A dazzling new exhibition at the Drawing Center, The Clamor of Ornament brings together nearly 200 drawings, etchings, photographs, tunics and textiles to tell five centuries of complex stories of cultural exchange and appropriation. be told.
Curators define ornament as “a decoration, surface or structure that can be lifted from its context, reworked, replicated, and rearranged.” Albrecht from 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 circle inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings of Ottoman designs, next to a 1968 Bob Dylan forehead 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 round forehead, or the other circles that designer Martin Sharpe used to depict musicians’ hair. When raging, they were associated with “oriental” racist notions. 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 fascinating silver daguerreotypes of Egyptian mosques and intricate tiling-like drawings by Persian court architect Mirza Akbar. It was the English architect Owen Jones who inspired him to write a canonical book-length study of artistic and architectural decoration. Inspired by the grammar of
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 from a textile mill in the town of Paisley, Scotland. The Stars and Stripes were included in Navajo textiles made after the Navajo were confined to the reservation where they had to import their wool. In his erudite catalog essay, quoting economic historian Kazuo Kobayashi, cotton made in India “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 significance 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 one argument, but merely presents a multitude of exhibits, a conceptual hustle that deepens and amplifies an already overwhelming visual experience. On the one hand, as the debate about cultural appropriation becomes more and more heated and less nuanced, we desperately need this kind of reminder of how difficult it is to untangle reality. As a visitor to , I finally decided to decontextualize myself by adjusting the snazzy but informative wall labels designed by Studio Frith and instead focusing on the pure sensual pleasures of air conditioning. I decided to engage in the transformation. A gallery filled with an extraordinary collection of beautiful objects.
These Bend Quilts by Emma Pettway (2021), from the 1864 woodblock series Edo Flowers: Five Youths by Kunichika Toyohara, 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 six inches long, carved bones show a closely packed crosshatch whale surrounded by tormented sailors in 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
At the Drawing Center at 35 Worcester Street, Manhattan until September 18th. (212) 219-2166, drawingcenter.org.
