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.
Shows
The Fabric of Gods and Goddesses at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris /
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 /
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
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: 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)