Community: The aesthetics of Denver in transition

This past week, in separate conversations, I heard two nearly unrelated things, concerning how one could approach contemporary art. The first was from a good friend, who said something to the nature of, “I don’t like most contemporary art because it’s not art.” When I asked him to explain what he meant, he referenced several controversial public art pieces in Denver (which I’ll leave unnamed, as those debates have been well-trodden elsewhere). He explained that, “weird art,” as he put it, doesn’t involve any real skill beyond what any carpenter could do and the intellect behind “real art” is pretentious. The second comment about art was from my father, a carpenter for the past twenty-odd years. He was visiting me at the Dikeou Collection, and always an enthusiast of Western realism, told me that he thinks the, “real art,” is the craftsmanship put into the actual building, pointing to the original mail shoot from the 1890’s that runs from the top floor to the bottom.

Having observed the flurry of construction going on in Denver during the past months in preparation for the DNC, seeing half-gutted buildings (that look a bit like fold-out doll houses), the exposed scaffoldings and metal frames, having the weird experience of walking past a building just as it was being imploded to the ground –strangely like performance art- I got thinking about the relationship between blue-collar construction work and fine art. Specifically, the not uncommon critique that, fine art is intellectually pretentious juxtaposed to the not unheard of claim that avant-garde art is over-priced plumbing.

And I don’t totally disagree with my friend or my father. I have aided in artist installations that required a hammer and nails, and the experience was acutely reminiscent of helping my father when I was child on some home improvement project. My friend is right, much contemporary art no longer requires that an artist hone his or her skills with the paintbrush (though painting is not a dead form), but learn carpentry instead (and perhaps this is even an unexpected result of the Ready-Made era). Furthermore, an antique mail shoot certainly is it’s own art form (and Duchamp would probably not have disagreed). My only question is why such resistance in collapsing the two points into each other as mutually uplifting?

The most thorough creative expression I’ve ever encountered of these ideas (the Ready Made, accidental art, art that is labor-based, imagination vs. reality) is a translation of Dreams and Stones, originally written in Polish by Magdelena Tulli. The collapse, construction and relapse of any city, in response to tragedy or opportunity, is undoubtedly an aesthetic all it’s own, a kind of disturbed, temporary beauty. I really enjoy reading the critique written about the Denver art scene, both by Denver-area critics and those passing through, whether or not I agree. But I think I like most of all taking a walk through this movement, disagreement, momentary congruity, an explosion or construction of layers, the constant cycle that flips over before the dust quite settles. Quite simply, Denver, in transition, is beautiful.