Patterns of The Pattern

The P & D Movement

Jul 15, 2025

Every so often, art gets serious—maybe too serious. Clean lines march in uniform, canvases go somber, theory outshouts emotion. Then suddenly color finds itself… unwelcome. Decoration is exiled to the sidelines, branded frivolous, feminine, even dangerous.

In every age, color waits.
And when the moment is right—
It dances back.

Art Movement Tuesday explores how a generation grows weary of the gray, of rules, of minimalism’s holy emptiness, of cleverness without joy. Somewhere in a quiet studio, a hand reaches for a brighter brush… A tile pattern whispers from Morocco… A quilt square hums from a grandmother’s chest, and a carnival flag flutters as a box of Crayola’s sing… Before long, no one can silence or stop them.

When Color Throws a Party

Enter the Pattern and Decoration Movement, a rebellious confetti cannon of art history. Feminist, joyous, defiantly beautiful, it dances against the cold dogmas of its time.

What exactly did it all mean? Why is it important today? They remind us of what history often forgets: Color and decoration get culturally punished when restraint and control dominate political or intellectual life. They rebound when society tires of rigid ideologies or technocratic culture, offering escape, sensuality and a sense of re-enchantment.

For a decade from 1975 to 1985, P&D artists do not just make ‘pretty things.’ They chart a pendulum of rebellion, connecting the personal, more domestic life with the political and the feminist liberation while respecting the global, non-Western decorative traditions.

Now, let’s enter the room—

The door swings open into 1975! Suddenly the room is alive—patterns vibrate on every wall, colors ripple across canvases like laughter at a too-serious dinner table. The space we have entered smells of fresh paint, textile dye, and… is that a hint of incense? Maybe.

Joyce Kozloff is animated as she stands by a large work looking like a Persian carpet. As she invites us to come closer, we see the geometry breaking into a cascade of cosmic rivers. Someone next to her leans in, admiring the detail. Kozloff is already mid-sentence as we arrive, “The decorative is political. It is global. This is women’s history on the walls.”1

We round the corner to Miriam Schapiro seemingly still at work! She is surrounded by fragments and textures: Bits of lace, floral cutouts, shiny, rebellious wallpaper scraps. She smiles at us as her scissors snap. Her femmage is not simply collage—it is reclamation. “Why should women’s labor be hidden?” she asks, not waiting for permission to answer herself—“We bring the house into the gallery.”2

In this, which will move toward the first Pattern Painting exhibition at P.S.1, New York, the manifesto is not an angry shout—it’s an invitation! The decorative becomes declaration. Robert Kushner says it directly, “The world is filled with beauty. Why should art pretend otherwise?” He paints lush robes and flowering panels with the same joy someone might select fabrics at an outdoor market.3

The walls are alive with Kim MacConnel’s riot of playful motifs—Valerie Jaudon’s rhythmic structures pulse with mathematical precision, yet feel warm, like the floor tiles of an ancient bathhouse.4 We brush shoulders with critics from Artforum.5 Some sniff, some scribble. One voice mutters about decadence as another praises the radical joy in the room. Feminist journals will pick up the banner: Art does not need to be dour to be serious.6 “This is not nostalgia,” someone whispers beside us, as we sip cheap gallery wine. “It is reclamation.” This is the recognition of the personal, the decorative, and the joyful.7

At this party, color is no longer a guest—it is the host.

Taking the Party Line

For the ten years the movement shimmers brightly, it dances against austerity and gray intellectual walls. Weaving together the domestic, the political and the global, P & D threads across continents and histories, unbothered by the scowls of minimalists.

First Stop: New York, 1975
The engine was just warming up at P.S.1, Long Island City. Once the inaugural “Pattern Painting” exhibition opens its doors the world catches its first glimpse of Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Kushner, and Kim MacConnel. After critics tilt their heads, unsure, the manifesto weaves itself a little tighter, stitched together in the air—suddenly decoration is no longer a dirty word.8

Second Stop: SoHo, 1976–77
In the heart of SoHo, the Holly Solomon Gallery throws open its doors. Holly herself, dresses like a walking tapestry, championing the movement. This is when the Pattern and Decoration label is formalized in the press.9 Her gallery becomes a safehouse for rebellion in technicolor. Valerie Jaudon and Tina Girouard join the roster. This is where decorative arts meet the downtown scene.10

Third Stop: Washington, D.C., 1977
When the “Ten Approaches to the Decorative” show opens at the Smithsonian Institution, the nation's capital is confronted with its own prejudice against ornament. Feminist critics hail it as a breakthrough even though the establishment shuffles nervously.11

Fourth Stop: Los Angeles, 1978
The party spills west. Robert Kushner brings silk, brocade and metallic flair to the New Gallery.12 Kim MacConnel’s playful abstractions fit perfectly with California’s sun-drenched irreverence.13 Collectors like Eunice and Hal David start paying attention.14

Fifth Stop: Chicago, 1979
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago hosts P&D artists in various exhibitions. Young curators lean in. The Art Institute’s Women’s Caucus buzzes with discussion. Now a Midwestern ripple begins.15

Sixth Stop: Cologne and Düsseldorf, 1980
The train crosses the Atlantic. German and Dutch galleries experiment with Kozloff’s geometric mosaics and Schapiro’s fabric-based pieces. European feminist circles absorb the movement’s energy. Critics like Barbara Rose in the U.S. write both admiringly and skeptically—this mobile party is gaining European guests.16

Seventh Stop: Back East, New York, 1981–82
P&D peaks. Major museum shows like “Decorative Impulse” at the American Craft Museum ignite debate. Decor becomes critical conversation. Gallerists Anina Nosei and Paula Cooper take selective interest. Some artists start seeing crossover success.17

Last Stop: The Market Turns, 1983–85
The market shifts as Neo-Expressionism and the Pictures Generation climb in dominance. Minimalism attempts to reassert itself, but is not fully successful. Meanwhile, Schapiro and Kozloff keep producing. Kushner rides the New York-LA circuit. The party starts to thin, but the bubbly has not completely gone flat.18

After the Party

The lights may dim, yet the music lingers. By the mid-1980s, the galleries pivot toward new figuration, market-friendly expressionism and the icy grip of postmodern irony. Even though the party celebrating color loses its central stage—ornament never really leaves. It hides in plain sight, woven into backdrops, stitched into textiles, waiting.

We have seen history play this trick again and again.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Art Nouveau rises as a counterweight to industrial severity, with swirling lines and botanical grace.19 It flourishes just before World War I sweeps idealism away. In the Roaring Twenties, Art Deco turns ornament into modern glamour with its hard angles, vivid color and celebration of elegance—until the Great Depression and war again usher in restraint.20

As we have seen in the 1970s, after years of minimalist austerity and conceptual chill, Pattern and Decoration erupts, reviving global crafts, domestic labor and feminist voices. For ten years, it pulses. Then again, it recedes. The pendulum swings.

Color and decoration surface most visibly when societies grow weary of restraint, when cold dogma no longer satisfies, when the human need for sensuality, craft and joy demands attention. Then the walls break open—textile, pattern, ornament burst through. Each time, these movements are labeled frivolous, feminine and unserious. They are questioned, marginalized, swept back into the category of the ‘decorative’, pushed off to a distance from the so-called serious business of art history.

Still, the Pattern and Decoration Movement leaves behind more than surfaces. It leaves us with a critique and open questions: Who decides value? Who defines importance? Who draws the line between high art and human craft?

The party winds down, but the train is not derailed. In quiet studios, artists continue to stitch, carve and layer, preparing for the next turn of history’s wheel—when the color will dance back, as it always does.

Postscript: The Echo Chamber

The gallery walls go quieter after 1985, but P&D’s energy does not disappear—it spills out into the nightclubs, fashion runways, MTV screens and city apartments. A new cultural hybrid takes shape, where pattern, decoration and exuberance go mainstream.

Betsey Johnson spins into the 1980s with the same energy lighting up Pattern and Decoration galleries. Her designs celebrate everything the art world tries to suppress—florals, bows, frills, lace and most of all, fun. Where Miriam Schapiro stitches femmage onto canvases, Johnson turns it into dresses, tutus and pop-punk daywear. Her fashion shows are mini parties, her cartwheels down the runway an open rebellion against minimalism’s grim seriousness. Johnson channels the decorative into personal identity, creating wearable joy. Like the P&D artists, she draws from domestic crafts, vintage kitsch, and folk traditions, but sends it strutting down the street. In her world, color is attitude, ornament is agency while the body becomes the canvas. The art scene may move on, but Johnson ensures the spirit of pattern, play, and unapologetic femininity keeps dancing into the cultural bloodstream.21

From the 70s through the 80s, Bunny Williams invites pattern into the home, layering global textiles, antique prints and exuberant color inside refined, livable spaces. Where the Pattern and Decoration artists rebel in galleries, Williams reclaims the home as a site of elegance and sensory delight. Launching her firm in 1988, Bunny’s interiors defy the sterile modernism of mid-century minimalism, embracing the warmth of handwoven fabrics, floral chintzes, bold wallpapers and ornament with history. Williams draws from a global library of craft traditions, mixing English country comfort with Moroccan tile, Indian block prints, and neoclassical symmetry. In her world, the decorative signals longevity, character, and connection, not frivolity. Her rooms whisper a quieter version of what P&D shouts: The domestic sphere is worthy of artistry. She reaffirms color, pattern and ornament are timeless tools for living well.22

In music, glam-pop and new wave bands take the baton. Cyndi Lauper bursts onto the mainstream scene in 1983 like a walking P&D manifesto, her hair streaked in electric color, outfits layered in lace, tulle, vintage florals, polka dots and metallics, all colliding in playful rebellion. She becomes a pop icon of self-decoration, mixing thrift store finds with designer pieces, breaking the rigid style codes of the early MTV era. Lauper does not dress to seduce or conform—she dresses to play, to tell stories, to turn herself into moving art. Her music videos unfold like Pattern and Decoration installations in motion, with backdrops exploding in bold prints, eccentric set design, with references to comic books, circus posters and world folklore. Where P&D makes the gallery a stage for domestic craft, Lauper turns the television screen into a theater of joyful maximalism. Her famous line says it all: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a rallying cry for color, self-expression, and anti-serious rebellion threading directly back to the artistic revolt of P&D.23

All of it echoes P&D’s central provocation: Color and ornament are not low culture—they are the pulse of cultural renewal, the language of pleasure and protest.

Through the eighties, a common thread persists: When society seeks joy after austerity, when it longs for connection after disillusionment, the walls, the clothes and the songs all brighten. In an era of faux marble frescoes and tulle layered polka-dot skirts, we were not just living through a trend, we were witnessing the broader cycle P&D exposed where the domestic merges with the global, and the personal with the political, through the undeniable power of decoration.