The seminar is dedicated to the US art movement Pattern and Decoration, which is currently the subject of an exhibition at mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. With mosaics, textile collages, paintings, installations, and performances, in the 1970s committed feminist artists like Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, and Robert Kushner aimed to bring color, formal diversity, and emotion back into art. Decoration played a key role, as did the techniques of artisanship associated with it. Bringing various ornamental traditions, from the Islamic world to Art Deco, into their work the artists not only questioned hierarchies between "high" and "low," but also between Western and non-Western art. A proximity to folk art and kitsch was welcomed as a deliberate counter to the "purism" of the art of the 1960s. Taking individual art works as a starting point, we will discuss functions and meanings of the decorative as well as questions of appropriation and an increasingly globalized notion of art. 

Prerequisites for participation are the attendance of all seminars and an interest in reading and discussion. Participants are required to give a short lecture in the exhibition "Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise," which is the basis for their term paper.

The number of participants is limited to 20.

There will be a special reference collection of publications in the mumok library.