Category: Art Criticism
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The Systematic American Landscape
“There is perhaps no central theme to American national identity than the land. Over the years, it has served as a wellspring of aesthetic beauty, spiritual sustenance, and economic opportunity.” Thus reads a wall sign at the Corcoran Gallery of Art beneath the title “Nature as Nation: 19th Century American Landscapes from the Collection.” The…
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Nobody reads what you write; why bother?
It was a sunny August afternoon in 2012. I sat with a friend on a relatively empty Denver restaurant patio under a green awning. We drank terrible, sticky-sweet mojitos and talked. My friend, an older man, a cellist, and a retired Merrill Lynch Investment Banker, was planning a trip to Rome, Prague, and Paris. At…
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What We Can Learn from Denver’s “Blue Mustang”
from adobeairstream.com in March 2009 Rachel Hultin, a Denver real estate developer, has launched a Facebook page opposing Denver International Airport’s Blue Mustang. A dare after a night out drinking with friends turned into a media frenzy for Hultin, who has wanted to crowd-source a response to the Luis Jimenez sculpture that greets visitors at the airport. Hultin has…
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Denver’s First Perplexing Biennial
from adobeairstream.com September 2009 The Denver Biennial of the Americas has some awesome growing pains. Denver artists and art dealers are getting nervous. So are conference planners, hotel bookers and purveyors of the creative economy in Mile High City. The Biennial of the Americas, scheduled June 24-August 12, 2010 is a scant 9 months away.…
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Finding a Way to Write About Art
What is asked of me as an art writer and critic today, is not why I became an art writer and critic. In this time of great transition in media, art and business, there are more media venues than ever filled with everything from drivel to genius. More and more people are writing about art…
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Is Gender Bias in Denver Arts in Transit — Or Fixed? from adobeairstream.com
When I first read Ray Mark Rinaldi’s review of “The Transit of Venus” exhibition at RedLine, I was astonished at the biased perspective of this major voice for art in Denver. He labeled the show “the girliest art exhibit . . . ever seen in Colorado.” But, to be fair, his first sentence, “At the risk…
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John McEnroe in Art Ltd. Magazine
john mcEnroe by leanne haase goebel Mar 2013 An abandoned mining area above the town of Ward, Colorado, inspired John McEnroe’s most recent body of work, Half Life, currently on view at Robischon Gallery in Denver, in a solo show thematically connected with four other artist’s solo shows, under the curatorial title: “Object | Nature.”…
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Innovation in Art Criticism from adobeairstream.com
This piece was recently picked up by ArtsJournal. Last September, I was invited as guest art critic to give an update on the status of art criticism in the digital age to the Art Student’s League of Denver. (Fellow panelists were Denver dealer Ivar Zeile and artist/blogger Theresa Anderson.) In the past seven years more than…
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Dana Schutz’s Grotesque and Fantastical Works Linger from adobeairstream.com
Dana Schutz’s work was recently featured in two Denver museums. A 10-year survey, Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels was on view at the Denver Art Museum while in conjunction Dana Schutz: Works on Paper was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Schutz’s bright works have been compared to ones by John Currin,…
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El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa from adobeairstream.com
In 2008, the Denver Art Museum commissioned El Anatsui to create Rain Has No Father?, a metal sculpture tapestry created from found liquor bottle tops and copper wire. The artwork debuted in 2010 as part of Embrace! a site-specific exhibition that celebrated the unique (and controversial) architecture of the Daniel Libeskind designed Hamilton Building. The…
Leanne Goebel 