Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in Contemporary Art, 1975-1985
Hudson River Museum
511 Warburton Avenue
Yonkers, NY
914-963-4550
October 27, 2007 – January 20, 2008
By SANDRA
SIDER
Valerie Jaudon Toomsuba 1973
acrylic on canvas, 70 x 72 inches
all images courtesy the Hudson River Museum
COVER December 2007:
Joyce Kozloff Hidden Chambers1975-76
acrylic on canvas, 78 x 120 inches
This exhibition is the first major East Coast retrospective of the Pattern and Decoration movement (P&D) in more than two decades. The last such show was also mounted at the Hudson River Museum, long recognized for championing alternative art. This museum is perfectly designed for displaying the monumental works of P&D, and in general the space is used advantageously. The pieces of each artist are grouped together, except that paintings by Cynthia Carlson and Valerie Jaudon are interspersed among other works. Carlson’s Pfui Teuffle (German for “Ugh! Disgusting!” 1975), displayed at the entrance, reveals the influence of gestural painting on her deeply textured surface. No photograph of this work published in the small scale of the Internet could possibly transmit the marvelous swirls of her convoluted paint.
Entering the main exhibition space, viewers see two large paintings by Robert Zakanitch, Green Goose Waltz (1980) and Day Trellis (1979), across a vista of nearly fifty feet. At this distance the tonal shifts in the triptych formats have sufficient room to be appreciated fully. The underlying grid of his compositions also becomes apparent, a vague reminder of the modernism that Zakanitch so successfully repudiated.
Valerie Jaudon is another painter whose surfaces fall flat in photographic reproduction, in which the rich metallic sheen of Jackson (1976) becomes a dull red, and the thick slabs of pigment in Toomsuba (1973, the earliest piece in the show) are barely noticeable. Her paintings epitomize the ethnic and non-Western influences on P&D. The structure of Toomsuba resembles woven basketry, and the patterning in her later monochromatic paintings resonates with the intricacy of Islamic screens or tiles.
Dazzling paintings and ceramics by Joyce Kozloff also refer to non-Western sources, as well as to the geometric patterns of quilts. This section of the display includes presentation drawings for Kozloff’s large-scale installation at the Wilmington, Delaware, train station (1980), and a model of the proposed space (installed 1984). The one quilt in the show, by Jane Kaufman, emphasizes not pattern, but rather luscious decoration in the form of hand-embroidered flowers in Embroidered, Beaded Crazy Quilt (1983-85). Her other work, 4-Panel Screen (1984), consists of four convex panels, each 79 x 31 inches, shimmering with iridescent coquille feathers and glass beads. One might call this piece “P&D going for baroque.” It is one of the most amazing objects of contemporary art that I have ever seen, constantly changing in the light.
Probably the most memorable piece in the exhibition is Kim MacConnel’s Flourishing Side Line Occupations (1978), found fabric glued together in a monumental helter-skelter patchwork. The work premiered in 1978 as one of four works by this artist in the exhibition Third World Series in a gallery associated with the Berkeley Museum of Art, with MacConnel’s titles drawn from Chinese “peasant” paintings. Several of his other fabric works in the current exhibition suggest the influence of Warhol, and MacConnel can now be understood as one of the trailblazers for artists such as Polly Apfelbaum and David Salle who favor layering and appropriation, and for contemporary quilt artists focusing more on surface than on structure.
The lynchpins of the exhibition are four works by Miriam Schapiro, the octogenarian grande dame of P&D who is still going strong. Heartland (1985), a large-scale heart constructed of paint and floral fabric, serves as a metaphor for the show. The P&D artists were unafraid of sentimental impulses, appealing to the emotions. A three-year-old in the museum with his family yelled, “Want to smell flowers!” as he raced to Heartland and shoved his nose against a femmaged flower before the guard could stop him. P&D beckons to the viewer, activating our instincts to touch beautiful, interesting things. Like several other artists in the show, Schapiro was influenced by the decorative intensity of Islamic art, notably in a 1972 exhibition of sixteenth-century Persian manuscript painting.
An impressive surprise is the mosaic work of Ned Smyth, especially the two Black & White Columns (1985), standing nine feet high, flanking a portal. Their totemic character immediately becomes apparent, and with Robert Kushner’s gorgeously frenzied Slavic Dancers (1978) floating high beside the columns, viewers may imagine that they are in a ritual space, where pagan rites and sacred ceremonies might take place—with costumes of Kushner’s fabrics. Another revelation was the use of glued fabric as borders by Brad Davis, with the textiles creating patterns and shapes that engage in a decorative dialogue with his spirited narrative imagery.
Robert KushnerVisions Beyond the Pearly Curtain 1975
acrylic on fabric, 120 x 202 inches
More than one-third of the 37 works on display are dated between 1978 and 1980, and nine are only slightly later, which means that the apogee of the Pattern and Decoration movement is comprehensively covered. A few rather important artists, however, are missing in the show, which is sparse in three-dimensional objects. One would have expected to see the work of George Sugarman, either the small-scale metal or wooden sculptures, or his collages. As early as 1966, Amy Goldin, one of the art critics who championed P&D, had recognized Sugarman’s decorative tendencies. He also served as a mentor to several of the P&D artists. Works by ceramic artist Betty Woodman and her husband, the painter George Woodman, would have rounded out the exhibition, especially since both of them were active in the early days of P&D. My only criticism of the installation design is that Kushner’s Visions Beyond the Pearly Curtain (202 inches wide) has little room to breathe in its constricted space. That piece would have been even more magnificent in the large room where the paintings by Tony Robbin are displayed.
This exhibition was fortunate to have had Dr. Anne Swartz as guest curator. A professor of art history at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Swartz is one of the few scholars whose research has focused on the P&D movement. She understands and celebrates the diversity of P&D, which ushered in the pluralism of today’s contemporary art. The excellent exhibition catalogue features Swartz’s helpful “Chronology of Pattern and Decoration,” along with essays by Arthur C. Danto, Temma Balducci, John Perreault, and the curator herself.
[This reviewer’s current book project, American Quilt Art: 1960-1980, discusses P&D as a pervasive influence on the development of quilts as contemporary art.]
