Robert Kushner (b. 1949, American) is best
recognized for his role in and contribution to the
Pattern and Decoration movement that spanned
the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. This style of
artmaking championed work that had been
marginalized as feminine or trivial. Kushner’s
expansive subject matter and medium bears
the influence of Islamic textiles and artists such
as Georgia O’Keeffe and the Chinese brush
artist Qi Bashi. His ornamental and emotionally
charged work Reclining Women #6 (1987)
speaks to the artist’s ability to distill mood and
form through representational, abstract, and
geometric elements. Of his rich and layered
compositions, Kushner has said, “Decoration,
an abjectly pejorative dismissal for many, is a
very big, somewhat defiant declaration for me.”
–Affinities and Outliers: Highlights from the University at Albany Fine Art Collections