Much of the story of art in the past century has revolved around defying, subverting or, at the very least, ignoring beauty.
A turning point came during the 2001 biennial at SITE Santa Fe where guest curator Dave Hickey took a renewed look at the notion of beauty in an exhibition titled “Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism.”
If many artists are beginning to reconsider beauty, as that show made clear, some never abandoned it.
Among them is Robert Kushner, a veteran New York artist who is featured in a small and, as might be expected, beautiful exhibition continuing through Feb. 17 at the Sandy Carson Gallery.
Although the offering does contain some large-scale works, such as the 68-by-76-inch “Conservatory Scatter I: Doors” (2004), a kind of diptych painted on antique Japanese sliding doors, the seven works look a little puny in the gallery’s big front room.
But any deficiencies in the size of the show are made up by the first-rate quality of the selections and the welcome opportunity to have any chance at all to see works by Kushner, who has not shown in Denver in a long time if at all.
Born in 1949 in California, Kushner was associated with the pattern and decoration movement. It emerged in the mid-1970s as a response to minimalism and championed the use of decorative elements – principally bold patterns – in fine art.
Since 1987, flowers have been been the main subject of his paintings, with such varieties as irises, geraniums and peonies making their appearance in this exhibition – sometimes depicted in outline, other times more substantially.
From their compositional approach to the rendering of the subject matter, Kushner’s works have long been influenced by Asian art, a connection made even more concrete here by his fascinating use of antique Japanese doors and screens as painting panels.
Perhaps most striking about these works are the strong colors and the artist’s love of shine and sheen. Along with oil and acrylic paint (probably some with metallic pigments), he incorporates gold, silver and copper leaf and even glitter.
For some viewers, these effects might be too much.
But for others, they are a corncucopia of visual delights.
Flowers also play a major role in the work of Trine Bumiller, a nationally known Colorado artist with 19 oils and watercolors in her seventh solo exhibition running through Feb. 18 at the Robischon Gallery.
Among her most prominent works in Denver is “Wood, Water, Rock,” a $54,000 commission at the Colorado Convention Center consisting of 18 abstracted landscapes on a curved wall in the west lobby.
Bumiller has long created works that combine multiple joined canvases, and she continues that practice in these works, bringing together variously six to 13 small canvases in each. But the results are mixed at best.
Where she usually assembles canvases with related or at least complementary subject matter, typically flowers, leaves, twigs and other fragments of the landscape, she adds panels here with tilelike and trellislike patterns and bright color spectrums.
Rather than coming together as cohesive, harmonious wholes, these constructed compositions, such as the 76-by-
108-inch “Full Bloom,” almost seem cacophonous, with Bumiller’s bolder than usual colors colliding more than blending.
And unlike most bodies of art, which are enhanced by being shown together, the multiplicity of large-scale works in this exhibition actually seem to detract from each other, because together they throw the viewer into visual overload.
Like the seasons, art goes through cycles. Beauty might have gone out of style for a time, but it was far too precious a quality not to come back into vogue.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
