Holly Solomon

The Princess of Pattern and Duchess of Decoration

…Once we get rid of our cultural bias against Third World Art, “decorative” art and traditional women’s art, we may be able to break down the superficial elitism of Western abstract art. Patterning could be more of an art of the people than most forms of social realism —John Perrault

Art history is, of course, the history of art and the artists who made it. It weaves in the context of time and place, as well as the influences of a wide swipe of culture, from pop to low to high. It also, like it or not, includes the history of commerce, of the art market, and of the persuasions of the people who control that market—particularly art gallery owners, or gallerists, who sometimes call themselves art dealers. One such art dealer is Holly Solomon (1934-2002).

Holly Dworken was born in Connecticut to a Russian-born father who owned a grocery store. While attending Sarah Lawrence, she met and married Horace Solomon, a Yale graduate—and more importantly, a Yale graduate with a rich daddy. When they began their life in New York City, Holly started taking acting classes at Lee Strasberg studio, and was introduced to artists, gallerists and members of the art scene. She started stopping in to the places her new downtown friends told her about, and began collecting art, her first purchase being a Dan Flavin minimal light work procured from Richard Bellamy of the Green Gallery. But soon she was heavily interested in Pop Art—in fact she sat for a Warhol portrait—and dubbed herself the “Princess of Pop.”

At the end of the 1960s, she and her husband opened an alternative arts space at 98 Greene Street in SoHo, and while this was several years after Yoko Ono’s loft performances, George Mecunias’s Fluxus happenings, and Judson Church’s dance theater, which opened in 1962, the idea of a non-commercial arts space hosting a range of arts events, performances and idea exchanges was still relatively novel. In 1972, the space closed, but not before Holly produced a documentary about five artists who performed there, which won an award at that year’s Edinburgh Film Festival. At the time of closing she had hosted successful readings by poets like Ted Barrigan, performances by Laurie Anderson, and exhibitions of artists like Gordon Matta Clark. 

Not finished yet, Holly decided to open a commercial gallery in 1975, also in SoHo, on West Broadway. She committed to showing a handful of artists who made work that looked nothing like the prevailing accepted high art of the day, which was mostly minimal and conceptual, and mostly made by men. She championed art that included pattern, color, and traditionally feminine crafts: weaving, textile, sewing, mosaic. She became the main proponent of this art movement, known as Pattern and Decoration, which would evolve in the later 70s to be an important next step in the history of art. And while the movement included artists of all genders, the vast majority of those working within it were women who understood that in order to diminish long-standing hierarchies in art history—all of which prioritized male, white, “first world” viewpoints—they would have to elevate tropes of pattern and decorating to the highest echelons of painting. 

[holly Solomon] championed art that included pattern, color, and traditionally feminine crafts: weaving, textile, sewing, mosaic. She became the main proponent of this art movement, known as Pattern and Decoration.

Holly Solomon, icon

“In regarding the basic texts of Modern Art, we came to realize that the prejudice against the decorative has a long history and is based on hierarchies: fine art above decorative art, Western art above non-Western art, men’s art above women’s art. By focusing on these hierarchies we discovered a disturbing belief system based on the moral superiority of the art of Western civilization,” wrote Valerie Jaydon and Joyce Kozloff, two Pattern and Decoration painters who together published the important text Art Hysterical Notions of Progress and Culture. Both artists showed their work with Holly Solomon and were present at a January, 1975 meeting at the loft of artist Robert Zakanitch in Tribeca, where a group discussed, debated, and championed the importance of this new strain of art making as a way to achieve social change. It was essential that the art historian Amy Goldin was present—she had been the professor of two of the movement’s most prominent artists, Robert Kushner and Kim Macconell—and while he was not at this meeting, “P and D,” as it was known, also found an advocate in the critic and curator John Perrault, who expounded on its ability to create social change. “Pattern painting is non-minimalist, non-sexist, historically conscious, sensuous, romantic, rational and decorative…for some time some have felt that what we need is an art that will acknowledge Third World art and/or those forms traditionally thought of as women’s work…once we get rid of our cultural bias against Third World Art, “decorative” art and traditional women’s art, we may be able to break down the superficial elitism of Western abstract art. Patterning could be more of an art of the people than most forms of social realism,” he said.  

Solomon was the greatest proponent of the P and D artists of all, and gave them a home in her gallery, which she moved uptown, back down to SoHo, and then eventually closed in favor of running an appointment-only space from the Chelsea Hotel until her death in 2002. She entertained fabulously, was a voracious shopper, the mother of two sons, and always a supporter of artists. Next week we will look at some of those artists and art that made up P and D, but today I wanted to highlight the importance of dealers like her, who made these experimental movements possible for the artists who believed in them.