met her my very first week of college and we remained friends and sometimes collaborators until her death. The most indelible course I took from her was entitled: Independent Studies in Cultural Traditions. In reality it was a weekly deep dive into Indian Cooking, Tarot card reading, a little Kabbalah and meditation. In many ways Pauline taught me and so many others how to be creative, honest, responsible human beings in this world of change.

A special thanks to Mathieu Gregoire and Russell King for allowing me to use their photos of the UCSD installation.