Collection Applied Design

Over his four-decade career, painter Kim MacConnel (born 1946), a pioneer of the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, has elicited comparisons to Picasso and Matisse for his brightly hued canvases, in which abstracted glyphs spill over into pattern. "MacConnel reminds us of what every homemaker knows," Christopher Miles wrote in Artforum; "that decoration denotes, connotes, and implies; that it's a channel as effective as any sign system for the delivery and subversion of ideas." Of the movement he helped foment, MacConnel has said, "P&D is nonhierarchical... It is much more chaotic. It is open to different voices." This important volume contains 65 color images, plus an interview with the artist by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's curator Robin Clark, and an essay by Richard Marshall.