Raggedy Ann's Foot: The Hessel Museum at Bard: With Pleasure

Tony Robbin, in one of many great moments of the epic Pattern and Decoration exhibition, With Pleasure, at Hessel Museum Bard College, traveling from MOCA LA with a COVID hiatus between. The show is curated by Anna Katz working with Rebecca Lowery of MOCA. Having seen both, I find the Bard iteration superb, both in scale and pairing of works. These images descend. The room you see here, with Jaudon, Smyth, Robbin, Kozloff, and Williams, was revisited after at full tour. So while it is the first thing you see it was the last that I did. Scroll up for a truer-to-life tour of the show.

Valerie Jaudon, Mineral Wells, 1990.

The P&D painters emerged as a group in a time of 1970s globalization, finding succor in Amy Goldin's research on pattern, their travels to the Middle East especially, their feminism, and excitement to push back against minimal aesthetics with maximal abundance.

Joyce Kozloff, challenged to move beyond the safety of painting to emark on new territory, did just that, hand-printing these textiles installed with mosaic posts that may seem common to us now but at the time radical. She is a consistently innovative and inventive artist.

Entering the show, you encounter Jaudon to right with Dee Shapiro in distance. Every view throughout the show overlaps rooms that reveal new relationships between artists.

In a spectacular two step with Ree Morton's Beaux Paintings of 1975, Betty Woodman-brilliant!

Ree Morton, Rocking Chair with One of the Beaux Paintings, 1975

Ree Morton, One of the Beaux Paintings, 1975

Ree Morton, all works One of the Beaux Paintings, 1975

Cynthia Carlson flowers

Cynthia Carlson's Flowers

Carlson's room at the Hessel

Amazing Cynthia Carlson wallpaper, squeezed from the tube

These Cynthia Carlsons inspired my 2019 exhibition Effulgence

Two great cardboard MacConnells, 1978: Vase and Lotus Decorations

Kim MacConnell - perfect proportions

Stella, Estes, Benglis - such a great install.

Marion Estes: gorgeous color, and GLITTER

Takako Yamaguchi, Magnifica#6

Mary Grigoriades, two stunning, Mayan-influenced paintings.

Ralph Bacera

Betty Woodman

Billy Al Bengston's screens from other side

Billy Al Bengston's hanging screens

Ralph Bacera ceramics seen from above. He was my Ceramics I teacher. I wasted connection with a great artist!

Grigoriades and Yamaguchi in an inspired combination

Video stills from Tina Girouard, with radio soundtrack like a time capsule as she folded fabric.

Tina Girouard

On left, early Sam Gilliam

Zakanitch, Kushner

Robert Zakanitch, Angel Feet, 1978

The attachments are lotus!

Nancy Graves, 1985.

Seen from the other side.

Glorious install: two epic Zakanitch paintings flanking a superb Nancy Graves from 1985

Costumes for Robert Kushner's fashion shows (1975) hosted in various galleries and studio lofts.

Bob Kushner's fabric painting--free and loose

Womanhouse, LA, 1972--I went to art school near here a decade later, and the presence was felt.

I want this issue of Heresies.

Wall documentation of Ned Smyth's installations. Can you imagine this in a gallery today?

Joyce Kozloff's Screed Against Repressive Aesthetics

Faith Ringgold, of whom Roberta Smith writes in her August 21st NYT review of the show, "painted bright geometries inspired by African Kuba cloth on narrow canvases and then, looking to Tibetan thangkas, extended them top and bottom with-apparently-pieces of ersatz tourist blankets, sewn and appliqued by her mother"!!

A superb Al Loving.

Just look at this installation! Ned Smyth between Kozloff and Jaudon.

Joyce Kozloff, textile prints and mosaics.

Joyce Kozloff, Striped Cathedral, 1977. I love this painting.

In its entirety, Joyce Kozloff's 1977 Striped Cathedral. Challenged to surpass constraints of the canvas substrates, Kozloff dedicated the next twenty years to public art projects.

William T. Williams, Tale for Shango, 1978

Joyce Kozloff, Striped Cathedral, 1977, detail

Kozloff's Striped Cathedral, 1977, detail

Jaudon, Mineral Wells, detail

Valerie Jaudon, Mineral Wells, 1990

Tony Robbin, left, Ned Smyth and Joyce Kozloff, far wall, William T. Williams, right

One of many brilliant installation moments, Sylvia Sleigh and Robert Zakanitch beyond Tina Girouard on left.

Howardena Pindell, Untitled #19, 1977, a simply gorgeous painting--did not *see* it the same in LA.

Tina Girouard, Sketch for wallpaper painting

Tina Girouard, who co-founded Soho's FOOD with Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden. In tandem with the wallpaper work, Girouard made great videos and performances.