LONDON — She's sipping tea in bed with the dogs, browsing at the supermarket, and getting an eyeful of two horses mating. Alison Jackson's series of photographs currently on view at London's Pertwee Anderson & Gold reveals Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II like you've never seen her.

Timed to coincide with the monarch's forthcoming Diamond Jubilee, the royal spoofs in this exhibition would be little more than schoolgirl Photoshop pranks if they weren't so breathtakingly credible. Captured with a finely-tuned faux paparazzi aesthetic, the impeccable cast of lookalikes induces an immediate — if short-lived — suspension of disbelief. Prince Philip at a gallery opening, peering intently at a photograph of a spread-eagle Marilyn Monroe, doesn't seem like an entirely improbable scenario, nor does the Queen kneeling on the floor at Buckingham Palace to play with her doggies. That's a royal scoop News of the World would have paid  for handsomely.

Jackson has also found inspiration in last year's much-feted royal wedding — and displayed some of her pictures for the occasion. Here is the Queen again, dancing rock'n roll with Elton John at the reception, a drunken Duchess of Cornwall resting for a while on the royal throne, and Prince William leading a conga line with his bride, Cheryl Cole, Prince Harry, Lady Gaga, and David Cameron bringing up the rear. If only.

"Alison Jackson, Jubilee," May 25 – June 9, 2012, Pertwee Anderson & Gold, London.

For images from the exhibition, click on the slide show.

Michael Haneke’s “Amour” was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes’ closing event on Sunday. Following 2010’s “The White Ribbon,” it is the second time the Austrian auteur has won the festival’s top prize. He is the eighth director to win it twice. The reality-television satire “Reality,” directed by the Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone, was awarded the Grand Prix. The Jury Prize went to the whisky comedy “The Angels’ Share,” directed by the British veteran Ken Loach. Mexico’s Carlos Reygadas was named Best Director for his quasi-surrealistic “Post Tenebras Lux,” which, involving a middle-class couple living in the wilds with their nightmare-suffering toddlers, foxed many critics. The full list of winners is printed here. Read the full post on Spotlight.

British tourist Andy Fields made quite a stir in April when he claimed that he bought an early sketch by Andy Warhol from a Las Vegas drug addict for $5. The sketch, supposedly made by a 10-year-old Warhol, depicts American singer and actor Rudy Vallee with bright red lips against an abstracted background of green, orange, and yellow squares. Fields has stated that the unlikely piece of Warhol juvenalia is valued at $2.1 million. In July, it is set to be shown at the Royal West of England Academy, whose director recently told the BBC that it represented "a seismic shift in the history of art" and that "viewing this portrait allows us to see the beginnings of one of the greatest art movements."

It's a great story. Unfortunately, it is also too good to be true, according to the comments of those close to Warhol.

Gary Comenas, who runs the Web site Warholstars.org, states that he started having doubts about the authenticity of Fields’s Warhol when it was first publicized in April. On his site, he has gathered the opinions of a number of Warhol experts, including academics, authors, and the artist’s family and friends. Every judgment leads to the conclusion that the presumed juvenilia is fake, and a pretty crude one at that.

Patrick Smith, scholar and author of two books on Warhol ("Andy Warhol's Art and Film" and "Warhol: Converations About the Artist"), says that the drawing would be unprecedented in the context of the artist’s archive. “I have never seen any early drawing by Warhol that even remotely looks like the supposed ‘Warhol’ sketch of Vallee, nor have I ever seen an early authentic signature that even remotely appears like the one on the sketch,” he says. Thomas Kiedrowski, author of “Andy Warhol’s New York City; Four Walks, Uptown to Downtown,” agrees: “Despite a number of well-made Warhol forgeries that have circulated over the last few years, the Fields find is an easy one to spot, his story and the Warhol signature is far from authentic,” he argues.

In an email, Warhol’s own brother Paul Warhola explains that the family had already told Fields that the work was not done by Warhol. “It had no characteristics of his drawing style whatsoever and the signature was vastly unlike his real signature. It doesn’t even come close to being like Warhol’s early work.”

Some details of Fields’s story also undermine his credibility. For instance, British tourist claims that Warhol had given the drawing to his childhood nurse; the family doesn’t recognize the alleged nurse’s name. Fields also says that he found the Warhol sketch amidst a pile of Gertrude Stein drawings, which should be another red flag: Stanford University professor Wanda Corn tells Comenas, Stein “never made drawings or any other kind of visual art, and the signature is not hers.” 

Jackie Curtis,  a Warhol superstar and one of the high (drag) priestesses of  ‘70s glam rock, is back at La MaMa thanks to Scott Wittman, the Tony-Award-winning writer, director, and lyricist  (“Hairspray,” “Catch Me If You Can”). The writer-director has created an impressionistic collage of Curtis and his work, “Jukebox Jackie,” which runs at the downtown theater on East 4th Street through June 10th. “Jackie was decades ahead of his time,” says Wittman of the subversive, gender-bending musician, dramatist, and poet born John Curtis Holder, Jr.  Wittman says that his aesthetic was heavily influenced by Curtis, who, before he died of a drug overdose at the age of 38, had a similar effect on a Who’s Who of pop artists including Andy Warhol, Bette Midler, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Harvey Fierstein, Patti Smith, and Lou Reed.  Reed celebrated Curtis in “Walk on the Wild Side,” his ode to the ‘70s New York underground: “Jackie is just speeding away/Thought she was James Dean for a day/Then I guess she had to crash/Valium would have helped that bash/She said, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side…’” Read the full Q&A on Spotlight.

What is the essence of a Sol LeWitt wall drawing? What makes these works — which famously exist as a series of instructions, executable by anyone who owns them — authentic LeWitts and not just some lines on a wall? This metaphysical quandary is about to be played out in a lawsuit filed by disgruntled collector and dealer Roderic Steinkamp against Chicago's Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

On May 22, Steinkamp sued Hoffman and her eponymous gallery for a total of $1.4 million, alleging that she lost a certificate of authenticity for a Sol LeWitt drawing he consigned to her in 2008. (The lawsuit was first reported by Courthouse News.) "Since the wall drawings do not constitute freestanding, portable works of art like a framed canvas or a sculpture on a podium, documentation of the work is key to transmitting it or selling it to a collector or institution," says the complaint, filed in New York County Supreme Court. "The unique nature of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings renders their accompanying Certificates of authenticity critical to such works' value."

According to the complaint, Hoffman assumed legal responsibility for the certificate when she accepted it (along with a maquette of the drawing it represented) from the collector for consignment. She got back in touch with Steinkamp last year to tell him the certificate was "lost and irretrievable." Her insurance company would not cover the "mysterious disappearance" of the certificate, she allegedly told Steinkamp, and in order to file a claim with the police she would have to lie about the date it was lost. She asked the collector to name the "smallest amount" he would accept, according to court documents, and said that "if worse comes to worse" she would have to pay the plaintiff cash.

Instead, Steinkamp is suing Hoffman for breach of bailment (or, failure to act as a proper custodian for a piece of property), breach of contract to maintain and preserve the certificate, negligence, and conversion, to the tune of $350,000 per count. The drawing in question — "Wall Drawing no. 448" — was originally created for a private residence in Cambridge in 1985. Neither Hoffman nor Steinkamp's lawyer Aaron Richard Golub (an art collector himself and quite the colorful character, who once represented David Hampton in an unsuccessful lawsuit against playwright John Guare for using his life story in "Six Degrees of Separation") returned a request for comment.

Whether Steinkamp's lawyer is pursuing this case as if the certificate were equivalent to a lost painting or drawing remains unclear. Whether Sol LeWitt, who died in 2008, would have agreed with this lawsuit is another question entirely.

HONG KONG — The planning for Hong Kong’s contemporary art museum M+ — which is slated to open in the West Kowloon Cultural District in 2017 — took a big step forward recently with the appointment of Dr Pi Li to the position of senior curator. Pi’s hiring follows that of the former head of the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul Tobias Berger as curator, and former Tate Modern head Lars Nittve as director. Pi is the first mainland Chinese curator to join the team.

Pi is a leading figure in the Chinese art world, a prolific curator and scholar who currently serves as the head of the art management department at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He is also the co-founder of Boers-Li Gallery, a critically claimed commercial art space in the capital. But he’ll be putting aside all these positions come July in order to make an exclusive commitment to M+.

Pi’s appointment underlines the importance of Chinese contemporary art for the new museum and the necessity of establishing strong connections between the mainland and Hong Kong art scenes.

ARTINFO Hong Kong talked to Pi about his decision to move to Hong Kong and why he was interested in working at M+.

After years of honing your curatorial practice in mainland China, what are the factors that made you decide to move to Hong Kong?  

The M+ position is a very rare opportunity, if the plans of this contemporary art museum can be fully executed, it will be a great thing to be a part of it. Secondly, in terms of my own life, I have been working as a curator, gallerist, and scholar; it will be interesting to embrace a different experience. The third reason is that Hong Kong is a place with much more freedom in the academic world and in politics. This environment makes the city an ideal place to  execute objective and independent research on Chinese contemporary art. My decision to move was based on these three factors.

In the last two decades, the growth of Chinese contemporary art hasn’t pulled the Hong Kong art scene along with it, nor brought attention to it. What strategies do you think can help to promote Hong Kong art?

I do agree with you that the outside world’s attitude towards Chinese contemporary art as opposed to Hong Kong contemporary art in the past two to three decades has not been the same. The ideology of Hong Kong is close to the West, so the international audience might not have found many specifically “Chinese” elements in it, thus the interest in Hong Kong art has been small. On the other hand, Chinese contemporary art operates under an unfair system, so curiosity from the outside world has created great opportunities as well.

One of the core ideas of M+ is to look at art from the 20th and 21st centuries from a Hong Kong perspective, that is the basic goal of the museum. There are several things that will be done: First, M+ will serve as a platform to present Hong Kong art; the second layer is to promote Hong Kong art on an international level, and promote artistic exchange; third, we should establish a research platform to provide context for Hong Kong contemporary art and its relation to Chinese art, as well as the international art scene.

How will you approach the Hong Kong audience? Do you think it is different from the mainland Chinese audience?

The audience is different in every city. It is a complex process knowing and understanding the Hong Kong public — that’s what makes the job interesting. The museum will not be functional for several years, so I will have enough time to understand and do my research on it. It's crucial for curators to understand their public.

You are shifting from a commercial environment to an institutional one; how do you think you will employ your market experience in the context of M+?

M+ and the gallery are two completely different institutions: One is non-profit, the other is commercial. To avoid any conflicts of interests I have put my share of the gallery into a blind trust. Curators are not art dealers, they are critics and exhibition organizers — there are other layers to this role. My experience as a gallerist reinforces the administrative ability I bring to the institution.

How about the Boers-Li gallery; are you giving any advice to your partner?

Boers-Li is a mature gallery, it has run for six years. It was the first Chinese gallery that applied an exclusive representation system. Its list of artists, collectors, and programs are well-developed, and I think it can continue to grow as it is.

This article originally appeared on ARTINFO Hong Kong.

Ousted Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family have already been accused of plundering the nation's antiquities, particularly the ancient site of Carthage, for their own personal gain and enjoyment. Now it seems that the family's illicit reach extended further than previously realized: experts have identified a white marble sculpture found in the house of Ben Ali's son-in-law, Sakher el-Materi, as the Gorgon's Mask, a massive object that was stolen from Algeria back in 1996.

Authenticated by experts from the Algerian culture ministry, the artifact is key evidence in el-Materi's ongoing trial for archaeological plundering and trafficking, Le Journal des Arts reports. (Ben Ali is living in Saudi Arabia and el-Materi has been granted permanent residency by Qatar, but both are being tried by Tunisia in absentia, and Ben Ali has already been sentenced to decades of prison time for crimes including corruption and torture.) According to the Algerian newspaper Liberté, the Gorgon's Mask was first spotted by Saïd Dahmani, the former director of the Hippone antiquities museum, in a television program filmed in el-Materi's house after the fall of the regime. Ultimately, 164 plundered archaeological objects were discovered in the residence shared by el-Materi and Nesrine Ben Ali.

The sculpture, which depicts the head of a mythological Gorgon with hair of writhing snakes, was looted from a public fountain in Annaba, Algeria, site of the ancient city of Hippone. Three feet high and weighing over 700 pounds, the sizable artifact could not have been easy to remove. Writing for Liberté, Mohamed-Chérif Lachichi presumes that local authorities were complicit in the theft and has accused the Algerian culture ministry of complacency in the face of persistent looting.

After the sculpture was discovered, residents of Annaba started a campaign to insist that it be returned to their city, even creating a Facebook group called "Notre Gorgone" ("Our Gorgon"). Today, Tunisian culture minister Mehdi Mabrouk confirmed to the Tunis Afrique Presse agency that the Gorgon's Head is being "protected and guarded at the National Institute of Tunisian Heritage and will be returned to the Algerian authorities after the legal proceedings are complete."

— The Donna Summer Art Boom: The Jack Gallery in Las Vegas wasted no time jacking up the prices for the late Disco Queen's lithographs, which are now selling for almost twice their original price of $550. The gallery, which is currently planning a memorial exhibition for Summer, says demand has been high since her untimely death earlier this month. The most popular work? "Winter Melody," an image of blue-mascaraed eyes and a blue mouth floating in space, named for the singer's 1976 single. [TMZ, Jack Gallery]

— Chelsea Condos and Galleries in Light-Based Feud: The owners of two Chelsea condo developments — +art and Chelsea Muse, both on 27th Street — are suing the company that manages an adjacent gallery building, alleging that it is deliberately blasting them with powerful spotlights in retaliation for not being able to use the condo buildings as free storage space. The suit seeks $4 million in compensation and punitive damages form Pinetree, which owns the Landmark Arts Building (home to some 30 galleries), plus a court order preventing future use of "intensely bright floodlights." [TRD]

— Gugg Won't Give Up on Helsinki: Although the city board rejected a proposal to build a Guggenheim museum earlier this month, Helsinki's mayor Jussi Pajunen and Guggenheim Foundation director Richard Armstrong remain convinced the expensive project has legs. "A successful city has to be a city of culture," said Pajunen. Locals don't seem to agree: Graffiti reading "Fuck the Guggenheim" has spread across the city. [FT]

— A New Museum for China: The Yellow River Arts Center, a $279-million art space in Yinchuan, will open in 2014 and is the latest in a string of aggressive museum projects in China. The planned museum will show Qing period paintings alongside commissioned work by international contemporary artists. [FT]

— China's Museum Boom Bolsters Real Estate: The latest feature on the flood of new museums opening in China (see above item) to showcase emerging collectors' wares — 395 new institutions last year, by one count — enumerates the well-rehearsed set of reasons for the trend, from the country's desire to establish its cultural might to its nouveau riche showing off the fruits of their auction-hopping. The article does, however, add another motivating factor: The new institutions serve as highbrow anchors for shopping mall and condo projects. Katie Hunt writes that "museums are prized by property developers eager to give their shopping malls and residential developments a high-brow gloss." [BBC]

— William Kentridge Becomes a Mentor: The South African artist and animator has selected Colombia's Mateo López as his protégé for the 2012-2013 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. The program allows accomplished creatives in various fields to select young talents to collaborate with and advise for one year. [Press Release]

— Change to Aussie Law Could Deter Super-Collectors: A revision to Australia's superannuation laws is having a devastating impact on all but the top echelon of the domestic art market — sales have dropped 20 percent since the law was revised. One collector — who observers suspect will be the first of many — Bill Nuttall, is selling his 100-piece collection of Aboriginal art rather than face the costs of complying with the new law. [ABC News]

— François Pinault Goes to the Movies: The billionaire French art collector will mount an exhibition of film and video works at the Palazzo Grassi in conjunction with this summer's Venice Architecture Biennale. The show will feature work by 25 artists including Mircea Cantor, Shirin Neshat, and Bruce Nauman, all taken from Pinault's collection. [TAN]

— Philly Already Feeling the Barnes Effect: Less than two weeks after the Barnes Foundation's reopening in Center City Philadelphia, an annual survey of the city's cultural organizations suggests that its arts institutions are recovering from the recession and donation drought that had limited exhibitions and programing since 2007. "This recovery is a testament both to how organizations have restructured and how Philadelphians have placed a high value on culture in their communities," said Tom Kaiden, president of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

— World-Class Collection Lands in South Dakota: Art conservator and collector Neil Cockerline — formerly of Minneapolis's Midwest Art Conservation Center — has elected to donate his 500-piece collection to the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, bestowing on the small regional museum a treasure trove including works by Warhol, Rauschenberg, Motherwell, Matisse, Jim Dine, and Robert Indiana that will go on view next year. "I chose to donate this collection to the South Dakota Art Museum," Cockerline said, "because [...] they have a reputation of professionalism and a commitment to preservation.” [Kekoland]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

See time-lapse video of the construction of the new Barnes Foundation in Philly (or read ARTINFO's review of the new space, here):

ALSO ON ARTINFO

Experts and Family Agree That British Tourist's Much-Touted Childhood Warhol Sketch is an Inept Fake

How Do You Lose a Work of Conceptual Art? Collector Sues After Gallery Misplaces Sol LeWitt Certificate

Former Tunisian Dictator's Son-in-Law Accused of Looting 700-Pound "Gorgon's Mask" Sculpture From Algeria

Artist Stages Weird Candid Photos of Queen Elizabeth, Mocking Britain's Monarchy Fetish

Artist Koki Tanaka to Represent Japan at the 2013 Venice Biennale; Mike Kuraya to Curate

Mercedes Responds to Censorship of Artist’s Car-Themed Work at L.A. MOCA Event

For more breaking art news throughout the day,
check ARTINFO's In the Air blog.

Can cinema verité set you free? A home-movie made under house arrest in Teheran, Jafar Panahi’s “This is Not a Film” documents one sort of imprisonment; “5 Broken Cameras,” a modest, first-person documentary produced by Palestinian photographer Emad Burnat and Israeli activist Guy Davidi in the West Bank town of Bi’lin records another sort of restraint.

Bi’lin, located two miles east of the Green Line and four miles west of Ramallah, has since the mid-aughts served as a stage for non-violent protest against the Israeli “protective barrier” that — in carving out space for the huge, high-rise settlement of Modi’in — effectively cut off the village from 90 percent of its ancestral farm land. “5 Broken Cameras,” which opens this week at Film Forum, is titled for and structured around the five digital recorders Burnat ran through in the course of documenting this ongoing, essentially non-violent struggle. Read the full review on Spotlight.

SALE: Antiquities at Christie's and Sotheby's

LOCATION: New York

DATE: June 7-8

ABOUT: Next week, New York's auction houses will be taken over by ancient, rare marble statuary as Christie's and Sotheby's prepare for their respective antiquities sales. At Sotheby's Thursday a late Hellenistic marble figure of the Capitoline Aphrodite (c. 2nd century A.D.) is expected to be the top lot, with an estimate of $300,000-500,000. It was once owned by the London-based Thomas Hope (of the same Hope family that lent its name to the Hope Diamond), a prominent collector of antiquities who also owned the Hope Dionysos, which now sits at the center of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Sculpture Court. Also on offer is a Greek marble grave stele, dating from the latter part of the 4th century B.C.E. (est. $300,000-500,000), which was discovered in Athens in 1877, was exhibited at the Met from 1964 to 2011, and is being offered at Sotheby's as part of the renowned collection of Jan Mitchell.

On Friday at Christie's, a Greek bronze mirror from the late Classical or early Hellenistic period (350-300 B.C.E.), featuring the Trojan couple Paris and Helen sitting together on a group of rocks, is expected to fetch $600,000-900,000. The mirror has been traded several times in the last few decades, spending time in a private collection in Germany, then at Phoenix Ancient Art, a dealership in Geneva and New York, and finally being purchased by a private collector in Geneva as late as 2006. One of the oldest works on offer at the sales is a Judean Desert limestone mask from the pre-pottery Neolithic era (c. 7th millennium B.C.E.). The 9-inch long, oval-shaped mask, consigned from a New York collection, is estimated to set one back $400,000-600,000 — not a terrible price for an object with an almost 10,000-year history.

OTHER INTERNATIONAL SALES:

Sale: Greenwich Concours d'Elegance: Collectors' Motorcars and Automobilia
Location: Bonhams Greenwich
Date: June 3, 9:30am

Sale: Native American Art Auctions
Location: Bonhams San Francisco
Date: June 4

Sale: Belle Epoque: 19th & 20th Century Decorative Arts and the Joanne Melniker Stern Royal Memorabilia Collection
Location: Doyle New York
Date: June 6

Sale: Modern Art, Post-War and Contemporary Art
Location: Ketterer Kunst Munich
Date: June 9

BERLIN — Programming for the inaugural Berlin Art Week — the latest moniker for the September weekend that includes the Art Berlin Contemporary (abc) and Preview Berlin art fairs, but not Art Forum Berlin, which has been canceled — was announced by representatives from the participating fairs and institutions during a gathering in city hall today. Pointing to Berlin’s Fashion and Music weeks, as well as the upcoming DMY design week, Sybille von Obernitz, Berlin’s senator for economy, technology, and research, said that there was an obvious gap to be filled. However, reflecting the furrowed brows across the room, Silke Neumann, speaking on behalf of abc later clarified, “This is not the first time we have all stood together.”

For years now, abc and Preview have coincided with openings at galleries and museums represented on the Berlin Art Week committee: the Nationalgalerie, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Berlinische Galerie, the Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), and the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK). However, Nationalgalerie director Udo Kittelmann said, “We had to start something new,” and that, “It was only possible here in Berlin and at this very time.”

After the collapse of Art Forum last year, there had been the distinct feeling that Berlin’s future as a commercially viable art capital was at the very least uncertain. Abc, though full of high quality works, has thus far been unable to bring in high-profile international collectors, even on the scale of Berlin Gallery Weekend. However, it remains to be seen whether this grouping of events under one name will have the desired effect — after all, the weekend has always had the loose title of “Kunstherbst” (fall art season). If anything, by not including Berliner Liste — the largest fair in terms of the number of participating galleries — on the official roster, the organizers actually narrowed the week’s focus.

Two things do set Berlin Art Week apart: its €500,000 ($621,000) advertising and development budget courtesy of the state; and its open format. Actually, the two go hand in hand, the former ostensibly alleviating political tensions surrounding the latter. Some of the most interesting effects of the week may very well be how Berlin’s other institutions, art spaces, and studio complexes respond to the incentive and encouragement to join in the event. Berlin cultural secretary Anrdé Schmitz said, “With over 400 galleries and 6,000 actively practicing artists, we are not only Europe’s biggest gallery city but also the most innovative,” pointing to the number of Berlin-based artists in Documenta and last year’s Venice Biennale.

On the other hand, the result may be over-stimulation and saturation, as happened when this year’s Gallery Weekend and Berlin Biennale overlapped. Though that combination seemed to bring in a critical mass of people, it also drew criticism from both organizers and viewers for being too much in too little time — time will tell whether September's first Berlin Art Week will suffer from the same art overdose.

Berlin Art Week takes place from September 11-16, kicking off with the Hamburger Bahnhof and Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie’s presentation of the shortlist for the Young Art Prize. The full program can be seen here. 

What goes around comes around. Twenty-four years ago Michelle Pfeiffer achieved her critical breakthrough playing a Mafia widow hit upon by the local Don (Dean Stockwell) after her husband is rubbed out in Jonathan Demme’s zesty crime spoof “Married to the Mob.” There wasn’t a trace of “Scarface”’s icy Elvira in Pfeiffer’s Angela de Marco, a gum-snapping, brunette-ringleted Brooklyn mom who trades in her shoulder-padded animal print gowns for pretty floral dresses when she falls for an FBI man (Matthew Modine). Read the full post on Spotlight.

Last week, on a cloudy and sweater-worthy spring day in New York, the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto had a little tea party in his secret Japanese teahouse. Built in 2011 above his studio, the teahouse lies somewhere atop a nondescript white building in Chelsea, beyond a hand-operated elevator, and through a few labyrinthine hallways — even if a visitor has the correct address, he might be skeptical of whether this is the right place.

Given the occasion, the lack of sunshine outside was more than just lame cocktail party fodder: Sugimoto’s work depends directly on the presence of the sun. In his expansive and vibrant exhibition “Colors of Shadow,” which was first shown as part of a career retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in February 2006, Sugimoto used Polaroid pictures to document the intersections of hues that emerge when dawn’s light passes through an obelisk prism apparatus. No sun, no art.

Now these snapshots, glorious blown-up bits of a rainbow, are set to become Hermès scarves. The company’s creative director, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, named Sugimoto as Hermès’s third “carre d’artiste,” a visual artist invited to collaborate with the legendary fashion house.

After receiving an invitation to the tea party celebrating the new scarves, this reporter rode the ancient elevator in Chelsea to the 11th floor. It stopped with a jerk. After a few turns, there stood a man in a white dinner jacket.

“Hello, sir,” he said. “Would you like any tea?”

Gladly. But this was not Sugimoto’s tearoom, it was his studio, and the tea party’s mad hatter was nowhere to be found, either. What was there instead? Well, two beautiful Hermès scarves announced their presence on the necks of mannequins. Beyond that the studio was mostly bare, apart from the sine equations, cosine equations, and geometrical formulas scribbled in pencil on the walls. This made sense: the bends and ruffles in the scarves, they were parabolas. The silk, upon first touch, dribbled through fingers like mercury.

“You found the scarves, yes?” Sugimoto said.

The artist was standing and then offered a bow. He was wearing an off-white shirt with chunky black buttons, and comfortable-looking pants.

“Let’s go up to the tea room.”

The stairs led past little fountains with gray, cheek-smooth stones, a wooden lean-to on the right, and a massive window beyond it. The bottom part of Manhattan, 26th Street to Wall Street, was laid out under the ceiling of clouds.

“I rented the space for the storage,” Sugimoto said. “But I saw this beautiful view so I said, ‘Let’s make it a tea house!’”

Even in the poor weather, it was quite the view.

“This is a modern tea house,” he continued as attendants served the beverages and platters of sushi (the tea party was catered by Nobu).

“People don’t have to take your shoes off,” he said, plopping down on a stool and disregarding the traditional folded-leg position. “And you can sit like this.”

 The Hermès commercial silk director, Victor Borges, sat across from him.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Sugimoto said, gesturing towards Borges. “The scarf project, they came to me when I was already working on this series. I had 200 all together and we chose 20. It’s a nice group, we’re presenting the differences, but it’s hard to choose. Maybe this is yellow, and this is some other yellow over here.”

There will only be 140 scarves — seven printings of the 20 designs — but the process of making the pieces took two years. Hermès had a new inkjet machine manufactured for the project, one that can recreate the precise shadings of the pictures on the silk. It takes three weeks of non-stop inking to finish a single scarf.

“It’s part of the process,” Borges sighed. “We knew when we would start, we didn’t know when we would finish.”

The original “Colors of Shadow” project was equally painstaking. For 10 days in his studio in Tokyo, Sugimoto arose at 5:30 in the morning to shoot in tiny timeframe, the only point when the rising sun would hit the prism in the right way. The colors were refracted from the prism to a certain spot on the white wall, shifting as the sun rose. Then, Sugimoto would shoot certain parts of the rainbow with his Polaroid.

He likened it to hunting wild game.

“It’s a free held camera, so I’m able to move around,” he said. “Sometimes I’m photographing only this corner here. And it’s constantly moving, because the sun is always coming up. It is like shooting an animal, but instead I’m shooting a moving color.”

The idea to approach light and color in this way came from Isaac Newton — the artist mentioned that Newton’s book “Opticks,” from 1704, was a major touchstone. Newton may be synonymous with rules of physics, leaving his work with colors as more of a deep cut from the oeuvre. But when flipping though the beautiful book that accompanies the original Sugimoto exhibition, it becomes clear that the motion — the moving colors, the mixed colors — define what the artist is trying to do. Though big and hardback, it’s more flipbook than coffee table book — when you skim the pages, the hues move like waves.

Perhaps this explains why the project can be appropriated to the buoyancy of a scarf. Though Sugimoto claims to be a fashion dilettante, he understands the translation.

“This is my very first experience collaborating with the fashion field,” he said. “It’s not a painting — well, you can hang it on the wall, but you can wear it. People can use their tastes to choose – there are four corners so you can choose the way you want to wear it.”

The scarves will be hung on the wall — as art — at the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland, from June 12 to 21. (The exhibition is timed to correspond with Art Basel.)

But as pretty as the scarves will look hung up in a gallery, Sugimoto said it was fun and freeing to design something that can be worn outside, tied around the neck of a someone anywhere from Basel to Chelsea.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a beautiful girl wearing a scarf on the street,” he said.

He was sitting in front of that huge square of silk, its colors cascading from red to orange, the whole thing lit up behind him despite the dark of the cloudy day.

“It’s a beautiful scarf.”

Land Art, or Earth Art, is justifiably known as one of the thorniest bodies of contemporary art. The massive pieces, among them the iconic “Spiral Jetty” by Robert Smithson (who also coined the movement's moniker), Michael Heizer’s mysterious “City,” and James Turrell’s “Roden Crater,” defy representation and can only truly be experienced in person, in some of the more remote places on the planet. A new project from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, however, gives at least a small inkling of the movement’s history to armchair Land Art explorers.

To launch their new exhibition at Geffen Contemporary, “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974,” the first historical, thematic exhibition to take on Land Art, the L.A. MoCA has created an online directory for the movement. With the help of Google Maps and designers Ways & Means and OKFocus, visitors can easily surf to a selection of Land Art’s greatest hits both executed and conceptual. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “Wrapped Coast” (1969), the largest single artwork ever made according to the site, is among the former. The Google map displays the Australian coastline where the piece was installed while a pop-up provides an in situ photograph. Italian avant-garde architecture collective Superstudio’s “Cube of Forest on the Golden Gate” (1970-71), on the other hand, is an unexecuted proposition: the view of the real bridge reveals nothing, but a rendering outfits the structure with a dense building formed of plants.

L.A. MoCA’s exhibition shows Land Art “as a media practice as much as a sculptural one,” as the curatorial text describes it, giving equal weight to the language, photography, and video that publicized the projects and proposals as it does to the physical works — just as well, given that it would be difficult to shoehorn actual earthworks into a museum gallery. The online component makes it possible for viewers to get a sense of just where these works exist or existed, and what impact they had on the landscape that gave them their context and power.

Take a spot once occupied by a lowly Cajun restaurant, bring in a team from Indochine, install the Norwegian chef Mads Refslund and add a subterranean lounge with an oppressive doorman. That’s the calculus behind Acme, a restaurant and cocktail bar that...

The cover subject of the July issue of Elle U.K. isn’t a starlet swathed in the latest Dior couture gown, a pop songstress perfectly posed, or a model showing off her sexy pout. The person isn’t even a woman but rather British soccer icon David Beckham, slicked down and shirtless as he steps out of a swimming pool. The footballer is the first man in the magazine’s 26-year history to grace its cover in a solo shot.

The move is noteworthy for several reasons, and it acts as a reminder of the sharp differences in how men and women are typically portrayed in the media. Females regularly appear on the covers of men’s magazines like GQ and Esquire, airbrushed and objectified with exaggerated cleavage and exposed legs. But when males land on the covers of women’s magazines, they are usually fully clothed and posed alongside a scantily clad member of the opposite sex.

In the past 15 years men have been photographed for Elle U.K.’s cover just a handful of times, including the February 1997 issue, when musician Paul Weller appeared with model Kate Moss; April 1997, which shows Flamenco dancer Joaquin Cortes with his arms wrapped around model Naomi Campbell; September 1998, when actors Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Ewan McGregor were part of a Britain’s Sexiest Stars package; January 2001, which featured McGregor again and actress Renee Zellweger; and November 2003, which spotlighted singer-actress Nicole Appleton and Oasis’s Liam Gallagher. All of the men — with the exception of a shirtless Cortes — are completely covered up, wearing shirts and jackets. Gallagher even sports a Burberry scarf. The women, meanwhile, all have their skin exposed — Campbell wore a slinky back-baring mint-green dress, Zellweger donned a backless bustier, Appleton had a bare midriff, and Moss sported a low-cut spaghetti-string top.

But Elle U.K. took a different approach this time, leaving Beckham all by himself to show off his chiseled abs and bulging pecs — but that version only goes to subscribers. The magazine also created a more subdued newsstand version with a close-up of Beckham in a gray T-shirt, showing off his tattooed arms.

In explaining the magazine’s decision to feature the London-born midfielder without a companion, Elle U.K. editor-in-chief Lorraine Candy offers a simple explanation, referencing the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games.

“David Beckham is a national hero, so we saw an opportunity to shoot a celebratory cover to support an historical and patriotic year,” she said in a statement posted on elleuk.com. “He is an icon and Elle is known for featuring icons on its cover. This is a first for us on the newsstand and I believe he is loved by men and women alike. Anyway, who doesn’t want to see a picture of one of the world’s most handsome men on the front cover of a magazine? It will be a collector’s issue.”

However, it is still uncertain whether Beckham, a former England team captain who is on the shortlist for the England soccer team, will even participate in this year’s Olympics. Team England soccer coach Stuart Pearce will decide in the next few weeks if Beckham will make the cut. But the soccer player did help promote London’s bid to host the games, and on May 18 he carried the Olympic torch from Greece to Royal Navy air station in Cornwall, England.

The upcoming Games, it seems, have offered an excuse for other women’s magazine editors to place shirtless male athletes on their covers. For American Vogue’s June 2012 issue, Anna Wintour put U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte (the fourth Vogue male cover star) in swim trunks, flanked by two female Olympians — soccer player Hope Solo and tennis star Serena Williams, both in gold one-piece swimsuits.

But the cover group shots – troubling as they might be – aren’t really the issue here, and another question comes up when contemplating July’s Elle U.K.: Why did it take so long for a prominent women’s fashion magazine to put a solo man on its cover? A look at 2011’s best-selling magazine covers reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulation in the United States points to the bottom line. Out of the top sellers of the year, none featured a male cover model on his own. GQ’s most popular cover from 2011 pictured Mila Kunis. The actress was a hit all around – her February Cosmopolitan cover sold 1.2 million issues and her August Elle cover with Justin Timberlake was the magazine’s fourth-highest seller last year. By contrast, Esquire only sold 73,000 copies of Timberlake’s solo cover, making it the magazine’s worst-performing issue in 2011. There are numerous factors – from the economy to human psychology to societal expectations – that can contribute to unpredictable newsstand sales, but the numbers generally show that women perform better than men.

One thing is certain: If current editorial standards remain intact, men and women will continue to buy magazines flaunting manipulated images of svelte women who represent an unrealistic standard of perfection that no human being can actually achieve. Nonetheless, Elle U.K.’s Candy did, in a sense, make history and break gender boundaries by naming Beckham as the magazine’s first solo male cover star (although it goes without saying that he’s been airbrushed, too). We’re curious to see how the issue fares on the newsstand and where the editors will take it from here. 

A legal dispute between the African National Congress (ANC) and Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery over a controversial painting of President Jacob Zuma has been settled out of court, the Financial Times reported today. Created by the artist Brett Murray and displayed in an exhibition titled "Hail to the Thief II," the painting depicted South Africa's president in a heroic, Lenin-style stance. Like other works in the show, it appeared to riff on the visual language of Soviet-era propaganda posters, though in this case, it also portrayed the President's genitals hanging prominently out of the fly of his pants. Rendered in fiery red, yellow, and black acrylic paint and titled "Spear," the painting was taken as more than a little provocative given the uncommon delicacy of sex and race relations in South African culture.

"Spear" may not be the first work of art to make reference to Zuma's colorful sexual history. A practicing polygamist, he has reportedly sired several of his 20 children out of wedlock, and was the defendant in a rape trial between 2005 and 2006 involving the daughter of a fellow ANC member who was known to be HIV positive.

The case surrounding the Murray painting is nevertheless unprecedented for the ire it has sparked in the South African public. Shortly after "Hail to the Thief II" opened, representatives from the ANC called for the painting's removal on the grounds that it violated the dignity of Zuma's office. At first, the gallery resisted, telling the AFP that taking it down would amount to censorship. In response party members announced plans to take the gallery to court. 

"The presidency is shocked and disgusted at the grotesque painting by Brett Murray depicting President Jacob Zuma in an offensive manner," ANC spokesman Mac Maharaj told the South African Times. "We are amazed at the crude and offensive manner in which this artist denigrates the person and the office of the President of the Republic of South Africa."

Zuma loyalists were not the only ones who felt Murray had gone too far. Arts and Culture Minister Paul Mashatile called the gallery to express his concern, and a statement from the Congress of South African Trade Unions objected to the work's display. "This picture is offensive and disrespectful not only to an individual," they wrote, "but to the democratically elected President of South Africa and therefore to the whole country and the people of South Africa."

On May 22, while the case was being argued in court, the Telegraph reported that hundreds of ANC supporters were marching through the streets Johannesburg, calling for the the painting's removal. That same day, the Guardian released a video of two men defacing the work with x-marks of red paint and smeared black paint. According to CNN, about 15,000 people were expected to attend another march the following Tuesday, this time to the doorstep of the gallery. 

In court, Zuma's friend and legal counsel Gcina Malindi spoke sharply, arguing that the painting's insult to Zuma's person was also an insult to human rights, and breaking into sobs as he described his alliance with the president during the years of apartheid. By this point, it appeared that the fulcrum of controversy had moved from questions about Murray's right to openly mock elected officials with his art to broader questions about Zuma's race. Announcing that they would remove the painting as a "gesture of goodwill" on Wednesday morning, the Goodman Gallery appeared to relent, bringing the polarizing dispute to a close.