Biography
Since participating in the early years of the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the 1970s, Robert Kushner has continued to address controversial issues involving decoration. Kushner draws from a unique range of influences, including Islamic and European textiles, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Pierre Bonnard, Tawaraya Sotatsu, Ito Jakuchu, Qi Baishi, and Wu Changshuo. Kushner’s work combines organic representational elements with abstracted geometric forms in a way that is both decorative and modernist. He has said, “I never get tired of pursuing new ideas in the realm of ornamentation. Decoration, an abjectly pejorative dismissal for many, is a very big, somewhat defiant declaration for me. … The eye can wander, the mind think unencumbered through visual realms that are expansively and emotionally rich. Decoration has always had its own agenda, the sincere and unabashed offering of pleasure and solace.”
Most recently, Kushner’s work has been included in several national and international museum exhibitions focusing on the Pattern and Decoration movement: With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2019-2020);Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2019);Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Vienna, Austria, and Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2018-2019);Pattern, Decoration & Crime, MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland, and Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2018-2019).
Kushner’s installation, Scriptorium: Devout Exercises of the Heart, wasa group of over one thousand drawings of flowers and plants on book pages that date from 1500 to 1920. The pages have been removed from vintage books of all types from around the world. In 2010, Scriptorium was exhibited in Desire at The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. It then traveled to the Kunsthallen Brandts in Odense, Denmark before returning to the U.S. for the inaugural exhibition at DC Moore Gallery’s new Chelsea location in 2011. In 2012, it was exhibited at the La Jolla Athenaeum in California.
Kushner has also created large-scale murals for public and private spaces. In 2004, he installed two monumental mosaic murals, 4 Seasons Seasoned, at the 77th Street and Lexington Avenue subway station. He has also completed commissions at Gramercy Tavern and Maialino restaurants in New York City, Union Square in Tokyo, The Ritz Carlton Highlands in Lake Tahoe, CA, and Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC. Recently, an eighty-foot-long marble mosaic, Welcome, was installed at the new Raleigh Durham International Airport in North Carolina.
Kushner's work has been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan and has been included in the Whitney Biennial three times and twice at the Biennale in Venice. He was the subject of solo exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. A mid-career retrospective of his work was organized by the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art.
A monograph on Kushner's three decades of artistic work, Gardens of Earthly Delight, was published by Hudson Hills Press in 1997. Wild Gardens, a selection of Kushner's recent paintings with an essay by Michael Duncan, was published by Pomegranate in 2006. Kushner also edited the publication Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt (Hudson Hills, 2012) to much critical acclaim.
Kushner's works are included in many prominent public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The National Gallery of Art, DC; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC; Tate Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; The Denver Art Museum; Galleria degli Ufizzi, Florence; J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, St. Petersburg; and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
For the complete biographyand bibliography, please download the PDFs.
Biography
Bibliography
Exhibitions
Museum Exhibitions
Publications
News
May 22, 2023
Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris
September 4 - October 23, 2021
Galerie Nathalie Obadia is delighted to present the work of American artist Robert Kushner for the first time. Born in 1949, in California, he was a key figure of the Pattern & Decoration movement, which was founded in the late 1960s - early 1970s in New York, where he still resides today.
May 13 @ 5pm EDT
On May 13, a Zoom webinar brings together Jenelle Porter and Robert Kushner to discuss Kushner's exhibition, Robert Kushner: I❤ Matisse, on view at DC Moore Gallery through June 19.
April 10, 2020
Over the coming weeks, we will be providing inside views into how our artists continue their practices to create new works of art, while sharing perspectives of their current, everyday lives. We are excited to welcome your thoughts about these features, as this initiative will bring together our friends, families and colleagues.
Press
April 12, 2024
ARTnews: The Best Booths at Expo Chicago, from an Ode to Hometown Heroes to Solo Showcases
June 26, 2023
Our Choices Art: Robert Kushner interview
March 7, 2023
The New Yorker: Goings on About Town
July 12, 2022
Centre Pompidou Magazine: "Artifacts at the End of a Decade," a dive into the avant-garde New Yorkers of the 1970s
July 15, 2021
June 29, 2021
Hyperallergic: Exhibitions at CCS Bard Explore Art at Its Most Intimate, Playful, and DefiantMay 12, 2021
Forbes: One Artist’s Colorful Tribute To Henri MatisseApril 10, 2020
The Paris Review: Staff PicksFebruary 28, 2020
Curbed: Inside the Powerfully Expressive World of MaximalismFebruary 11, 2020
The Art Newspaper: Embracing the Visual Overload: Los Angeles Show Celebrates the Pattern and Decoration MovementDecember 2019
Artforum: Lynne Cooke Best of 2019December 11, 2019
Hyperallergic: Best of 2019: Our Top 20 Los Angeles Art Shows
December 11, 2019
Los Angeles Times: Christopher Knight’s Best Art Exhibitions of 2019
November 4, 2019
Los Angeles Times: More is More. Why the 'Pattern and Decoration' show at MOCA is Pure PleasureOctober 30, 2019
New York Times: New York Galleries: What to See Right NowOctober 10, 2019
artspeak: Robert Kushner: By My Window
September 2019
Space Magazine: And Decoration: Good Taste is the Final Refuge of the UnimaginativeSeptember 12, 2019
ARTnews: Fall Preview: 32 Essential Museum Shows and Biennials to See
September 2019
The Burlington Magazine: Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as PromiseSeptember 2019
Art in America: Pattern RecognitionSeptember 7, 2019
National Review: Weird and Fantastic Modern Art in Dijon’s Consortium
September 2019
L'Oeil: On Dirait Les Chemins Du SudJuly 29, 2019
The Silo: Textility (a woven essay)
June 28, 2019
The Boston Globe: At ICA More is More
June 25, 2019
Forbes: A New Exhibit Of 'Maximalism' Shows How Artists Trounced Modernism And Made Art Inclusive In The 70s
April 24, 2019
Frieze: Is Pattern Back In Fashion?
April 17, 2019
IdeelArt: Key Figures of the Pattern and Decoration Movement
March 7, 2019
Art Agency Partners: Funky, Funny and Fussy Reassessing the Pattern and Decoration Movement
June 13, 2018
Hyperallergic: The Pattern and Decoration Zeitgeist
June 11, 2018
Blouin Shop Magazine: Robert Kushner Reverie: Dupatta-topia at DC Moore GalleryMay 25, 2018
Artforum Critic's Pick: Robert Kushner DC Moore GalleryMay 7, 2018
Blouin Artinfo: Reverie: Dupatta-topia by Robert KushnerFebruary 9, 2017
Design Arts Daily: "Robert Kushner at DC Moore Gallery"
February 9, 2017
The Paris Review: "Portraits and Perennials"
Summer 2015
November 2012
ARTnews: Made You Look: Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt by Ann LandiSummer 2007
Artforum: Robert KushnerApril 2015
Artforum: "Robert Kushner: Baroque"January 12, 2015
The New Yorker: "Robert Kushner"