G. Roger Denson

Last updated

G. Roger Denson (born 1956) is an American journalist, cultural and art critic, theoretician, novelist, and curator. He was a regular contributor to The Huffington Post . His writings have also appeared in such international publications as Art in America, Parkett, Artscribe, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine Online, Cultural Politics as Art Politics, Artscribe , Bijutsu Techo , Kunstlerhaus Bethanien , Artbyte , Art Experience , Arts Magazine , Contemporanea , Tema Celeste , M/E/A/N/I/N/G , [[Trans>Arts, Culture, Media]], and Journal of Contemporary Art .

Contents

Denson has written on the criticism of Thomas McEvilley (with republished essays by McEvilley) in Capacity: History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism, currently issued by Routledge, (originally Gordon & Breach). [1] Denson's monographs and catalogues include Dennis Oppenheim , (Fundacao De Serralves, Portugal); [2] Hunter Reynolds: Memento Mori, Memoriter, (Trinitatiskirche, Cologne); Michael Young: Predella of Difference, (Blum Helman, New York). And in the book by Robert Morris (artist), Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris (October Books, MIT Press), Denson has contributed to the chapter, "Robert Morris Replies to Roger Denson (Or Is That a Mouse in My Paragon?)". [3]

Early work

As a curator of painting, sculpture, photography, conceptual art, performance, dance, film, and video, Denson helped to launch the careers of a number of young artists as well as to exhibit the work of several who were already internationally acclaimed. Artists such as Chris Burden, Allan Kaprow, and Vito Acconci.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Denson established a reputation as a nomadic ideologist. [4]

This is also when he curated exhibitions, screenings, and talks with such artists as Suzanne Lacy, Joan Jonas, Steve Paxton and Dancers, Trisha Brown and Dancers, Eric Fischl, Shigeko Kubota, [5] Yvonne Rainer, [6] Laurie Anderson, [7] Dara Birnbaum, Gary Hill, [5] Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Kathryn Bigelow, [8] Marina Abramović, Lew Thomas, Gretchen Faust, Leon Golub, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, [9] Wolfgang Staehle, Mira Schor, Susan Bee, and Mimi Smith, [10] [11] Scott B and Beth B, Polly Apfelbaum, Chrysanne Stathacos, among numerous others.

Denson curated primarily at Hallwalls, Buffalo, New York, [12] but later was a guest curator with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; A-Space, Toronto; The New Museum of Contemporary Art; The Alternative Museum; Abington Art Center, Philadelphia; and various New York commercial galleries. All of which contributed to his serving on the Gallery Association of New York's Board of Directors. Perhaps the exhibition for which he is best known as a curator is Poetic Injury: The Surrealist Legacy in Postmodern Photography, held at The Alternative Museum, with a catalogue and essays by Denson and Suzaan Boettger, and a preface by Rosalind Krauss. [13]

In 2004, Denson co-wrote and edited the performance script for "Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty: Entertainment by Dan Graham and Tony Oursler", performed at Art Basel Miami Beach; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Vienna; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2004–05.[14] A film montage of the performance made by Tony Oursler was installed at the Whitney Biennial 2006, Whitney Museum of Art in New York.

From 2005 to 2008, Denson developed and taught MFA courses in art criticism and writing at New York's School of Visual Arts. He claimed on the SVA website that his courses were especially designed to introduce students to the diverse art, thought, and polity reflective of global history and contemporary events. Such exposure to the world at large should precede specialized study of aesthetic, social, and political theories, he holds, so that each individual is equipped with the intellectual and emotional counterweights required to keep from being unduly seduced by attractive, but myopic world views and paradigms.

In 2010, Denson personified nomadic diversity in his novel, Voice of Force (published with Oracle Press) not only in his characters, but by relinquishing the author's godlike perspective and voice and replacing it with narration by multiple voices loudly expressing contrasting points of view.

After being deeply devastated by the terrorist attacks that levelled the Twin Towers and murdered nearly three thousand people on September 9, 2011, Denson reviewed for HuffPost the opening of architect Michael Arad's elaborate 9/11 Memorial, "'Reflecting Absence': More Than a Metaphor Or A Monument". [14]

In 2017, just before Denson retired from teaching and dedicated himself strictly to writing, he contributed to the monograph Splendid Voids, The Immersive Works of Kurt Hentschläger, an essay titled "The Splendid Phenomenology of Hentschlägerian Voids". A work that with curator and editor Isabelle Meiffert, Denson distributed an in-depth elucidation of Hentschläger's phenomenological reveries.

Recent work

In 2004, Denson co-wrote and edited the performance script for Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty: Entertainment by Dan Graham and Tony Oursler , performed at Art Basel Miami Beach; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Vienna; and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2004–05. [15] A film montage of the performance made by Tony Oursler was installed at the Whitney Biennial 2006, Whitney Museum of Art in New York. [16]

From 2005 to 2008, Denson developed and taught MFA courses in art criticism and writing at New York's School of Visual Arts. He claimed on the SVA website that his courses were especially designed to introduce students to the diverse art, thought, and polity reflective of global history and contemporary events. Such exposure to the world at large should precede specialized study of aesthetic, social, and political theories, he holds, so that each individual is equipped with the intellectual and emotional counterweights required to keep from being unduly seduced by attractive, but myopic world views and paradigms. [17]

In 2010, Denson personified nomadic diversity in his novel, Voice of Force (published with Oracle Press) not only in his characters, but by relinquishing the author's godlike perspective and voice and replacing it with narration by multiple voices loudly expressing contrasting points of view. [18]

From 2011 to 2021, Denson published 99 articles with Huffpost, all of which are currently accessible at https://www.huffpost.com/author/rogerdenson-330

After being deeply devastated by the terrorist attacks that levelled the Twin Towers and murdered nearly three thousand people on September 9, 2011, Denson reviewed for HuffPost the opening of architect Michael Arad's elaborate 9/11 Memorial, "'Reflecting Absence': More Than a Metaphor Or A Monument". [19]

In 2017, just before Denson retired from teaching and dedicated himself strictly to writing, he contributed to the monograph Splendid Voids, The Immersive Works of Kurt Hentschläger, an essay titled The Splendid Phenomenology of Hentschlägerian Voids. A work that with curator and editor Isabelle Meiffert, Denson distributed an in-depth elucidation of Hentschläger's phenomenological reveries. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Morris (artist)</span> American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer (1931 - 2018)

Robert Morris was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He was regarded as having been one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art. Morris lived and worked in New York. In 2013 as part of the October Files, MIT Press published a volume on Morris, examining his work and influence, edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson.

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is most recognised for his technically proficient satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial sexual and societal topics. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Estes</span> American artist (born 1932)

Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters as John Baeder, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, and Duane Hanson. Author Graham Thompson writes "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."

Stephen Vitiello is an American visual and sound artist. Originally a punk guitarist he is influenced by video artist Nam June Paik who he worked with after meeting in 1991. He has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Robin Rimbaud and Frances-Marie Uitti; as well as visual artists Julie Mehretu, Tony Oursler and Joan Jonas.

Tony Oursler is an American multimedia and installation artist married to Jacqueline Humphries. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, California, in 1979. His art covers a range of mediums, working with video, sculpture, installation, performance, and painting. He lives and works in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Steir</span> American painter and printmaker (born 1938)

Pat Steir is an American painter and printmaker. Her early work was loosely associated with conceptual art and minimalism, however, she is best known for her abstract dripped, splashed and poured "Waterfall" paintings, which she started in the 1980s, and for her later site-specific wall drawings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Oppenheim</span> American artist, sculptor and photographer

Dennis Oppenheim was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art: a meta-art that arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. As well as an aesthetic agenda, the work progressed from perceptions of the physical properties of the gallery to the social and political context, largely taking the form of permanent public sculpture in the last two decades of a highly prolific career, whose diversity could exasperate his critics.

Thomas McEvilley was an American art critic, poet, novelist, and scholar. He was a Distinguished Lecturer in Art History at Rice University and founder and former chair of the Department of Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza</span> Austrian archduchess

Baroness Francesca Anna Dolores von Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva, formerly Francesca von Habsburg-Lothringen, is a Swiss art collector. By birth, she is a member of the House of Thyssen-Bornemisza. She is also the former wife of Karl von Habsburg, current head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amar Kanwar</span> Indian filmmaker

Amar Kanwar is an Indian filmmaker. His work challenges the limits of the medium in order to create complex narratives traversing several terrains such as labour and indigenous rights, gender, religious fundamentalism and ecology.

Parkett was an international magazine specializing in art. The magazine ceased publication in Summer 2017 with its 100th issue and now continues online as a time capsule and archive with some 270 in-depth artists portraits, artists documents, newsletters and more at www.parkettart.com.

<i>Head of a Catalan Peasant</i> Series of paintings by Joan Miró

Head of a Catalan Peasant is an emblematic sequence of oil paintings and pencil made by Joan Miró between 1924 and 1925. Miró began this series the same year that André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism. The series was made partly in Paris. For Joan Miró "a peasant" symbolized rural knowledge, and also reflected his Catalan identity.

Akram Zaatari is a filmmaker, photographer, archival artist and curator. In 1997, he co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with photographers Fouad Elkoury, and Samer Mohdad. His work is largely based on collecting, studying and archiving the photographic history of the Arab World.

Till-Holger Borchert is a German art historian and writer specialising in 14th and 15th-century art. He has been the chief curator of the Groeningemuseum and Arentshuis museums in Bruges, Belgium, between 2003 and 2014. In December 2014, he was appointed as director of the Municipal Museums in Bruges. In this role he initiated a radical reorganisation of the institution and laid the foundation for the renewal of infrastructure like the ticketing facility of the Gruuthusemuseum, a new storage, and the exhibition park BRUSK designed by architect Paul Robbrecht. In November 2021 he was appointed as new director of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen, a position he resumed in April 2022.

Kathe Burkhart is an American interdisciplinary artist, painter, writer and art critic. Described as both a conceptual artist and an installation artist, she uses various media in her work, combining collage, digital media, drawing, fiction, installation, nonfiction, painting, photography video, poetry, and sculpture. The content is feminist; the radical female is the subject. The Liz Taylor painting series, which she began painting in 1982, have been exhibited at the MoMA PS1, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Venice Biennale. Burkhart is also the author of literary fiction and poetry.

Kurt Hentschlager, or Hentschläger is a New York-based Austrian artist who creates audiovisual installations and performances. Between 1992 and 2003, he worked in a duo called Granular-Synthesis.

<i>Model by the Wicker Chair</i> Painting by Edvard Munch (c. 1920)

Model by the Wicker Chair is a 1919–1921 painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch that is in the collection of the Munch Museum in Oslo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rocio de la Villa</span>

Rocio de la Villa is a Spanish university professor, art historian, curator, researcher and art critic. She has edited and collaborated in the edition of distinct catalogues and publications related with the art and the position of the woman in the artistic world. In 2014 she was rewarded with the Prize MAV in the modality of Criticism of art. She also goes by the names Rocio de la Villa Ardura and Rocio Villa-Ardura.

Anne Turyn is an American photographer. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is also an adjunct professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Stefanie Hessler is a German-born contemporary art curator, an art writer, and the current director of Swiss Institute in New York. From 2019 to 2022 she was the director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway.

References

  1. ↑ Capacity: history, the world, and ... – Thomas McEvilley, G. Roger Denson. Google Books. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  2. ↑ Livres / Books / Livros : Exposition – Dennis Oppenheim – Porto, Fundação de Serralves, 1996. TOBEART.com. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  3. ↑ Continuous Project Altered Daily. The MIT Press. Archived 2011-06-04 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  4. ↑ McEvilley, Thomas; Roger Denson, G. (1996). Capacity: History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism. Psychology Press. ISBN   978-90-5701-051-4.
  5. 1 2 Installation: Video – 5/9/80. Hallwalls (September 9, 2011). Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  6. ↑ Yvonne Rainer – 21 April 1977. Hallwalls (September 9, 2011). Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  7. ↑ Performance Benefit – 11/12/78. Hallwalls (September 9, 2011). Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  8. ↑ Kathy Bigelow and Ericka Beckman. December 12, 1978. Hallwalls. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  9. ↑ Figures, Forms, and Expressions. November 20, 1981. Hallwalls. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  10. ↑ "Mira Schor Reclaims Voice, Speech and Writing for Painting". HuffPost. April 3, 2012.
  11. ↑ "Contra Acte: Mimi Smith and Susan Bee Unleash the Comic Repressed". HuffPost. May 30, 2014.
  12. ↑ Consider the Alternatives, Twenty Years of Contemporary Art at Hallwalls, The Burchfield Center, 1995, pg. 19
  13. ↑ Poetic injury: The surrealist legacy in postmodern photography. ISBN   0932075177.
  14. ↑ Denson, Roger (September 9, 2011). "Michael Arad's 9/11 Memoria Absence': More Than a Metaphor Or A Monument". The Huffington Post.
  15. ↑ Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Archived 2011-07-28 at the Wayback Machine . Tba21.org (June 6, 2005). Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  16. ↑ Whitney Biennial 2006 :: Day for Night. Whitney Museum of Art. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  17. ↑ "Media.schoolofvisualarts.edu" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 19, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2010.
  18. ↑ Voice of Force (9781448661695): G. Roger Denson: Books. Amazon. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
  19. ↑ Denson, Roger (September 9, 2011). "Absence': More Michael Arad's 9/11 Memorial - Than a Metaphor Or A Monument". Huffington Post. Retrieved January 13, 2025.
  20. ↑ Meiffert, Isabelle (2017). Splendid Voids. The immersive works of Kurt Hentschläger. Berlin: Distanz Verlag GmbH. ISBN   978-3-95476-183-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.