Approximately 200 drawings, etchings, photographs, tunics and textiles will be brought together in the dazzling new exhibition “The Clamor of Ornament” at the Drawing Center to bring together five centuries of complex stories for cultural exchange and appropriation. is spoken about.
Curators define ornament as “a decoration, surface or structure that can be lifted from its context, reworked, replicated, and rearranged.” Albrecht in the early 1500s with his Dürer woodcuts, Anonymous Papua his New Guinea artist bark paintings, and a series of black and white cakes and pastries. His illustrator Tom Hovey drew for the coloring book version of “The Great British Bake Off”.
The ingenious display design allows you to imagine these squiggles and ruffles flying around the world as if weightless. One of Dürer’s, a lacy roundel inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings of Ottoman designs, next to a 1968 Bob Dylan foreheaded poster with a similar circle hanging on Elsewhere, in a series of his 19th-century watercolors and woodcuts, textiles his patterns bounce between India, Europe and Japan.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Dylan’s forehead circles, or the other circles designer Martin Sharp used to depict musicians’ hair. At the time, they were associated with racist notions of “Oriental”. This is a fantasy constructed to glorify the very people the Europeans were conquering and looting.
Romance can be seen in Joseph Philibert Giraud de Pranget’s captivating silver daguerreotypes of Egyptian mosques and intricate tiling-like drawings by Persian court architect Mirza Akbar. It inspired the English architect Owen Jones to write a canonical book-length study of artistic and architectural decoration. Inspired by “Grammar of Decoration”.)
The “Cry of Decoration” also provides evidence of the ruthlessness of industrialization and colonialism – at least as it manifested itself in art. There is a painting of ‘The Red Fort, Delhi, Furnished to British Taste’. A stylized Kashmiri mango cut in a textile mill in the town of Paisley, Scotland. The American flag was included in Navajo textiles made after the Navajo were confined to the reservation, from which they had to import their wool. In an essay, he quotes economic historian Kazuo Kobayashi, saying that Indian-manufactured cotton “was the most important trade in exchange for African slaves.”)
Others use appropriation to oppose oppression and cultural annihilation. But none of these exchanges are simple. Harlem designer Dapper Dunn has appeared here in a few photos, pioneering a new vision for his style of black incorporating corporate and fashion logos. This is an innovation later adopted by those companies. Artist Wendy Red Starr annotates historical photographs of Crow’s diplomats, restoring the importance of feathers and hair bows that were belittled and misunderstood by white American contemporaries. But with that importance comes a kind of violence of its own. One hair bow, she writes, represents “physically overcoming her enemies and slitting her throat.”
Ultimately, the exhibition does not make a single argument, but merely presents a multitude of exhibits, a conceptual hustle that deepens and amplifies an already overwhelming visual experience. On the one hand, we desperately need such a reminder of how difficult it is still to untangle reality as the debate over cultural appropriation becomes more and more heated and less nuanced. As, I engaged in decontextualizing myself, tweaking the swanky but informative wall labels designed by Studio Frith, and instead focused on the pure sensual pleasures of air conditioning. A gallery filled with an extraordinary collection of beautiful objects.
These Bend Quilt by Emma Pettway (2021), an 1864 woodcut series by Kunichika Toyohara Edo Flowers: Five Youths, or an 18th-century French pattern called Leveillon Arabesque Some might be drawn to the bold colors of the temporary wall covered in . 810.” But I found myself drawn to the simple, monochrome authenticity of John Maeda’s trippy typographic posters. A zigzag “tapa cloth” from Oceania. Or a 19th century scrimshaw specimen. Barely He is a six-inch long carved bone depicting a densely crosshatched whale surrounded by anguished sailors destroying a whaling ship. It’s mind-boggling to think that an entire little scene full of drama and pathos could be just a patch of free-floating decoration.
Ornamental Bustle: Exchange, Power and Joy from the 15th Century to the Present
Until September 18th at the Drawing Center. (212) 219-2166, drawingcenter.org.
