Raggedy Ann's Foot: LA Pattern and Decoration (LAPD) : MoCA Grand St., opens BARD June 27th

Walkthrough of the epic Made With Pleasure: Pattern & Decoration, curated by the brilliant Anna Katz. What a pleasure to see this work in my hometown of Los Angeles. In early days at UCLA, the Dept. of Graphic and Visual Art was agog with P and D's social critique of gender. Womanhouse had happened, likely Cal Arts already disbanded, but the conversation continued in works by Mira Schor, Tom Knechtel, and Mike Kelley's stuffed animal sculptures into the 1980s.

We begin with Al Loving's Untitled, 1975. Anna Katz writes, "P and D's maximalist , eclectic citation of all things decorative flew in the face of the dominant artistic values of the time: minimalism's cool, reductive aesthetics and modernism's aspirations to formal purity. Most importantly, Pattern and Decoration recuperated art forms historically discredited on the basis of their femininity (such as embroidery) or status as craft (such as weaving, pottery, and other traditional, often non-Western arts). It was shaped by feminism, pointed to the global origins of abstraction, and influenced the development of installation art."Museum Link

Surprise surprise: Ree Morton! One of the Beaux Paintings, 1975 (another iteration below, same title)

Cynthia Carlson's extruded flower wallpaper--one of the amazing discoveries of seeing this work in the reals.

From Tough Shift for M.I.T., 1981/2019, recreated for MOCA originally shown at MIT.

The focus on wallpaper and dimension is so exciting and relevant--like something coming alive , or breaking the fourth wall.

Insouciant bouquets by Kim MacConnel: Lotus Flower Decoration, 1978

Vase Decoration, 1978

MacConnel room with hand-painted sofa and accessories.

This could work with Daniel Wiener's tables, Scott Burton's chairs, and Yayoi Kusama's sofas

Curatorial genius: incorporating a print by Judy Pfaff informed by P&D's maximalist aesthetic

And the 1978 Stella Khar-piddda! A wonderful shock: it makes SO MUCH SENSE.

Merion Estes, Primavera, 1982. This painting has glitter! Estes should have a survey at the New Museum.
"Surveying the long arc of art history, they [P&D artists] viewed decoration as a necessary and universal means by which human beings have enriched our lives and humanized our spaces and objects, from the banal to the sacred. Indeed, throughout this exhibition, decoration is approached not as style alone but as a tenet of well-being."

Franklin Williams, Four Made My World, 1972. Williams is a Californian, born Utah 1940. Made With Pleasure will travel to Bard College in fall 2020, and I look forward to its installation there, to see the change in relationships.

Alan Shields, Top Spin Lob, 1980-82.

Ralph Bacera, my ceramics teacher at Otis/Parsons in 1983! (Ceramics I). How I wish I knew this work but alas, a callow student.

He includes gold leaf in his sumptuously patterned designs, which speak to appropriation. "Many of the motifs in Pattern and Decoration were drawn from non-Western decorative art practices, which were of particular interest to P&D artists for several reasons beyond aesthetic merit. First, many non-Westrn arts traditions do not observe a hierarchy of, or even a distinction between, fine art and decorative art. As well, women and people of color had long been denigrated in Western philosophy and literature as primitives and naifs, incapable of serious cultural production; these terms were further deployed toward the dismissal of the decorative." The text goes on to say that now these appropriations can be seen as problematic, but it is important to remember how these artists brought those forms forward with the intention of honoring or celebrating them in a time when disciplines were separate unlike today.

Billy Al Bengston, Zosteras Draculas I-IV, 1975. It is the memory of Bengston's flower paintings in a lobby, in 1986, that inspired me to paint flowers. They were so shocking. I look forward to more on this artist, who did enjoy a show at Venus over Manhattan some years ago, but whose output remains unknown to most New Yorkers.

Takako Yamaguchi, Magnificat #6

Mary Grigoriadas, New Day, 1975. What a discovery!

Mary Grigoriadas, Rain Dance, 1975. So exquisite, especially after a recent trip to Mexico! Her influences combine the Catholic Church with Mayan temple facades and knitting designs.

Context view, with Nancy Graves' Accordia in front, 1982. I have really come to love her work for its worlds within worlds, its spiky charm, shown to great advantage in Mapping, April 2019, at Mitchell Inness and Nash Gallery Link.

Robert Zakanitch's Dragon Fire, 1985

Dragon Fire Detail

Zakanitch Angel Feet, 1978

Chinese painting aficionado with a heavy brush: Brad Davis' Rabbit and Two Dogs = Desire, 1978

Robert Kushner Fairies, 1980. Such delicacy-- his concern with the fleet mark has always been evident, though this early work is new to me.

Another installation view for context: Nancy Graves, Robert Zakanitch

Joyce Kozloff, installation so relevant to the ledger drawings by Laura Battle and my own explorations at MacDowell. The first work of Kozloff's I saw was her fabulous lobby at 745 Fifth Avenue, but since then have seen exhibitions at DCMoore including Girlhood, 2017 Gallery Link and was most especially impressed with the Kozloff map installation at Basel 2019: Gallery Link.

From Striped Cathedral, 1977

Valerie Jaudon. Mineral Wells, 1980.

Jaudon: Facture

Tony Robbin, Japanese Footbridge, 1972

Jaudon. Bellafontaine, 1976.

The great Sylvia Sleigh's epic painting of art critics.

Constance Mallison. A new discovery, and impossible to convey the quality of these drawings through images. They are gorgeous, discrete, delicate, elegant.