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…
How lucky Robin Rule must be. No sooner had she moved her namesake gallery from the Siberia of an off-street spot at the Icehouse in Lodo to her new location at Broadway and 1st Avenue, across the street from the Mayan Theater than her new neighborhood was heralded in Denver’s…
Many galleries go the route of the easy-to-do group show in the month of December, because it provides viewers with a wide variety of potential gift selections and because the holidays are overflowing with other kinds of seasonal events. Only during the dog days of August–a time when no one…
One of the great art soap operas of the past year has been the acrimonious split between Open Press, the respected printmaking outfit, and CSK Gallery, one of the newer kids on Wazee Street. Since December 1993, the printmaker and the gallery had been joined at the hip, sharing the…
In the 1950s, when it seemed as if every artist in America was working in an abstract style, a handful of visionaries in the San Francisco area were creating to the beat of a different drummer. The “Beats,” close cultural allies of the Beat poets, defied fashion by addressing recognizable…
Russell Beardsley’s sculptures, wall reliefs, mixed-media pieces and an installation are interspersed with Debra Goldman’s photos and photo-constructions in the current show at the Mackey Gallery. Though there are few obvious similarities between Beardsley’s Absence Reveals Presence and Goldman’s Recordar, the exhibits are highly compatible in tone, perhaps the product…
If it’s a taste of Manhattan modernism you’re craving this fall (and who isn’t?) run, do not walk, to Options 3–Robert Motherwell, the Denver Art Museum’s exhibit of twenty newly acquired paintings, collages and works on paper from this modern-day giant. Critics have sometimes dismissed Motherwell’s work as too pretty…
The Alternative Arts Alliance Open Show, which closes this weekend, is an annual demonstration of just how difficult it is for artists to create credible installations. Thank goodness an antidote is at the ready: Vital Connections, an intelligent and deeply felt installation by Virginia Folkestad that currently occupies the front…
Quick–name three women artists from Latin America. Well, there’s Frida Kahlo, of course, and then there’s, uh…er…. That most of us know so little about the art of our neighbors to the south makes a point about how art appreciation in this country can be xenophobic–that is, when it’s not…
The American frontier of the nineteenth century was a bonanza for both nature-loving romantics and the pragmatic forces of manifest destiny. And at the nexus of these two very different groups were the artists who recorded it all firsthand as members of the four major survey parties sent to map…
