Vines from The Joy of Ornament
1980
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
etching, aquatint, and drypoint from a portfolio of 17 etchings and aquatints and three drypoints on wove Arches paper
Dimensions
plate: 22.5 x 10.2 cm (8 7/8 x 4 in.) sheet: 29.2 x 15.2 cm (11 1/2 x 6 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Kathan Brown
Accession Number
1997.8.124.1
Art Historical Context
**Vines from *The Joy of Ornament Robert Kushner, 1980 Etching, aquatint, and drypoint on wove Arches paper Step into the lush world of Robert Kushner's *Vines*, a captivating print from the 1980 portfolio *The Joy of Ornament This delicate etching, aquatint, and dry—measuring just 22.5 x 10.2 cm on its plate—captures twisting vines in a celebration of organic exuberance. Kushner, a leading figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, championed ornamental beauty at a time when modernist austerity dominated art. His work rebelled against minimalism, embraci...
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 *...