Art in America: Pattern Recognition

foundations

Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Pattern Recognition In the 1970s and ’80s a bold group of American artists embraced vibrant color, ornament, and craft.

By Glenn Adamson

Miriam Schapiro: Again Sixteen Windows, 1973, spray paint, watercolor, and fabric on paper, 30½ by 22½ inches. © Estate of Miriam Schapiro/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Eric Firestone Gallery. © Estate of Miriam Schapiro/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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when she died of cancer in April 1978. It all adds up to an extremely convincing case for the relevance of the Pattern and Decoration movement, which Katz sees not as a divergence from more weighty avant-garde matters, but on the contrary, the key turning point in recent art. To grasp the force of this argument, it helps to expand on an observation about P&D by New York Times critic Holland Cotter: it was “the last genuine art move- ment of the twentieth century.”² In a weak sense, this is true just because of the great fragmentation that came right after—the rupture of postmodernism. The bellwether “Pictures” show at Artists Space in 1977, coin- ciding with P&D’s peak, augured a crisis of authorship, most clearly exemplified by appropriation-based practic- es. Though postmodernist art shared certain strategies with Pattern and Decoration work—fragmentary collage and an emphasis on the signifying surface—it tended to be more theoretical and introverted, often hostile to “grand narratives” of progress. From this point on, art movements could be only subcultural spasms, or worse, marketing ploys. In the conceptual chess game inaugu- rated by Duchamp, in which each successive avant-garde movement was understood as a dialectical response to its forerunners, postmodernism was checkmate. To many at the time, by contrast, P&D seemed ridic- ulous and irrelevant. Writing in Artforum in 1981, artist and critic Thomas Lawson characterized the pluralist blanket of the movement as nothing but a decorated funeral shroud for abstraction, the “last gasps of a long overworked idiom.”³ The movement’s detractors had been trained to believe that decoration was simply bad abstraction, the condition that a painting or sculpture fell into if it lacked, well, whatever made it good art. This was of course circular reasoning, and the Pattern and Decoration crew saw right through it. But unlike View of the exhibition “Less Pattern and Decoration while also opening up to a postmodernism, which would shatter the canon irrep- Is a Bore: Maximalist “It is easy to be ironic broader purview. The movement’s key protagonists, a arably, P&D sought the opposite: a radical extension Art & Design,” tight circle based in New York and California—Cynthia of relevance. “We were seeing films from all over the 2019, at the Institute Carlson, Brad Davis, Valerie Jaudon, Richard Kalina, globe and listening to world music,” Kozloff has said. of Contemporary about P&D. It can be Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Kim MacConnel, Tony Art, Boston. “The hermeticism and provincialism of the New York Robbin, Schapiro, and Robert Zakanitch—are being art world became painfully obvious.”4 hard to look it in the eye.” shown alongside other artists who shared their visual Childhood memories, she noted, were a source of impulses, but not necessarily their intellectual goals. inspiration for many of the artists: “Zakanitch’s grand- So writes Hamza Walker, director of LA's LAXART, In Europe, where P&D was collected early and in mother’s wallpaper, Schapiro’s yard sales, and trips up in the multi-author catalogue for "With Pleasure: depth, two exhibitions are currently on tour. A version and down the escalators at Bloomingdale’s.”5 The P&D Pattern and Decoration in American Art, 1972–1985," of “Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise,” artists also exalted polychrome pottery, Celtic illumina- an exhibition opening next month at the Museum of co-organized by Esther Boehle at the Ludwig Forum in tions, woven carpets, tiled walls, printed silks, Persian Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).¹ Curated by Aachen and Manuela Ammer at MUMOK in Vienna, will miniatures, quilted blankets—“everything,” as Robert Anna Katz with Rebecca Lowery, the survey is one of a open at Budapest’s Ludwig Museum next month under Kushner puts it, “that was left out of Janson’s History of number of major international exhibitions about the the title “Pattern and Decoration,” while “Pattern, Crime Art.”6 Some artists actually learned the skills associated Pattern and Decoration movement launched in the past and Decoration”—curated by Lionel Bovier, Franck with these “minor” art forms—MacConnel and Kushner year. Viewers from California to Europe are being treat- Gautherot, and Seungduk Kim—can now be seen at Le Top, George spent time repairing antique kilims—while others just ed to a wide range of works from this oft-neglected epi- Consortium in Dijon after debuting at Mamco, Geneva, Woodman: A Gentle quoted them, as painted motifs. Even modernist abstrac- CURRENTLY ON VIEW Tesselation, 1970, oil sode in 1970s art, one in which member artists rebelled in late 2018. Back in the United States, curator Jenelle on canvas, 48 inches tion, notionally the movement’s antithesis, was part of “Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise,” at MUMOK, against restrictive modernist abstraction by vigorously Porter’s “Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design” at the square. its hybrid vocabulary. Schapiro had previously been a embracing craft, color, and cultural content. ICA Boston is a spectacular swathe of over-the-topness. It Vienna, through Sept. 8; “Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art and hard-edge painter, as had Goldin before establishing her- Design,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, through Sept. Above, view of Joyce The deluge began last year with “Surface/Depth: The is the most thematically broad and visually intense show 22; “Pattern, Crime and Decoration,” at Le Consortium, Dijon, Kozloff’s installation self as a critic. Jaudon has retained a singularly rigorous Decorative After Miriam Schapiro,” curated by art his- of the lot, while MOCA’s “With Pleasure” is arguably France, through Oct. 20. “Pattern and Decoration” takes place at An Interior Decorated, formalism over the course of her long career, making torian Elissa Auther at the Museum of Arts and Design the most scholarly. The publication accompanying the the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Oct. 5, 2019–Jan. 5, 2020, 1979, at the Mint Muse- paintings that are equally in dialogue with Islamic callig- in New York. The show juxtaposed works by one of MOCA show also addresses the role of the curators and and “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art, um, Charlotte, N.C. raphy, Gothic architecture, and early Frank Stella. P&D’s founding figures with related examples by critics who supported the movement, including Jane 1972–1985,” appears at the Museum of Contemporary Art, What the P&D artists did reject was modernist younger artists. Meanwhile, there have been no fewer Kaufmann, John Perreault, Jeff Perrone, and particularly Los Angeles, Oct. 27, 2019–May 11, 2020. restraint. As if it had left them ravenous, they gorged than four major exhibitions in 2019, all foregrounding Amy Goldin, whose vibrant voice was lost tragically early themselves on inspirations of all kinds, all at once, Courtesy Charles Woodman. © Estate of George Woodman. Courtesy Charles Woodman. Meg Elkinton and Shane Godfrey.

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from cultures across the world and throughout history. This “promiscuity,” Katz argues, is what made P&D such a crucial breakthrough. It inaugurated a new phase of art history, a phase that we still and may for- ever inhabit, in which any qualitative hierarchy that manages to establish itself is considered ipso facto illegitimate. The movement’s members understood the gravity of this. To truly accept decoration as equal to fine art, Goldin saw, was “to deny the very possi- bility of revolution—art history is just one thing after another.”7 John Perreault, poet and critic, agreed: “art proceeds—it does not progress.”8 Artist Jeff Perrone more positively described a “new space where the low and the high no longer battle it out: we’re at peace and breathing again.”9 This is why we are seeing so many shows about P&D now. Its enthusiastic embrace of multiculturalism and multiplicity feels like a far more useful model for the present than the nihilistic end- to bear in mind that while the Pattern and Decoration game of postmodernism. Why mourn the death of the artists were exclusively white men and women, they author, if we can all be authors together? hardly saw themselves as powerful arbiters of the Top, Valerie Jaudon But this utopian impulse presents its own difficulties. painting in her studio art world. (“With Pleasure” includes figures like Sam on the Bowery, New At the time, Pattern and Decoration was often dismissed Gilliam, Al Loving, and Howardena Pindell, but there York, 1978. because its sources were thought to be trivial. Today, was little direct contact between these artists and the when discourse about cultural appropriation is much Above, Joyce Kozloff core P&D group.) For its time, though, the Pattern and in her SoHo studio, further developed, the problem looks to be the oppo- Decoration movement was unusual in advancing mar- New York, 1987. site: we respect other cultures too much to treat them ginalized voices and vocabularies. Kushner describes Right, Robert Kushner as quarries to mine. It is true that, as curator and critic it as “a coming out about what we were attracted to,” wearing Purple, 1975, Michael Duncan writes in the catalogue for “Pattern and suggesting an implicit queer aesthetic, but its most evi- acrylic on printed cotton Decoration: Ornament as Promise,” “the cross-cultural dent ideological allegiance was with feminism.13 with brocade and silk pillaging” undertaken by these artists was intended to Pattern and Decoration artists saw the history of tassels, 90 by 57 inches. “bend and expand the tropes of Western art.”10 However, women’s work—particularly domestic crafts—as a Below, Drop City, near as Katz points out, though the P&D group never intended forgotten canon that could be reclaimed as a source of Trinidad, Colorado, to be exploitative, “appreciation does not always hold up contemporary expression. Connections to the feminist ca. 1966. as a defense against appropriation.”11 Kozloff puts it suc- movement were numerous: Schapiro had been one cinctly: “We were honest, but naive.”12 of the leaders of the Womanhouse project at CalArts in In assessing this critical question, it is important 1972, some early and important texts by members of

the P&D group were published in the feminist journal rent exhibitions, which enthuses, “art has again decid- Left top, Valerie Heresies, and several of the participants were involved ed to BE HAPPY and make pretty.” (Caps very much Jaudon: Mineral Wells, 15 1980, oil on canvas, in consciousness-raising and other practices. For Kozloff in the original.) But there was more method than 120 by 108 inches. and Schapiro, especially, an interest in women’s art led madness in the movement. One revelation of “With to an exploration of Asian, African, and Latin American Pleasure” is its inclusion of the Criss-Cross collective, Left bottom, Kim cultures, where techniques like weaving and pottery based in Boulder, Colorado. This countercultural exper- MacConnel: Edible, are more often practiced by female artisans. This way iment, which emerged from the famed 1960s hippie 1979, acrylic and metallic paint on cotton, of bringing politics into art also resonated with artists commune Drop City, was devoted to pursuing pattern 101½ by 119 inches. outside the main group: the prominent feminist and as an anti-hierarchical force, a “democracy of parts,” in conceptual artist Elaine Reichek says, “when I heard the words of its member George Woodman (husband of Above, Miriam ‘pattern,’ I thought about knitting patterns, develop- the great ceramist Betty Woodman).16 Schapiro: Flying 14 Carpet, 1972, acrylic mental patterns, patterns of colonialism.” P&D was, The Criss-Cross painters, who also included Gloria and collage on canvas, then, a generative model, one that remains pertinent Klein and Clark Reichert, were fascinated by systems 60 by 50 inches. for recent art. Its preferred technique of “cut-and-paste” of symmetry and tessellation. Most of the core P&D has rightly come to be seen as an inadequate way of group did not share this interest in hard-core math- dealing with cultural difference. But it was ahead of its ematics, an exception being Tony Robbin, whose time in advancing an intersectional aesthetics, in which paintings were informed by his studies of four-di- identity is conceived as a matter of selective affinity. mensional geometry. The others did, however, bring "This countercultural experiment, which emerged from the It is important to emphasize that while P&D did an equally rigorous consideration to more culturally make room for visual pleasure, and plenty of it, it was embedded patterns. Kozloff made the astute obser- famed 1960s hippie commune Drop City, was devoted to pursuing not hedonistic. The movement has occasionally been vation that ornament was a “third category of art,” treated as a welcome relief from thinking too hard—as neither abstract nor mimetic, but just as susceptible pattern as an anti-hierarchical force, a “democracy of parts.” in a Hyperallergic article by Anne Swartz about the cur- to theorization as either.17 As early as 1966, in an © Estate of Miriam Schapiro/ARS, New York. Collection Thomas Solomon and Kimberly Mascola. © Valerie Jaudon/ Collection Thomas Solomon and Kimberly Mascola. © Valerie © Estate of Miriam Schapiro/ARS, New York. Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest. at ARS, New York. VAGA Jaudon and Kozloff: courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Kushner: Harry Shunk/ New Jaudon and Kozloff: courtesy DC Moore Gallery, Research Institute, Los Angeles. Drop City: courtesy Clark Richert. © J. Paul Getty Trust/Getty

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essay in Arts magazine, Goldin had reacted to debates over opticality—which pitted Clement Greenberg’s ideal of visual transcendence against the flickering, transitory effects of Op art—by doing something few other critics bothered to: looking closely at the mate- rial substance of the works. (She hilariously described Jules Olitski’s spray technique, for example, as pro- ducing an effect that was “airy, rather flatulent.”) This led her to conclude that “the formal problem of the incompatibility of visual mass and optical space”—that is, the attempt to narrow the distance between the image and what it was made from—had led to “the so-called emptiness and reductiveness of contemporary painting.” Goldin predicted this would not last: “Artists are not notably renunciatory—they don’t give up anything they want.”18 It took her about a decade, but in decoration, Goldin obviously felt that she found the answer to this conundrum. Her 1975 essay “Patterns, Grids, and Paintings,” as close as the P&D movement ever came to having a manifesto, argues that rugs and ceramic tiles have an intrinsic density and complexity, thanks inward, into dense compositions. In her “femmage” Zakanitch and Kushner were once asked at a College to the inextricable relationship between their visual paintings—the term is a portmanteau of feminine, col- Art Association conference to clarify their thoughts and material registers. This produces an aesthetic lage, and homage—multiple fragmentary patterns are about their exuberant, oversize floral compositions. object that is “incredibly tough,” able to accommodate arranged and overlaid, sometimes in an intentionally Were they saying their work was any different from interruption and variation in a way that convention- sentimental format like a heart or a fan.23 These works wallpaper? They replied, “We’re not. Wallpaper is bet- al abstract painting cannot. She also distinguished manifest a deconstructivist technique comparable to ter!”26 The implication was that the vast, contingent between the autonomy of the modernist artwork Miriam Schapiro: into fashion, suggests one area of overlap with post- the one Perrone pursued in his writings, for example, world of commercial design might be preferable to the Heartland, 1985, and the contingency of pattern, which actually gains modern theory. The idea that decoration can be at once in the way that their frames cascade right into the core precious self-regard of the art gallery. acrylic and fabric on itself and a reference to “the decorative” at large—both in effect when placed in a strong context: “The con- canvas, 85 by 94 inches. of the images; as Auther notes, this “complicate[s] the Not every P&D artist would have gone that far, even ceptual richness of pattern can be fully realized only a visual and a value system—resonates with the “double categorization of ornament or decoration as merely rhetorically. But all felt that the art world was far, far through the juxtaposition of related patterns.”19 This coding” that design theorist Charles Jencks claimed for supplemental, secondary, or peripheral to the ‘real’ or bigger than had previously been imagined. And they 24 was an inversion of the usual assumption of decorative communicative architecture. For Perrone, an early adopt- deeper meaning of a work.” As with Kozloff, materiali- Top, Joyce Kozloff: were willing to think through the implications of that inconsequentiality. In effect, Goldin was saying that er of deconstructivist theory, that duality also related to ty was of the utmost importance for Schapiro: she used Striped Cathedral, dramatic inclusiveness, in ways we are still catching up pattern had everything that modern art lacked, or per- Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance—the inconclusive fabric, glitter, handmade paper, and other elements 1977, acrylic on canvas, to today. Ultimately, this may come down not so much 72 by 180 inches. haps, had simply lost touch with. A rug was something quality of language, which always remains open to sub- associated with hobby craft. In Perrone’s terms, these to celebration—a word that gets thrown in P&D’s direc- to look up to. sequent interpretation, and derives its meaning through materials were in a “dual situation,” both a signifier of Above, Betty tion frequently—but rather to modesty. They saw that Perrone adopted a similarly positive view of contin- endlessly ramifying internal difference. It was just this craft and the genuine article. Schapiro was simultane- Woodman: Zante, art is itself in a “differential” condition, gaining much sort of open-endedness that Perrone found in the decora- 1985, glazed gency. Writing of the signature P&D maneuver of the ously indicating her political sympathies with unherald- earthenware, 31 by of its meaning through adjacencies and affinities. floating motif—excised from a source image and res- tive, writing that it can “always be understood as other ed amateur makers, and also forcing the question of her 21 by 9 inches. caled, as in MacConnel’s spliced-together paintings—he than, different from any base or established basis or bias. own status, and by implication that of any professional argued: “Decoration becomes decontextualized by virtue . . . Grid and function, as paradigms of the ideal and real artist, into the open. Who, she implicitly asked, gets to of its being borrowed. . . . Removed from its usual role, grounding, are the very bases from which the decorative decide whether an artwork is serious or not?25 GLENN ADAMSON is a critic and art historian based 21 the decoration becomes both sign and design, both itself deviates and flies free: it flutters on their surfaces.” It is this last idea that constitutes the Pattern and in New York. and quoted material (as in the dual situation of [Jasper] Once we see past the lush opulence of Pattern and Decoration movement’s most enduring challenge. Johns’s Flags).”20 In retrospect, this line of thought, which Decoration—looking it in the eye, as Hamza Walker borrowed from the semiotic theory then just coming says—it becomes legible by putting these ideas into practice. Kozloff’s installation An Interior Decorated 1 Hamza Walker, “Rebecca Morris and the Revenge of P&D,” in Relevance and Legacy of Pattern and Decoration,” in Esther Criticism 1964–1978, ed. Robert Kushner, Stockbridge, Mass., (1978–80) demonstrates the power of rich juxtaposition Anna Katz, ed., With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Boehle and Manuela Ammer, eds., Pattern and Decoration: Hard Press Editions, 2011, p. 41. 19 Amy Goldin, “Patterns, Robert Zakanitch: that Goldin advocated. The work beautifully embodies Art, 1972–1985, New Haven, Yale University Press/Museum of Ornament as Promise, Cologne, Walther König, 2018, p. 15. Grids, and Painting,” Artforum, Sept. 1975; reprinted Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2019, p. 182. 2 In his review 11Anna Katz, “Lessons in Promiscuity: Patterning and the New in Kushner, ed., Art in a Hairshirt, p. 167. 20 Jeff Perrone, Angel Feet, 1978, Perrone’s notion of decoration that is both applied and of the first (and until recently, last) retrospective P&D exhi- Decorativeness in Art of the 1970s and 1980s,” in With Pleasure, “Approaching the Decorative,” Artforum, December 1976, acrylic on canvas, autonomous, dressing the gallery in a riot of vertical bition, “Pattern and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American p. 47. 12 Joyce Kozloff, email to the author, July 11, 2019. p. 26. 21 Jeff Perrone, “Do Not Throw Stone at Mouse and Break 94¼ by 172⅜ inches. and horizontal planes of ceramic tile and printed silk Art, 1975–1985,” held at the Hudson River Museum in late 13Interview with Robert Kushner, New York, June 29, 2019. Precious Vase,” in New Decorative Works from the Collection of 2007, Cotter added that it was “also the first and only art In a nuanced consideration of this alignment, art historian Norma and William Roth, Orlando, Fla., Loch Haven Art Center, that are raised off the walls and floors on columns and movement of the post-modern era and may prove to be the Anne Swartz cautions, “Feminism helped make P&D possi- 1983, p. 10. As quoted in Katz, “Lessons in Promiscuity,” a platform. Kozloff emphasized this matter-of-factness, last art movement ever.” Cotter, “Scaling a Minimalist Wall ble. But it was not a Feminist movement.” Swartz, “Pattern p. 33. For a related discussion, see my essay “Craft and the writing that she wanted to escape the “metaphors” with Bright, Shiny Colors,” New York Times, Jan. 15, 2008, and Decoration and Feminism,” in Boehle and Ammer, eds., Allegorical Impulse,” in Knut Astrup Bull and André Gali, eds., p. E1. 3 Thomas Lawson, “Last Exit: Painting,” Artforum, Pattern and Decoration, p. 24. 14 Author’s interview with Elaine Material Perceptions, Stuttgart, Arnoldsche, 2018, pp. 93–114. in her earlier works, which transcribed ornamental October 1981, p. 40. 4 Joyce Kozloff and Robert Kushner, Reichek, New York, July 10, 2019. 15 Anne Swartz, “The Pattern 22Joyce Kozloff, artist’s statement for “An Interior Decorated,” motifs into abstract compositions, and instead create “Pattern, Decoration and Tony Robbin,” Artcritical, Aug. 2, and Decoration Zeitgeist,” Hyperallergic, June 13, 2018. hyperal- Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1979. 23 The term was 5 6 16 “an environment in which the ornament would be lit- 2011, artcritical.com Ibid. Author’s interview with Robert lergic.com. Quoted in Rebecca Skafsgaard Lowery, “Infinite introduced by Schapiro and artist Melissa Meyer in “Waste Kushner, New York, June 29, 2019. 7 Amy Goldin, “Rugs” Progress: Criss-Cross and the Gender of Pattern Painting,” in Not, Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women Saved and 22 eral and physically palpable.” (1972), in Robert Kushner, ed., Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt: Art With Pleasure, p. 117. 17 Quoted in Arthur C. Danto, “Pattern Assembled—Femmage,” Heresies, Winter 1977–78, pp. 66–69. If Kozloff reclaimed architectural space for the pure- Criticism 1964–1978, Stockbridge, Mass., Hard Press Editions, and Decoration as a Late Modernist Movement,” in Pattern 24 Elissa Auther, “Miriam Schapiro and the Politics of the 2011, p. 118. 8 John Perreault, “Issues in Pattern Painting,” and Decoration: An Ideal Vision in American Art, ed. Anne Swartz, Decorative,” in Katz, ed., With Pleasure, p. 79. 25 For more on ly decorative, Schapiro folded the logic of patterning Artforum, Nov. 1977, p. 32. 9 Jeff Perrone, “Every Criticism Yonkers, New York, Hudson River Museum, 2007, this point see Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft, Oxford, is Self-Abuse,” Arts Magazine, June 1980, p. 110-17. 10 Michael p. 10. 18 Amy Goldin, “A Note on Opticality,” Arts Magazine, Berg, 2007, p. 31. 26 Interview with Kushner, June 29, 2019. See Kozloff: courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York. Woodman: courtesy Charles Woodman/Esate of Woodman: courtesy Charles York. New Kozloff: courtesy DC Moore Gallery, Los Angeles/Salon 94, New York. Kordansky Gallery, Betty Woodman/David Zakanitch: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Orlando Museum of Art. © Estate of Miriam Schapiro/ARS, New York. Orlando Museum of Art. © Estate Miriam Schapiro/ARS, New York. Duncan, “More Than What Meets the Eye: The Continued May 1966; reprinted in Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt: Art also Katz, “Lessons in Promiscuity,” p. 38.

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