Visual Arts

For the downright dazzling opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, world-famous film director Zhang Yimou utilized the form of a basic painting scroll as the quintessential backdrop for his techno-savvy take on 5,000 years of Chinese cultural history. As it unfurled, Zhang’s mammoth 95-by-381-foot roll became the perfect prop…

By Lilia Menconi By The Mighty Human Race Lincoln’s face – which I personally can’t decide is attractive or not – is one we’ve seen a million times over. In fact, I don’t think the image even registers for me anymore. At most, if I see the guy on a…

By Sarah Fenske and Amy Silverman Just when it felt like the Valley’s arts community was growing strong, it shrunk. First it was Wellington “Duke” Reiter, dean of the college of design at Arizona State University, announcing that he was headed for greener pastures (namely, the Art Institute of Chicago)…

Walk into an art gallery on a First Friday and you’ll see people with drinks in their hands, chatting and laughing — not noticing they just knocked a painting with their elbow. But the crowds at a contemporary art show at, say, the Museum of Modern Art in New York,…

On a recent monsoon-ravaged July evening, people were showing the love on Marshall Way in Scottsdale. The Thursday night art-walk crowd was sporting white buttons with phrases like “your thumb print on my skin,” “I could jump into you . . . and land without consequences,” and “you could give…

In the 1930s, in what can only be considered the first official culinary performance art piece, Mexican émigré painters Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varos passed off tiny tapioca pearls dyed with squid ink as caviar to their surrealist buddies. In 1992, photographer Sandy Skoglund immortalized Britney Spears’ favorite comfort food…

Whether you realize it or not, your day is a minefield of perception pitfalls. It starts with that first glance in the mirror, when your nose looks like a flamingo beak and that pimple looks like Mount Vesuvius. On the drive to work you wonder if that asshole cut you…

Besides the notion of ultimate creation, God and painting clearly have something in common. For the past 60 years or so, both have been declared dead and buried innumerable times by the usual suspects. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of both has been greatly exaggerated. Scottsdale Museum of…

If I were the sitter for the portrait Martha, I’d hate John Dawson. Martha is one of the most compelling paintings showing at the Mesa Contemporary Arts exhibition “Dawson: Thirty Years.” And she looks like hell. Dawson’s portraits have a no-mercy, take-no-prisoners attitude. But it’s within these harsh paintings that…

Nine years ago, a guy named Brian Boner moved to Phoenix as a fresh college grad with an art degree from Minnesota State University. Boner stopped by gallery after gallery in Phoenix and Scottsdale, trying to make a connection. Inexperienced and shy, Boner didn’t have a résumé or portfolio —…

A dense, menacing thicket looms. Green and pink stems, yellow flower buds, fuchsia seed pods and burgundy leaves intertwine, overlap, and suffocate the surface. Enormous industrial bolts, large wing nuts, and clusters of threaded screws — pointing every which way — invade the great mass of thriving, oozing vegetation. It’s…

Lifetimes are spent trying to tackle and pin down the constant state of flux of the human mind. Even pros like Freud, Jung, and Dr. Phil have grasped only morsels. The task is arguably impossible. But painter Mark Keffer accepts the challenge in his show “The Future of Heads” at…

“Josh Greene: Some Parts Might Be Greater Than the Whole,” a current offering at Arizona State University Art Museum, is a work in progress. Literally. Greene’s project is the second installment in ASUAM’s “Social Studies” series, an ongoing series of exhibitions — if they can be labeled as such —…

After watching reality shows like America’s Next Top Model and Project Runway, trash-TV viewers (myself included) may think they know a thing or two about fashion design. But the garments on display at Phoenix Art Museum’s “Chado Ralph Rucci” put the likes of Runway winner Christian Liriano to shame. Given…

“Eleven French Artists. One Revolutionary Event,” screams the headline for Phoenix Art Museum’s self-proclaimed blockbuster, “Masterpiece Replayed: Monet, Matisse & More.” PAM’s current offering is a traveling exhibition of work by easily recognizable 19th-century French masters originated by Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum and first shown there in 2007 under the…

This past week, you may have noticed a surge of bleary-eyed, artsy individuals grabbing their caffeine fix from downtown coffee shops before noon. That can mean only one thing: Art Detour. The gigantic, weekend-long extravaganza comes once a year and is equal parts art showcase and insane asylum — kinda…

If you’re looking for razzle-dazzle, interactivity, or anxious introspection in an art experience, don’t bother seeing ASU Art Museum’s “Carl Andre/Tim Hawkinson,” a bare-bones exhibition featuring four pieces of art by two sculptors from two different generations with two diametrically opposite views on the meaning of art. Putting these particular…

Greater Phoenix is obsessed with cars. Need proof? Take a look at that big, nasty brown cloud we suck through our collective nostrils on a daily basis. Last year, the Phoenix Art Museum caught on with “Curves of Steel,” which displayed rare and historic models (see “Nice Ride,” May 17,…

Whether you’re a Bible-thumper, enlightened Buddhist, or totally faithless, you can’t deny that spirituality has birthed some great art. The cave drawings of Lascaux weren’t the caveman’s version of a movie theater; they were visual prayers to promote plentiful hunting and survival. Aztec temples didn’t feed any architect’s ego; they…

Ask around downtown Phoenix, and just about everyone seems to have a story about Michael Little. He’s a painter by trade, but better known as a character — formerly homeless, now living in a house with a Tim Burton-esque striped tree in front. The guy once swapped a painting for…

Not long after I arrived in Phoenix, a strange site appeared as I traveled north on the 51. The Pots Along the Freeway were like a divine apparition to a suffering saint. First, I noticed a mammoth old-fashioned campfire coffee pot standing watch over oncoming traffic. Then I sighted a…