Bray sketches with her camera, taking digital images of the landscape, urban and rural, then fragments the images in Photoshop into shapes and forms. She projects these images onto walls or paper stretched like canvas, and meticulously draws then paints the shapes. The wall works use latex or cut-out paper. The paper works are painted with gouache and ink. No matter the scale, Bray explores the ambiguous realm between abstraction and representation, evoking notions of the Western landscape both romantic and unromantic. Bray systemizes our visual experience of “the natural world.” In doing so she reveals art and nature as concrete.

Bray earned her MFA in painting from the University of Iowa, after growing up in Arizona. She relocated to Denver in 2006 and is an adjunct professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Denver.

 

Fashion is everywhere, from network television’s Fashion Star to cable television’s Project Runway and in Denver, where Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective, will compete this spring with Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada: On Fashion which opens May 10 at the Met. YSL in Denver runs through July 8.

Yet Pierre Berge, Yves Saint Laurent’s business and life partner and the director of the Fondation Pierre Berge Yves Saint Laurent, co-sponsor of the Denver exhibition, and the first foundation organized to keep an archive of haute couture, said:

“I think fashion is not an art. I should not say that maybe, but I’m convinced fashion is not an art, but fashion needs an artist to exist. To be. And Saint Laurent was an artist–a great artist.”

The YSL Retrospective is beautiful. And skinny. And angular. Such radical dimensions are what the Hamilton Building may have been designed for: sweeping, grand exhibitions of objects that move and don’t need to hang plumb on the walls. Denver is the only U.S. venue for this show, which chief curator Florence Muller called “the most important retrospective ever done” on Yves Saint Laurent’s fashion.

Remember when women didn’t wear trousers? It was St. Laurent who introduced in 1966 the idea of a woman going to a party dressed in a tuxedo. The retrospective also solidified that Saint Laurent in a sense instigated a sea change in gender rules by this introduction of menswear to women’s fashion. he also saw another kind of revolution: street leathers taken to the runway for made-to-order garments.  Without YSL there could very well have been no J Lo.

Culled from 5,000 works held in the Fondation archive and curated by Muller, a fashion historian, the exhibition features 200 original works of haute couture  spanning 40 years from 1958, the first year that Saint Laurent was the head designer at Christian Dior, through his last fashion show in 2002.

The exhibition is organized thematically. Gowns and ensembles on display include those designed for his muses and favorite clients from Catherine Deneuve (who is featured in her own small section of the exhibition) to Nan Kempner, Princess Grace of Monaco, Loulou de la Falaise, Lauren Bacall and Paloma Picasso.

The exhibition opens with the famous photos of Saint Laurent by Irving Penn but also later features a portrait by Andy Warhol that usually hangs in Pierre Berge’s office and, for the first time ever, the controversial nude photos of Saint Laurent by Jeanloup Sieff taken for an ad campaign.

His studio has been recreated and my favorite section of the exhibition features 750 pieces of paper with colored fabric swatches, which the designer actually used. Tucked amid the exploded rainbow are six muslin dresses from his last show. Fashion may not be art, but this hallway represented the artist Saint Laurent’s palette.

Other sections of the exhibition feature his dialogue with art and artists and his imaginary travels.

“Warhol took things from the supermarket and put them into art. YSL did the same with art and put it into fashion,” Muller summed up.

He began making his “Anemotive Kinetics” while still at Indiana University. A paper model from 1957-58 is part of this show. He made Anemotive Kinetics for decades, but in 1970 Mangold created the “I-Beam” series for an exhibition at Friends of Contemporary Art Gallery. These evolved into the “Tetrahedralhyperspheres” of the late 70s and early 80s, more rounded forms with natural finishes. His most recent works are called “PTTSAAES” which stands for “Points Traveling Through Space at an Erratic Speed.”

Chronological retrospectives bring to bear a full body of work and allow viewers a glimpse of understanding into the mind and process of the artist. This one features works both inside and outside, smaller gallery pieces and monumental sculptures. While Artyard, the gallery founded by Mangold’s wife Peggy features his work, the open galleries and surrounding spaces at The Arvada Center offer a breadth and depth to the viewing experience.

Tim, Space and Motion: Robert Mangold Retrospective is on view at the Arvada Center through April 1, 2012.

Trine Bumiller’s background in printmaking is evident in her paintings: wood panels combined together like building blocks to create a composite form of square and rectangular shapes. On each panel, a different organic, flat, geometric element suggests nature or botany. The artist often plays with color, preferring unnatural combinations, such as hot pink and yellow, orange with acid green or lilac contrasted with earth tones. The lines, shapes and layers of her painting technique hearken back to her training as a printmaker. Using a method known as glazing, each work is created by building up as many as fifty layers of thin oil paint. Bumiller works on tables, with the panels lying flat, allowing the liquid pigment to pool and coalesce. It’s a slow process. One layer a day. And as the layers of glaze are building, so are the cognitive connections. She begins to interpret her designs, formed during an earlier intuitive drawing process.

Bumiller begins by photographing natural elements. Recently it was grasses and yucca on a trip to Arizona. She then combines those images with others taken from magazines and the Internet. Up until a few years ago she would mock up concepts for paintings using a light box, or flatten a photograph by hand with paint, marking out certain details, leaving only the strongest elements. Today, the artist works on a computer. It’s intuitive. She looks for shapes, forms and lines that she likes together. The most difficult part of the process for Bumiller is creating the watercolor sketches of each work. It is here that she plays with color, shape and form, designing in essence what will be the final painting. She often creates the watercolors at her vacation home near the Continental Divide high in the Colorado Rockies, where it is quieter and more peaceful than her painting studio in Denver.

It was 2001 when Bumiller created her first multi-panel painting. “I was laying branches on stripes and painting those divisions. I thought, why not make it more literal and conceptual at the same time,” Bumiller recounts. Influenced by the altar paintings and predellas she viewed during a year in Italy, and how they combined imagery in rectangular shapes to tell a story, she implemented a similar structure for a public art commission at the University of Colorado. The work was created for a long hallway in the engineering building outside the water lab; she decided to make the 37-foot long painting meander like a river, and was installing it when 9/11 happened. “Instead of symmetrical, predictable rectangles I was doing paintings that were more random, kind of like the world felt at the time,” she recalls. “I went back to try the traditional panels, but they didn’t work for me anymore.”

Her upcoming solo exhibition at Zg Gallery in Chicago is titled “In Medias Res,” Latin for “into the middle of things.” “I like that in-between period, that in-between region whether it’s literal or philosophical. I’ve been working with the organic and inorganic and finding that combination in the middle of things that is representational and abstract,” she explains.

Viewing Bumiller’s paintings, her interest in science is evident. She explores imagery that is similar yet diverse: spiraling stems developing on a plant could represent the Milky Way, a rippled pool of water might be a recent galaxy discovered by the Hubble telescope. Less evident is her exploration of memory and the environment as repository. “Our memories are part of the landscape and yet we don’t see it,” she says. In this way, her paintings are a bit like Ross Bleckner’s memento mori. And with her use of organic and abstract it’s easy to think of Bumiller as a more restrained Judy Pfaff.

Symmetrical yet random, ordered but disordered, microscopic and macroscopic, Bumiller’s works employ the concrete medium of paint in such a way as to address the mysteries of the universe, and to find the edge where the individual meets the universal.

“Trine Bumiller: In Media Res, New Paintings” will be on view from March 2 — April 14, 2012. At Zg Gallery, in Chicago. www.zggallery.com

Trine Bumiller is also represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver www.robischongallery.com; and Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in New York, www.markelfinearts.com

About the cover: Clyfford Still PH-129, 1949 Oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 53″ Clyfford Still Museum Collection Photo: Peter Harholdt

In 1944, Clyfford Still did something that no known painter appears to have done before him. Using thick, black pigment he troweled a large canvas (105 x 92 1/2 inches) with a palette knife, then cut that textured black field with a deep red wound forming the outline of an almost organic shape. Vivid yellow appears to be shining through from beneath a tear, while a drip of white appears to ooze atop the blackness. In the lower right corner, a crevasse of emerald green fights for attention. There is no place for the eye to rest and the red wound appears to extend beyond the edge of the canvas. It’s an impending work that stops viewers in their tracks at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver where one views the artist’s work chronologically.

Months before, Still was creating normal-sized paintings that merged together human figures and machines. He was getting less and less literal about the human form, moving to capture the essence and spirit of life itself and then — bam — here is this larger than life painting, thick, textural and richly black with bits of bare canvas peaking through like stars in the darkest part of a night sky. It is different than anything Still painted before and is the first of many works he would create exploring the ideas he fused together for the first time in 1944-N-No.1.

In our post-modern world, filled with endless repetitions of abstraction, the sight of a non representational work of art continues to elicit commentary ranging from “I spilled paint on the garage floor that looked like that,” to “my two-three-four-or five year old could paint that.” Yet, to the discerning eye, 1944-N No. 1 is more than fields of color and a few lines. The artist is playing with figure, ground, color and texture to create something more than just paint on canvas. In 1944, in the midst of WWII, a group of American artists who came to be known as the Abstract Expressionists were deadly serious about their art. Clyfford Still, perhaps the most serious, committed to preserving the purity of his work by withdrawing from the New York art world and rarely exhibiting or selling his paintings. He believed the color, texture, shapes and forms “all fuse[d] together into a living spirit.”

While splitting his time between the East and West Coasts, Still established the basis for his original style — attributable to his Western roots. The red, vertical line in 1944-N No. 1 (and all Clyfford Still paintings) has significant meaning. Born in Gandin, North Dakota, he grew up on the prairie of Alberta, Canada. “When there were snowstorms, you either stood up and lived or laid down and died,” Still said. Another time he stated: “My paintings have the rising forms of the vertical necessity of life dominating the horizon. For in such a land a man must stand upright, if he would live. And so born and became intrinsic this elemental characteristic of my life and work.” To Clyfford Still, his paintings merged life and death.

His peers spoke of his inventiveness. Robert Motherwell said that Still’s show at Art of This Century Gallery in 1946 “was the most original. A bolt out of the blue. Most of us were still working through images … Still had none.” The same year that Still created 1944-N No.1, Rothko produced his surrealist painting Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, Jackson Pollock painted his cubist Gothic. Willem De Kooning didn’t create his first abstraction until 1945, when he painted Pink Angels, merging his Cubist and Surrealist tendencies. Mark Rothko, who wrote the introduction for Still’s exhibition, said that Still, working out West and alone had arrived at a completely new way of painting, incorporating forms and highly personal methods. Still came to abstraction not through European influence, but through Regionalism and Western aesthetics. Jackson Pollock said that Still made “the rest of us look academic.”

Mark Rothko, Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea

Jackson Pollock, Gothic

Willem DeKooning, Pink Angels

“As he [Still] himself has expressed it, his paintings are, ‘of the Earth, the Damned, and of the Recreated.’ Every shape becomes an organic entity, inviting the multiplicity of associations inherent in all living things. To me they form a theogony of the most elementary consciousness, hardly aware of itself beyond the will to live — a profound and moving experience,” Rothko wrote the same year he would break through to creating the spiritually infused, multiform abstractions he is known for, influenced by Clyfford Still.

Critics and historians also recognized Still’s originality. Irving Sandler said: “Jackson Pollock may have been the more important artist, but Still was, in my opinion, the greater innovator.” Sam Hunter called him “a remarkable and ultimately highly influential maverick” and “an independent genius.” While Clement Greenberg claimed that when he first saw a Clyfford Still painting he “was impressed as never before by how estranging and upsetting genuine originality in art can be.” Even as late as 1976, Robert Hughes said Still was “a singular talent whose dimension will not be fully known in his own lifetime.”

Clyfford Still has been called a megalomaniac, egotistical, difficult, but really he was a man passionate and dedicated to his art. A purist. He wrote to Greenberg in 1956, acknowledging that he had set himself the seemingly impossible “task of taking painting out of academicism and all the collective traps laid down for it by the need for security in the name of rationalism, culture, aesthetics and other conventional alibis. Inevitably, I had to violate the expectations or demands of others in painting. It was done concsiously [sic] and with high purpose. And the results? — I fought for freedom to build an unlimited and ennobling instrument.”

Primal and elemental Still’s paintings seem to animate matter and invoke a life force held within an infinite space. The purpose of his art was aimed at uplifting and liberating the human soul from the limitations of the modern age — science, mechanism, power and death. “I want the spectator to be reassured that something he values within himself has been touched and found a kind of correspondence. That being alive…is worth the labor.” And in our cynical contemporary world we forget that this idea was at one time the most imaginatively original concept an artist could convey.

“[On The Road] is about a group of crazy young people who just travel back and forth across the United States. Sometimes they hitch-hike and sometimes they drive cars. They steal cars and just want to be on the road the whole time. I’ve always liked that notion,” Ruscha said.

So it’s not unexpected that Ruscha would try to elucidate Jack Kerouac by lifting phrases from the novel and painting them in his signature-style: block print over nearly colorless, textured backgrounds, or vibrant hues with photorealistic images of mountain peaks along the bottom of the canvas.

Other common objects of Western culture also play a significant role in the art of Ed Ruscha. These are evident in the limited edition artist’s book version of On The Road created by Ruscha in 2009. The book is 222-pages printed on Hahnemühle paper and illustrated with photographs taken by the artist, commissioned or found. The photo plates are all blind embossed and tipped in by hand. An unbound version of the book, double-pages framed for display, is on view at the Denver Art Museum in Ed Ruscha: On The Road. Installed in an elegant grid at one end of the gallery, the rest of the space features 15 related paintings.

“If you weren’t familiar with the lines from Kerouac, you wouldn’t just know the source,” Thomas Smith, director of the Petrie Institute of Western Art said as we toured the exhibition. “You would think it was just Ruscha pulling literary verse out of context. At the heart of what Ruscha is, he’s a pop artist. In sort of the Andy Warhol sense of grabbing soup cans and images that are in popular culture, Ruscha is grabbing language that’s part of, and has become central to, popular culture, and the American story.”

Ruscha uses an all-caps typeface he invented, of curved letter forms squared-off, named “Boy Scout Utility Modern.” It’s his re-creation of the aesthetic of old-fashioned billboards and handmade commercial signs. And he knows something about this since he started his artistic career as a commercial artist. But it was his interest in words and typography that provides the primary subject matter for his paintings, prints and photographs.

A brilliant blue Western sky is the background for Mañana a large painting that is near the center of the gallery. “Sure, Baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next week that was all I heard—mañana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.” The words “probably means” nearly disappear into a rugged, snow-capped mountain peak that juts up into the bottom of the painting. Ice-capped peaks protrude into an emerald green background on another painting across the room. “Greatest seventy-yard passer in the history of New Mexico State Reformatory,” written on the canvas. And in this one “reformatory” dematerializes into the peak.

The photo realistic mountains began appearing in Ruscha’s work in 1998, a few years after he created a mural for the Great Hall at the Denver Public Library. And an early example from the DAM collection is on view in a nearby gallery.

But even if one is unfamiliar with Ruscha’s background, his affinity for artist’s books, his inspiration found in language, one will find a link between his version of On The Road and his paintings in photography, which has played a crucial role throughout his career. His photographs typically feature deadpan depictions of subjects not thought of as having aesthetic qualities. This is evident in the imagery selected to illustrate On The Road the book. Like his paintings, most of his photographs are devoid of human presence, emphasizing the structure and its placement in a built environment. The same could be said of the phraseology in his paintings. His choice of words are straightforward while also being inscrutable. “The Holy Con-Man Began to Eat.” “Brakemen eat surly meals in diners by the tracks.” “Everything takes care of itself. I could close my eyes and this old car would take care of itself.”

And they are Western. Contemporary Western. Pop Western. Deadpan Western.

Tisch was arrested and charged with felony criminal mischief for punching, clawing and rubbing her buttocks against 1957-J No. 2 at the Clyfford Still Museum. She then leaned against the canvas, pulled her pants down and urinated on the floor. On Friday, January 6, the judge reduced her bond from $20,000 to $5,000. Tisch cried and appeared emotionally distraught during her court appearance.

The event has sparked some great headlines and even more entertaining commentary around the Internet and blogosphere.

• Clyfford Still Painting Gets a Lap Dance in Denver appeared on Hyperallergic
• Drunk Lady Rubs Butt, Tries to Pee on $30 Million Painting is how Gawker wrote the lede
• Fox News took the (ahem) conservative approach with Colorado Woman Allegedly Punches, Urinates Near $30 M Painting
• While Boing Boing went with Police Unsure if Woman Urinated on $30 M Abstract Expressionist Painting
• Carmen Tish Charged with Criminal Mischief After Punching, Urinating Next to a $30 M Clyfford Still Painting was the extremely long headline on Huffington Post.

A few writers have pointed out the wall text next to the painting, which read: “I never wanted color to be color, texture to be texture, images to become images. I wanted them all to fuse into a living spirit.”

I’m pretty sure Ms. Tisch’s actions are not what Still had in mind.

The comments on the Internet and Facebook have been entertaining. Everywhere someone has made a crack about art critics:

• “Everybody’s a critic. Although usually people give things a thumbs down, or at least half a star.” Gregory R

However, it was not just Denver where the commentary took issue with the painting itself. There are a plethora of comments from New York, Los Angeles and London stating the same thing:

• My two year old could paint that! (No, they couldn’t)
• Looks like she threw up on it! (No, it doesn’t)
• I’ve got stains from paint spills in my garage that look just like that! (No, they don’t!)

And of course most people wanted to know how a painting is worth $30M and why it is going to cost the estimated $10,000 to repair it, etc. etc. And lots of people wondered why it wasn’t behind glass. To which I say, the experience of the work is not the same if it is hidden behind wall size sheets of glass.

A few of my favorite comments:

• “Once in the courtroom and unshackled, Mrs. Tisch will present the final act of her performance art, STILL LIFE TRIBUTUM.” GranPrix
• “So she took a number one or Number two?” Gr8ful Dude
• “What would Duchamp do?” gardengirl
• “I now have a new life goal: to create art so compelling that random lunatics are moved to rub their bodies (and bodily fluids) all over it.  Suck on that, Jeff Koons.” ruadh
• “I hope they throw the (art history) book at her.” Mat Gleason
• “Not an Onion article!” Dustin Blair
• “To pee or not to pee, that’s the question. Whether it’s art in the minds of men…” Pat Platt
• “A Colorado woman dropped her pants at a museum and rubbed her rear end all over a painting valued at $30 million, … Yes? And the story is?” Jerry Saltz
• “No. I mean doesn’t everyone do this? I do all the time … ” Jerry Saltz
• “Butt (ha) if she applies paint with same butt, is it art? : )” Sarah Ann Filler
• “She missed. If it was a guy he’d of signed his name.” Sid Garrison
• “$10k for a scratch and sniff test?” Art Valley
• “It is obvious to me that it is totally the paintings fault.” Robin Winters

The most informative string of comments were found on ArtFagCity where Corinna Kirsch explains how to clean urine off a painting from Cray Thomsen, a conservator of 19th century Russian paintings. Because you never know when you might need to clean urine from a painting:

If it’s fresh enough just use a slightly damp soft cotton ball and dap the “accident” up followed by a dry cotton ball. If it had been there for years and was starting to effect the paint I would clean it with a q-tip and a vulpex soap mixture follow by water and then a dry cotton ball to lick up all the moisture. Just make sure not to saturate the substrate!

And the craziest conspiracy theory:

I bet the museum paid her to do it just to get publicity and bring in more revenue. That piece would probably look better with piss all over it. Education is being cut and teachers are being laid off but that “painting” is worth >$30 mil? Silly. I kind of want to piss on it myself now. theeltimbo

But I think my favorite is this:

• “I know I am a tasteless Philistine, but honestly, this painting is “great?” Wow. Who knew?” littletonguy

Citizen journalism and citizen bathrooms appear to be growing closer.

In yet another effort to boost creative placemaking, the state of Colorado has released the guidelines in support of HB11-1031 the creation of Creative Districts in communities, neighborhoods or contiguous geographic areas around the state. Colorado Creative Industries division will certify two Creative Districts in 2012. Each will receive a $15,000 grant and a technical assistance package to enhance their districts. Additionally, five applicants will be identified as prospective districts and receive $8,000 and customized technical assistance to enhance the possibility that they may be certified in the future. Also, eight applicants will be identified as emerging and receive $2,000 and assistance to further their district planning.

Guidelines were approved on December 6 and released that afternoon. Applications must be submitted by 4 p.m., Monday, January 30, 2012. The agency has received inquiries from over 30 communities and neighborhoods interested in applying for the designation. Applicants must be an existing Creative District with an existing non-profit or for-profit managing entity; or a partnership of government, non-profit, and/or for-profit entities with one partner serving as the lead applicant; or a municipal or county government. The applicant must have formal local governmental endorsement or designation and distinct boundaries with an anchor arts or cultural organization or a cluster of creative entrepreneurs and venues. With such a short time-table, I wonder how many applications will actually be submitted that meet the criteria.

I was pleased to see Colorado move forward with this legislation and their language in the House Bill that kept the designation open and applicable to urban and rural areas, but meeting these requirements this year will be challenging for more rural communities and the first year designees will likely come from more urban areas with existing creative districts. It’s a bit difficult for a rural community to apply if their master plan or economic development plan has never before considered creativity as a possible industry for growth. And I doubt many rural communities have those designations. But I hope I’m wrong and that we see some bold ideas from towns or neighborhoods that have never before considered creative industry as their future.

This is the pilot year for CCI to certify Colorado Creative Districts. The primary goal is to enhance planning, development, and improvement in a “district” and to create a hub of economic activity. Statewide Creative Districts exist in ten states. There are 90 cities in the U.S. with arts and culture districts. Denver has several including the Art District on Santa Fe and RhiNo. These type of districts often become visitor destinations, attract creative businesses and revitalize empty buildings and spaces. They can also be used to celebrate the historic and individual identity of a community. Some states even provide tax credits. At this time, the state is not offering any new tax incentives for Creative Districts, but some incentives, like enterprise zone tax credits, which already exist, can be used by creative district developers if they meet the requirements. According to Maryo Ewell, director of the Creative District Guidelines, the state is encouraging local district activists to explore income options with local governments as part of an overall strategy of sustainability.

Interested parties can download the guidelines at
http://www.coloradocreativeindustries.org/programs/economic/creativedistricts/Creative%20District%20Guidelilnes_2012.pdf

The Denver Art Museum is the only scheduled U.S. venue in 2012 for two exhibitions imagined as crowd-sources: Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective, and Becoming Van Gogh. One of these exhibitions will be the most well attended in DAM history. My prediction? Yves Saint Laurent, which opens March 25 and runs through July 8, 2012, will feature 200 haute couture garments, photographs, drawings and films will draw more crowds to Denver than any other exhibition. It will also bring in the stylish, the fashionista, the well-heeled. Let’s just hope those in the tourism office aren’t so busy trying to promote Colorado skiing that they blow this opportunity for the city to roll out the red carpet for the Vogue crowd. Becoming Van Gogh opens October 21 and runs through January 20, 2013 and is an in-depth exploration of the artist’s work. Perhaps Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith will be released in paperback around that time.

Beyond blockbusters, I’m looking forward to seeing Ed Ruscha: On the Road, which opened December 24 and runs through April 22, 2012.  In 2009, Ruscha created a limited edition artist book version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the continuous 120-foot-long scroll recording Kerouac’s road trip. For this exhibition, Ruscha has created a new body of paintings and drawings inspired by passages in Kerouac’s novel. I’m particularly interested in the beat poets and their influence on contemporary art. Particularly overlooked in my opinion is The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied poets at Naropa University founded by Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, John Cage and Diane di Prima. The avant-garde and the counterculture collided in Boulder, Colorado.

Also on my radar is the Mark Grotjahn exhibit at the Aspen Art Museum, February 17 through April 29. Art critic at The Nation, Barry Schwabsky will discuss Grotjahn’s work on March 15. And skiers in Aspen can purchase limited edition Grotjahn designed lift tickets featuring the artist’s exuberant mask sculptures.