Best Denver Art-World Mystery 2002 | The missing work of Max Lazarus | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Denver Art-World Mystery

The missing work of Max Lazarus

In 1939, German-Jewish artist Max Lazarus came to the United States from Trier, Germany, where he was that city's most important expressionist painter. Prominent in the Jewish community, Lazarus was commissioned to paint a mural on the ceiling of Trier's main synagogue. But the 1930s was not the best time to be a Jewish modernist in Germany, and Lazarus emigrated to the States. He eventually settled in Denver, where, in the 1940s, he got a job teaching arts and crafts and carried on his work as an artist until shortly before his death in 1964. Now the museum in Trier would like to collect his work, and since very few German pieces survived -- the Nazis burned down Trier's synagogue, and most of his other work was destroyed -- the institution has come looking in Denver. But nearly forty years after his death, Lazarus has been absolutely forgotten in the Mile High City, and except for a handful of pieces, his work is unknown. So the museum has launched a concerted effort, even hiring a detective to track down the estate. It's a good mystery, and, hopefully, one that will be solved.

Best Example of Art-World Perseverance

Phil Bender

In 1980, a group of friends opened an alternative art space in a then-rough part of town and gave it the difficult and unconventional name of Pirate: a contemporary art oasis. But the co-op's name perfectly reflected the difficult and unconventional work that has so often found a home in the space at 3659 Navajo Street. Now, more than twenty years later, the original members have mostly scattered to the four winds. The exception is Phil Bender, who has not only remained as an active Pirate member, but has also run the place and kept it going during many dry spells. In addition, Bender has presented a solo exhibit of his own work at least once a year since Pirate's founding. For last summer's Bender bender, Paris, Paris Architecture, Etc., Etc., he covered the walls with hubcaps, postcards, coasters and other found items -- playing off his longtime penchant for using objects collected in multiples and putting them together in unlikely combinations to create pieces that are greater than the sum of their parts. Truly, Bender's unwavering dedication through the years has set a fine example for other artists.

Best Arts Commune

The Other Side

You have to hand it to the folks who strive to try something different, and the Other Side is just such an effort. Rather than being just another artist cooperative, it's more of a true collective, where artists not only share studio and gallery space (and daycare), but attempt to give back to the community by offering classes and workshops, as well as art for sale at reasonable prices. Located in the former Platte Anchor Bolt warehouse space and created out of the visionary dreamworks of grassroots art entrepreneurs Chris Minter and Jeff Ball, the Other Side is a place where artful things and concepts can grow unfettered. Check it out.

Best Swan Song

Lonnie Hanzon's haircutting ceremony

Hair today, gone...well, you know the drill: When local artist/entrepreneur Lonnie Hanzon decided to cash it all in, sell his workshop and auction off nearly everything in it, he also decided to drop his three-foot tresses, what he liked to call his "greatest work of art," and put them on the block, to boot. To his credit, he turned the whole crazy event into a theatrical experience and created a reliquary for the lopped locks. We can only hope that Hanzon and his newly chromed dome are now in a better place.

Best Art Class Carved in Stone

MARBLE/marble XIV
The Marble Institute of Colorado

They used Colorado Yule Marble for the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In fact, anytime someone wants to make something look grand, they call for the sleek stone that's quarried in the town of Marble, near Aspen. At the Marble Institute of Colorado's MARBLE/marble XIV classes this summer, sculptors of various levels of experience and expertise can learn to shape marble. After a group of internationally known instructors offers the basics on carving stone, each student will receive three cubic feet at which they can chip away. That rocks!

Best Strange Dance

Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance

Who can argue with a tradition that's been handed down for centuries, has its origins in a mystical fertility ritual, and involves grown people dressed in white holding antlers on their heads? That's the core of the solemn annual rite known as Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance, which leapt across the Atlantic decades ago and embedded itself in Denver's folk-dancing community. The Maroon Bells Morris Dancers perform the rite as part of the annual Winter Solabration at the Temple Events Center, and they're faithful to the ritual. Done in good fun, participants say, the ceremony gives new meaning to the phrase "horny dancers."

Best Early Training for Debutantes

Sugar Plums
Colorado Ballet

This program for young dancers places an elite crew of twinkletoes in the spotlight for the annual Colorado Ballet staging of The Nutcracker. It's a wonderful experience, of course, for any second-grader keen on turning pro, but the fast-track connections that come out of the mingling of so many upper-suburban stage mothers at related social events may be an even more compelling reason that the Sugar Plums have attracted so many applicants. Proceeds benefit the ballet, and various spinoff programs for alumni and older children have made the entire affair accessible to a wide range of youngsters -- whether their parents are Denver bluebloods or not. On your toes, kids!

Best Display of Equine Elegance

Cheval Théâtre

Hard to say if it was dance, theater, circus or dressage, but whatever it was, Cheval Théâtre provided an astonishing evening of entertainment during its extended Denver run last fall. Sitting in the audience, you sensed some mysterious, Cirque du Soleil-influenced story must be responsible for the goings-on in the sawdust ring under a tent in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center -- there were evocative costumes, golden coins, a fallen horse and rider amid swirls of smoke -- but the plot didn't really matter. What mattered was the magnificence of the horses, beautiful animals that represented some seventeen breeds and had names like Gadjal, Chabo, Dansk and Hercule; the grace and skill of the riders; and the extraordinary, almost mythic relationship between the animals and their humans.

Best Theater-Company Season

Denver Center Theatre Company

Denver should be grateful for the foresight and dedication that originally gave birth to the Denver Center Theatre Company, which has assembled a talented group of artists and every year offers an eclectic and intelligent mix of plays -- classic and contemporary, angry and light, humorous and tragic. The production values are almost always impeccable. This year's standouts were a newly translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Dinner With Friends and A Skull in Connemara. Though there's the occasional misfire, you always feel in safe hands here.

Best Theater Production (Since March 2001)

Coyote on a Fence
Curious Theatre Company

Coyote on a Fence opened soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and it says much for the production that it retained its strength and seemed both true and important in the face of those terrible events. Bruce Graham's play examines the death penalty in America and concerns two men on death row. One is a psychologist convicted of murdering a drug dealer, the other a skinhead who blocked the door of a black church with his truck and set fire to the building, killing 37 people. The play asks serious questions about the value of lives such as this and, by extrapolation, all human life. Chip Walton directed his first-rate cast at the Acoma Center with a sure hand, and Gene Gillette turned in a riveting performance as the childish and terribly damaged skinhead.

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