Robert Kushner: Wild Gardens

by Michael Duncan, Robert Kushner

The works in Wild Gardens reflect Kushner's longtime appreciation of Japanese art and culture combined with the use of composer and visual artist John Cage's "chance operation" system of composition. Several years ago, Kushner began incorporating elements of Cage's theories of chance composition as a major component in his own painting. Kushner and Cage met on an artists' retreat in the South Seas in 1980 and became friends, sharing interests in art, life, and flowers. Multiple layers of randomness echo throughout the paintings in this book--starting with the sheer accident of the physical survival of the individual antique screens and doors and their arrival in Kushner's New York studio and culminating in the compositions rows of similar leaves or flowers are repeated, with the selection of color or form indicated by chance operation, and with the use of counting and placement systems that yield strangely unexpected but surprisingly naturalistic results.

118 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2006

About the author

Michael Duncan, a critic and independent curator, is a Corresponding Editor for Art in America. His writings have focused on maverick artists of the twentieth century, West Coast modernism, twentieth century figuration, and contemporary California art. His curatorial projects include surveys and recontextualizations of works by Pavel Tchelitchew, Sister Corita Kent, Kim MacConnel, Lorser Feitelson, Eugene Berman, Richard Pettibone, Alberto Burri, and Wallace Berman. He was the curator of the 2009 Texas Biennial and is curator of the forthcoming exhibitions LA RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980: From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy and An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, & Their Circle.