Pattern and Decoration

also: P&D · The New Decorativeness

movement c. 1975-1985 United States

Pattern and Decoration was a United States art movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, sometimes called P&D or 'the New Decorativeness'. Its artists came out of 1960s abstraction and rebelled against two things at once: Minimalism's severe, reductive lines, and the Western hierarchy that dismissed ornament as trivial and feminine. They looked to Islamic tile work from Spain and North Africa, Mexican, Roman and Byzantine mosaics, Turkish embroidery, Japanese woodblocks, and Iranian and Indian carpets and miniatures - and to quilts, wallpapers and printed fabrics from the domestic sphere. Work covered the canvas edge to edge in all-over design, blurring the line between art and design. The gallerist Holly Solomon championed the movement, and major surveys at the Hudson River Museum (2008) and MOCA (2019-2020) re-staged it.

Example work related to "Pattern and Decoration".
Example work related to "Pattern and Decoration".Public domain (credit: Giovanni da Udine) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Edge-to-edge, all-over pattern with no focal point - background and foreground treated equally
  • Dense interlocking geometric and floral motifs drawn from Islamic tilework and mosaics
  • Craft and domestic materials: fabric, quilting, wallpaper, hand-painted tile, needlework
  • Bright, saturated color and unapologetic pleasure in decoration
  • 'Femmage' - painting fused with sewing, fabric scraps and collage
  • Minimalist grids retained but filled with lush ornament

Key figures

  • Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015) — Leader of the movement; coined 'femmage' for painting fused with sewing
  • Joyce Kozloff (b. 1942) — Painter and muralist whose ornamental installations drew on global decorative traditions
  • Robert Kushner (b. 1949) — Founder of the movement; lush ornament across painting, costume and mosaic
  • Valerie Jaudon (b. 1945) — Original member whose patterned abstraction joined grid and ornament
  • Holly Solomon (1934-2002) — Gallerist who championed the movement at her New York gallery

Example works

  • Anonymous was a Woman I — Miriam Schapiro (1977)
  • Tut's Wallpaper — Joyce Kozloff (1979)
  • An Interior Decorated — Joyce Kozloff (late 1970s)

Sources

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