In spite of a century of modern art jam-packed with things like abstraction, minimalism and conceptualism, the venerable tradition of depicting the human figure in art has held on admirably. As the modernist twentieth century comes to a close, artists working with the human body as their subject seem to…
He’s midway through his solo exhibit at the Close Range Gallery of the Denver Art Museum, but Phil Bender still acts embarrassed about all the attention. In fact, Bender’s taken an “Aw, shucks” approach–which works perfectly with his thick Texas drawl–to the accolades heaped on his signature grids of found…
The construction of Denver International Airport has meant many things to many people. For most of us, DIA has meant an extra hour or two of travel just to get to and from the remote facility. To many who were more intimately involved, especially in the airport’s financing and its…
It was in mid-March that Paul Hughes, director of the venerable, twenty-something Inkfish Gallery, announced that he would mount an in-depth exhibit of thirty mostly small works by New York-based kinetic sculptor George Rickey. That fine exhibit, George Rickey: Recent Kinetic Sculptures, is now open at Inkfish and runs through…
Denver’s really starting to look and act like a big city. The traffic in town is getting worse by the day. There’s no place to park either downtown or in Cherry Creek. And we now have a Mark di Suvero sculpture, “Lao Tzu,” sited on Acoma Plaza at the Civic…
Unlike in many American cities, just about every tree, shrub, plant and vine in Denver has been planted and cared for by someone. As early as the 1880s, people were bringing blue spruce trees down from the mountains and planting them among the scrub bushes and prairie grasses, which are…
Spring is here, and that can mean only one thing in the art world–you can’t find a parking space on gallery row in LoDo. When the Rockies take over Wazee Street, plenty of fans park at the two-hour meters that line the street. They can count on getting a parking…
It’s an unexpected stroke of luck to find three of the most important cultural institutions in the mountain West conveniently lined up in a row along Denver’s Civic Center complex. And you could hardly miss the Colorado History Museum, the Denver Public Library and the Denver Art Museum, housed as…
The comet Hyakutake has just passed close enough–9 million miles or so–to be seen from the earth without the aid of a telescope. Just over a year ago, the comet was completely unknown, even to the amateur astronomer in Japan who ultimately discovered it and for whom it was named;…
Only a handful of Colorado artists are genuinely famous–unless, of course, we’re talking about artists who work in ceramics. In that field, Colorado can point to a tradition that has produced many important figures, several of whom are known around the world. Think of Nan and Jim McKinnell, Paul Soldner,…
It’s tempting to compare Denver’s vibrant alternative art scene to a circus. But that wouldn’t be fair to circuses, which have only three rings, as well as an underlying organization and theme. The alternative scene, on the other hand, is governed by anarchy. Literally anything goes at the co-op galleries…
There is no region in the United States more firmly implanted in the popular imagination of the world than the American West. The images are romantic ones and have a long history. A rough-and-tumble Western mining town, for example, is the setting for a Giacomo Puccini opera–chosen, no doubt, because…
Greg Esser wears so many hats in the local art world that he’s reminiscent of Peter Sellers in one of those madcap Sixties comedies in which the British comic plays half a dozen roles. For starters, Esser’s the public art administrator for the Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Film…
It may be tempting for viewers to lump all abstract paintings that feature drips, runs, scratches and splashes into the abstract-expressionist camp. But look before you leap to any conclusions. Making the point that not all expressionist abstracts are abstract-expressionist are the nearly twenty gorgeous oils in the exhibit Sam…
Given Colorado’s relatively small population and isolation from the centers of American culture, the high level of art the state has supported over the years is nothing short of amazing. In fact, there’s only one thing that prevents Colorado from dominating the artistic culture of the mountain west–New Mexico, which…
So recently has the Boulder Art Center been renamed the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art–it was only last spring–that the new metro phone books still list it by its former moniker. That’s a shame, because we should try to forget about the BAC as soon as possible. For much of…
Our local cultural institutions do a mostly inadequate (and sometimes dreadful) job of nurturing the art of our region. It’s not as though there isn’t enough exhibition space–not when the vacant The End show by Edward Ruscha has had five months to befoul the Close Range Gallery at the Denver…
Nothing in history has saturated the world like American pop culture. For the past fifty years, American movies, television, graphics, and especially advertising have profoundly influenced the way the whole world looks. American fine arts have had a similar global influence. But interestingly, the popular media so commonly identified with…
A common perception within Denver’s alternative scene is that everyone has an equal right to participate–and that that’s what “open” or “outsider” shows are all about. I’ve even heard it said during a panel discussion linked to an Alternative Arts Alliance event that all art is valid–which, if it were…
The dead of winter is the last time one would expect to find an art show with most of the work exhibited outdoors. Surely only a lunatic–or, at the very least, an oddball–would schedule such an event in the coldest and darkest time of the year. However, that’s exactly what…
You’ll want to run through Shake, Rattle and Roll, the Colorado History Museum’s–excuse the expression–“exhibit” on the 1950s. And then you’ll want to run away as fast as you can. To say that this show is a total disaster barely hints at how bad it really is. I can’t recall…
The public made unprecedented expenditures on public art and public buildings last year in Denver. But you wouldn’t know it to look around. The biggest plum, both in terms of cost and lost opportunity, was Denver International Airport, born of the dreams of former mayor Federico Pena. The site plan…
