Visual Pleasure: Patterning and Ornamentation in Contemporary Art

Catalog description

In his influential essay, "Ornament and Crime," Adolf Loos questioned the use of ornaments based on a notion of progressive history, in which the past is subordinated to the future. Modernism universalism coated as purity and functionalism relegated notions of excess to the past, along with it, visual pleasure, ornamentation, patterning, and the use of saturated color in art, architecture, and design. This course focuses on the recovery of color, patterning, and ornamentation in contemporary art led by non-western, women, queer, and/or BIPOC artists as a resistance to western 'order' which deems these aesthetics 'primitive,' 'feminine,' and 'irrational.' We will use contemporary art, artistic movements, and artists as case studies to study how ornamentation and patterning can form networks of resistance by foregrounding visual pleasure and by underscoring healing and joy as ways to be in the world. There will be 2 guest lectures from artists, curators, and/or art historians and weekly readings. Artists to be discussed include Chris Ofili, Raqib Shaw, Guadalupe Maravilla, Mickalene Thomas, Saya Woolfalk, Devan Shimoyama, Nick Cave, Xenobia Bailey, Joyce Kozloff, Judy Chicago, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Valerie Jaudon, Miriam Schapiro, El Anatsui, Monir, and many others.