Portfolio Cover for The Joy of Ornament
1980
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
printed fabric with mounted Xerographic title card
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation
Accession Number
2008.115.162
Art Historical Context
Step into the vibrant world of 198s Pattern and Decoration with Kushner's *Portfolio Cover for The Joy Ornament* (1980). This yet sophisticated piece, housed in the National Gallery of's Reba and Dave Williams Collection, serves as the enticing frontispiece for a portfolio celebrating exuberant design. Kushner, a figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement—a rebellious response to Minimalism'sness—draws inspiration from textiles, flora, and global decorative traditions, infusing the work with a sense of unapologetic delight. Crafted from printed fabric adorned with a mounted Xerographic tit...
About the Artist
Robert Kushner
Robert Kushner, born in 1949 in Pasadena, California, grew up in an artistic household profoundly shaped by his mother, Dorothy Browdy Kushner, a California Modernist painter whose studio filled with abstractions, printmaking, taxidermy, and succulents sparked his early creativity. He studied at the University of California, San Diego, where his senior exhibition in 1971 featured the performance *...