moore curve

The sculpture of Henry Moore makes perfect sense, but I’m at a loss to explain why. I knew his work first as a kid through his Vertebrae on 4th Avenue in Seattle, but I didn’t know the piece was by anyone I should know anything about. I only knew that there was something solid and satisfying about it; that it transformed the sharp unreceptive lines of the plaza in which it sits into a place where I wanted to be.

When I mentioned to my brother that I was going to catch the Moore exhibit at the Denver Botanic Gardens he shared a clip that his company recently digitized for the BBC, a wonderful program called Face to Face in which Moore speaks of his influences and his process, which led me to dig through the rest of the BBC archival programming on Moore trying to find a word or phrase that could articulate what it is that he does.

I found nothing that summed it all up. But I did learn that Moore was influenced by Mexican sculpture, which I took to mean Aztec and Toltec given other references to the reclining Chaac Mool. That too made sense even though I didn’t anticipate it: like introducing two friends and discovering they already know each other, already adore one another, for all the reasons you thought they might.

Mexican sculpture seems to me to be true and right. Its ‘stoniness’, by which I mean its truth to material, its tremendous power without loss of seriousness, its astonishing variety and fertility of form invention and its approach to a full three-dimensional conception of form, make it unsurpassed in my opinion by any other period of stone sculpture.

Henry Moore cited in The Aztec World by Elizabeth Hill Boone, Smithsonian Books, Washington, 1994

DIoA

Because of this thing
People think they are in hell
Instead of Denver.

One of 200 haiku written to protest Luis Jimenez's Mustang sculpture that Denver area developer Rachel Hutin dropped off at the mayor's office this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As a former Denver resident I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding the installation of Mr. Jimenez's Mustang at the Denver International Airport until my brother sent me the clipping. He went to school with Hutin and got a charge out of seeing her pic in that funky sketch format that the WSJ uses.

I got a charge out of the story, which included telling details about the Mustang's "light-emitting diode" eyes "which burn red like taillights," as well as this spooky plot point:

Mr. Jimenez was killed working on the sculpture. In 2006, while he was hoisting pieces of the mustang for final assembly in his New Mexico studio, the horse's massive torso swung out of control and crushed the 65-year-old artist.

Personal opinion? I'm all for art that makes people squirm, and I think it's good for Denver to be a little uncomfortable with Mr. Jimenez's sculpture (may he rest in peace). Colorado harbors a heavy-handed preference for a nearly neutered realism in its public art, and as a result there's a preponderance of tedious pastoral bronzes peppered about public places.

Speaking of real: Once I met a horse in the wild and I nearly soiled myself. I was walking with a friend on the island Vieques, a brief ferry ride from Puerto Rico. The horses run wild on Vieques, which sounds charming until you encounter one at a full gallop on a lonely road with only a scrabble of jungle to hide in. Hide I did, and you would have too: they're fiercer and stronger and wilder than you would imagine they could be. The one I encountered was quasi-domesticated, and even this one, sprung from any memory of a paddock, scared the bejesus out of me.

I can only imagine that Mr. Jimenez got the spirit of the Mustang just right.

p.s. Says my brother: "The horse is a bit demonic. Maybe the setting just isn't right. I think they should at least turn off the eyes."

sound check

G: He's got a good strong handshake.

Me: How did it compare to the Pope?

G: Right up there.

Email thread with my brother G who just drove away from Mile High Stadium after a sound check with Barack Obama in preparation for tomorrow night’s speech. He'll return to the stadium sometime before 8AM before it goes into lock down prior to the event.

G and his crew took a group shot with the Junior Senator from Illinois and shook his hand before Obama ran through the last speech he gave to the DNC -- four years ago -- to check the sound system.

G was also on hand when Pope John Paul passed through Denver some years back -- so of course I had to pose the question that was on everyone’s lips.

Hoping for a few pics before the event, and G’s promised a recap of how it all comes down as a detritus exclusive. So stay tuned.

It may not be live blogging, but it’s, well, blogging.

first airplane that landed in denver, 1910

embiggen »

This shot, all 4 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches of it, is the reason I bought the catalog for Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present.

I caught the show at SFMOMA shortly after they opened the new building. The book's copyright reads 1996 which sounds about right.

Came across the catalog over the weekend when I tore apart two of the five bookshelves in the living room (we're painting. the other three, Bompa's bookshelves, come down this week to finish the job). Dipped into it to visit my old friend, photographer unknown.

It has everything that appeals to me in a well-made photograph: Story. Simple lines and forms that verge on the abstract. The kind of composition that pulls you into the frame; makes the moment your own.



Also rediscovered, through the catalog, the work of Robert Adams and learned of his 1977 collection Denver, which I went scrambling to find online, only to uncover half a dozen copies ranging in price from $500 to just under a thousand.

So I settled on a copy of The New West for a tidy $24.95 (on eBay, baby. haven't you heard? they're trying to give Amazon a run for their money.).

p.s. To be fair, the true dimensions of the photograph are 4 7/16 x 3 7/16 inches. But "sixteenths" just doesn't flow like half. So I fudged.

bricklayer

Ever notice? When Dorothy lands in Oz and the Munchkins show her the trailhead of the Yellow Brick Road, there’s a Red Brick Road that starts at exactly the same spot, spiraling off in the opposite direction.

I wanna know where that road goes.

Shot some red brick and hand-lettered signage to excess in Denver’s Lodo (lower downtown) historic warehouse district while I was away.

Here’s the set »

Here’s the slideshow »