Oh, the America of the 1950s. In the nostalgic mind’s eye, the era is all poodle-skirts and roller skates, malt shops furnished with chrome dinettes and jukeboxes filled with Elvis. It was a time when, according to the late career civil servant W. Averill Harriman, the whole country “drank Coca-Cola…
Sean Scully occupies a peculiar niche in the history of recent art. An unabashed modernist, he came of artistic age in the 1980s, an era dominated by an anti-modernist zeitgeist. The assault on modernism generally, and on abstract painting in particular, came from both the front and the rear. While…
You may want to wash your hands after taking in the trio of oddball (a polite but accurate term) conceptual exhibits that fill the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art this summer. While none are visually edifying, all three challenge conventional, and even unconventional, ideas about the nature of art and…
A cultural notion emanating from New York–as do so many–is that the art world closes down for the summer. While this may be true in that city, which wealthy collectors, gallery owners and artists alike abandon for the seashore during the dog days, out here in the hinterlands summer is…
Sally Perisho, the highly regarded director of Metropolitan State College’s Center for the Visual Arts, has been at the eye of a whirlwind the past few weeks. Last month her gallery moved from the corner of Wazee and 17th Streets in LoDo to a pair of storefronts next to the…
A new piece of public sculpture planned for the Denver Performing Arts Complex may yet displace the goofy entrance canopy at the Denver Art Museum as the most reviled object in the local art world. If the winning entry in a recent competition–Jonathan Borofsky’s as-yet-untitled monumental six-story-tall sculpture of conventionalized…
Contemporary art has fractured into innumerable directions and styles since the 1970s, but the situation has never been as wildly pluralistic as it is today. For proof of this diversity, see three current shows at two very different local venues. But catch them while you can–they’re all set to close…
On a recent sunny afternoon, Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp was standing under the museum’s still-controversial entrance canopy on Acoma Plaza. Not that the canopy provides any shade: Though workers began erecting it last fall, it’s still not finished. The stainless-steel panels intended to provide it with a roof…
As lower downtown’s sidewalks have become crowded with shoppers, tourists and sports fans, the trend among art galleries has been to move out or close up. That’s not just the story in LoDo, but on Broadway and throughout the central business district. The problem? Spiraling rents combined with sluggish art…
The new exhibit at Denver’s Museo de las Americas has an impenetrable title and an equally confusing outlook. 1598, 1848, 1898: Conquest and Consequences is billed as an exploration of the myriad relationships between the United States, Mexico and Spain. Its title suggests a provocative discussion and explanation of the…
Robin Rule, director of the Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, is on cloud nine, thanks to the nine abstract paintings that make up the gorgeous Dale Chisman: New Paintings exhibit that just opened at Rule. Not only is this show an aesthetic triumph for Chisman, the well-known contemporary master, but…
There’s good news and bad news these days at the Denver Art Museum. We’ll start with the good: After years of being on the road or in storage, the DAM’s own stash of modern and contemporary art is back on display with the opening of Welcome Back! Selections From the…
Anyone even remotely interested in tracing the course of contemporary art in Colorado over the past few decades will want to take in a pair of marvelous shows that focus on major, established local artists. But move fast–they’re closing soon. The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is feting venerable painter…
There haven’t been many negatives this past year for local lovers of photography. The hail of impressive shows began last spring with an exhibit at the Emmanuel Gallery that brought together some of Denver’s best talents. Then came a display of photography superstars from the collection of Hal Gould at…
Remarkable achievements in craft traditions are on display in two local shows. At Cherry Creek’s Pismo, Lino Tagliapietra, a living legend of Venetian glassmaking, is the subject of a self-titled solo show. Up in Golden, it’s the Colorado Clay Exhibition 1998, this year’s version of the venerable annual showcasing some…
The Nazis had a perversely high regard for the arts. As early as 1933, Adolf Hitler’s goons began a campaign against modern art, closing art schools, expelling modernist art teachers from German universities, and arresting and incarcerating scores of artists. Hitler, after all, was a failed artist who, as a…
The Round World gallery opened quietly last fall on the edge of downtown Denver, moving into a pair of rehabbed storefronts that share a red-brick Victorian building with the popular La Coupole French restaurant. It’s an obscure location for an art gallery; the neighborhood is neither LoDo, which remains downtown’s…
Vance Kirkland was the biggest name in Denver’s art world for much of the twentieth century. From the 1930s through the 1970s, he dominated the local art scene, not just as the city’s premier modern painter, but also as an influential art teacher and a powerful force at the Denver…
It used to be that real estate developers actually had to have plans to build something new before the Denver City Council would let them demolish a historic building. But at the council meeting February 23, Denver developer Bruce Berger didn’t have to come up with even that much. He…
Two compelling photography exhibits now at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities include nearly 100 works of art–and almost as many different ideas. The first show starts off with a titillating posted proviso: Children will not be admitted unless accompanied by an adult. But don’t get too excited…
The building at the corner of 17th and Wazee Streets, where Metropolitan State College’s Center for the Visual Arts occupies most of the ground floor, is currently shrouded in a jungle of metal pipes. But the oddly artistic maze isn’t part of the center’s fabulous Contemporary Metals USA exhibit. Instead,…
For many years, getting real was the chief preoccupation of the world’s painters. The Stone Age artists who decorated all those caves in France and Spain wanted views for their viewless spaces, and they painted what they knew: mainly bison and horses. The idea that painting exists to provide a…
