With all the excitement in this country about Chinese contemporary art, the fact that China is a police state is often forgotten. Leave it to the Chinese to remind us with some timely events that reveal the true conditions under which artists live and work there. A couple of weeks…
When I woke up on the morning of March 3 and prepared to attend the unveiling of a design for a new downtown museum dedicated to abstract-expressionist genius Clyfford Still, my heart filled with dread. I really didn’t want to see it, and had even less interest in meeting its…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Kazillionaire, arts donor and fine-art photographer Laura Merage has gotten a step closer to opening what she calls an “art incubator,” dubbed RedLine, by forming a board of directors. The seven-member group includes Merage and two other artists, Lori Bauman and Tom Guiton, and four administrative executives, Sue Renner, Bruce…
The Society for Photographic Education (www.spenational.org) will hold its 45th annual national conference at the Adam’s Mark Hotel this weekend, bringing about a thousand professionals in photo-based occupations to town. It’s too late to register, but there are limited day and sessions passes available, as well as an Exhibits Fair…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Just a hop, skip and a jump across Wadsworth Boulevard from the Lab at Belmar (see review) is the Lakewood Heritage Center in Belmar Park (801 South Yarrow Street, Lakewood, 303-987-7850). In the LHC’s Radius Gallery, curator Robin Anderson has organized Parallel Pathways, a ceramics duet featuring the work of…
When the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver unveiled its fabulous new David Adjaye-designed building last fall (“Smart and Sassy,” October 27, 2007), director and curator Cydney Payton put together seven discrete shows which were presented in each of the museum’s seven clearly defined spaces. Partly because the exhibits all opened on…
George Carlson. Put together by curator Ann Daley, who has shaped and defined the Western collection at the Denver Art Museum, George Carlson: Heart of the West deals with the career of an accomplished neo-traditional artist who looks to the century-old Impressionist style for inspiration. The Carlson exhibit includes nearly…
Ivar Zeile is definitely a fan of conceptual art, and he has selected two interesting Colorado painters who work in that manner for a pair of solos on view at Plus Gallery (2350 Lawrence Street, 303-296-0927, www.plusgallery.com). In the front space is New Frontier, which highlights recent paintings by Dana…
Though I try not to use the term “cutting edge” since it likens the art world to a knife as opposed to the soft, puddle-like thing it actually is, I sometimes do it anyway. The reason is because the term so handily describes the virtually indescribable, art-wise. Being on the…
Clyfford Still Unveiled. A master and pioneer of mid-twentieth-century abstract expressionism, painter Clyfford Still was something of an eccentric in the artist-as-egomaniac stripe. His antisocial behavior led to a situation where 94 percent of his artworks remained together after he died — a staggeringly complete chronicle of his oeuvre that…
The blockbuster Inspiring Impressionism (see review), at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000, www.denverartmuseum.org), posits the idea that the widely admired style both signaled a clear break with the past and, strangely enough, represented a straightforward continuation of Old Master traditions. Another show at the DAM,…
There’s another big blockbuster show coming that’s guaranteed to bring throngs of the great unwashed masses to the Denver Art Museum. They’ll be drawn to the place by the one-two punch of Old Masters and Impressionists, whose paintings and drawings are being showcased in Inspiring Impressionism, opening this weekend. Oh,…
Face East. Gallery co-directors Jim Robischon and Jennifer Doran usually go the extra mile to put together a great show, but in this case they went an extra few thousand, traveling all the way to China to pick out pieces for Face East, their salute to contemporary Chinese art. In…
Last fall, the Sandra Phillips Gallery (744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969, www.thesandraphillipsgallery.com) presented a museum-quality show featuring some of Colorado’s most important ceramic artists, including Martha Daniels and Paul Soldner. Before the show opened, Daniels had lunch with Denver Art Museum curator Gwen Chanzit. Daniels — whose own work is…
Colorado has an important ceramics tradition that stretches back a century. But the ranks of the top artists in the field have taken some big hits over the past decade: Betty Woodman retired from teaching in Boulder and moved to New York; Rodger Lang and Jim McKinnell died; and Nan…
Grounded. This good-looking exhibit pairs recent landscape-based abstract paintings by Lui Ferreyra with photos recording roadside landmarks by Peter Brown. Ferreyra fractures the imagery in his distinctive work by reducing it to non-repeating patterns of geometric shapes. There are reverberations of cubism in this, as well as references to digitization…
In 1990, Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp hired his old friend Craig Miller to start the Architecture, Design and Graphics department. A gifted and visionary curator, Miller took the ball and ran with it, collecting pieces with abandon. He became especially deft at absorbing entire collections of graphics, and…
A couple of years ago, while I was serving on a panel, one of my fellow panelists — I won’t say who — commented that it was no longer relevant where something was made because art had become truly international. I had two words for this would-be theorist: Chinese art…
Eric Matelski is an alternative scene impresario who hosts arty-events that attract the night owls. Tonight at 11 p.m. Matelski is putting forward his latest effort with the help of his cohort, Hector Munoz (aka Hecktor Muoz). The two are hosting their on-going adventure in cutting edge entertainment at Dazzle…
Color as Field. It’s no exaggeration to say that Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 is one of the best shows presented in Denver in a generation. Filled with a who’s who of American art — Still, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Stella — it’s like a brief vacation into a world where…
