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Slideshow: Joana Vasconcelos at Versailles

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Slideshow: Highlights from Full Figured Fashion Week™

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Slideshow: Mattia Bonetti at David Gill Gallery

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All Brass and Sass: Mattia Bonetti's Cheeky and Extravagant Works Return to David Gill Gallery

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All Brass and Sass: Mattia Bonetti's Cheeky and Extravagant Works Return to David Gill Gallery
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Keeping up with the style of his past exhibitions, called “playful,” “neo-Baroque,” and “barbaric” by various critics, Mattia Bonetti has returned to his longtime home, London’s David Gill Gallery, with another show of imaginative (and unusual) works.

The 14-piece show is a bit of modernism with a touch of surreaism and plenty of winking extravagance, a combination that works so well at David Gill, a purveyor of postmodern irreverence by the likes of Marc Newson and Ettore Sottsass. Bonetti has shown there since 1989.

Not all of the pieces in the new exhibition are immediately recognizable as furniture, but that’s the beauty of them; they toe the fine line between art and design, and sometimes between an armoire and a gift (see the shiny, bronze ribbon-wrapped “Happy Birthday” cabinet), or an armoire and a porcupine (see the frighteningly spiky “Fakir,” a cabinet fit for a medieval torture dungeon). Bonetti’s use of high end materials — gold leaf, fine leather, polished copper, and the like — doesn’t disguise the whimsy of his work. Through its armor of dark lacquered wood and pipes of steel for example, the humor in his reflective “Organ” cabinet still shines through.

Click the slide show to see pieces from Mattia Bonetti's show at David Gill Gallery.

Full Figured Fashion Week Shines a Spotlight on an Untapped $17-Billion Market

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Full Figured Fashion Week Shines a Spotlight on an Untapped $17-Billion Market
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NEW YORK — Last week at Bloomingdale’s, models strutted down the runway wearing the latest designs by Calvin KleinRalph Lauren, and Michael Kors — but they weren’t the typical stick-thin variety who frequent the catwalks of the global fashion weeks in New York, Paris, London, and Milan — their figures reflected that of the average American woman.

The runway show, which was part of Full Figured Fashion Week, showcased styles for a segment of the population that the pages of Vogue and other fashion magazines often overlook: those size 12 and up. More than 62 percent of American women are overweight, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and the average woman wears a size 14 — yet most high-end designers like Prada and Louis Vuitton rarely go beyond a size 10, even though the plus-size clothing market was worth a whopping $17 billion last year.

“There’s definitely challenges in finding plus-size clothing because we’re a little curvy,” stylist Sheryll Lavonne told ARTINFO. “We need better materials, and we like high fashion too, but it is difficult to find nice fashion for us.”

Experts say that luxury labels want to stay away from the plus-size market because it conflicts with the image they wish to project.

“It’s about selling the dream,” Constance White, style director at eBaytold the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in March. “These people are in the image business, and a larger woman doesn’t fit with their image of the brand. They want you to buy their perfume but not one of their dresses.”

Only a small percentage of high-end fashion designers offer sizes for curvier women. Oscar de la RentaDonna Karan, and Tommy Hilfiger are among the few who create garments for that retail market.

“We’re seeing it now with Calvin Klein, we’re seeing it with Michael Kors, we’re seeing it with Tadashi [Shoji], and all of the designers that were featured here today at Bloomingdale’s,” Reah Norman, a fashion stylist and an editor at Plus Model Magazine, told ARTINFO following last week’s presentation. “I think it’s going to take some time for people to really consider plus-size women fashion, more so from a straight fashion perspective.”

For Bloomingdale’s, participating in Full Figured Fashion Week was clearly a way to reach a diverse range of customers. Anne Keating, a senior vice president of public relations at the company, told ARTINFO via email that their partnership with the event is an example of the store’s commitment to “offering all of our shoppers the opportunity to enjoy exciting events and top designer fashions.”

More people in the straight-size fashion industry are taking notice of plus-size women and their spending power. Along with the steady stream of designers slowly entering the market, mainstream women’s magazines like Marie Claire, which has a plus-size fashion column called “Big Girl in a Skinny World,” and events like Full Figured Fashion Week are helping to bring the larger female form to the spotlight. Will the luxury designers eventually catch on to their needs? Hopefully.

“I think that as more designers take the chance and they see success, then others will follow suit,” said Norman.  

Click on the slide show for highlights from Full Figured Fashion Week.

J. Hoberman: Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012

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J. Hoberman: Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012
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Andrew Sarris, the most influential movie critic of his generation, died today at age 83.

From 1960 through 1988, Sarris was a fixture at the Village Voice where, over the course of his hundreds of learned, yet colloquial, reviews, he — more than any other individual — educated American moviegoers on the history of the medium.

Most famously, it was Sarris who popularized and explicated the French notion of auteurism — basically that Hollywood directors like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and many, many others were artists, no less and perhaps a bit more, than Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and other highly touted foreign directors. Hard to believe that this was ever controversial, and yet … (On the other hand, Sarris was also an unabashed Francophile who championed early Godard, mid-period Chabrol, and Rohmer’s entire career.)

Sarris’s “The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968,” first published as a special — and almost instantly collectible — issue of Film Culture, and later as a paperback original in 1968, boiled Hollywood history down into pithy career descriptions of some 200 filmmakers, ranked by category (Pantheon Directors, The Far Side of Paradise, Expressive Esoterica). It was a bible for countless cinephiles, including me. My undergraduate comrades and I used to call it The Book, as in “Paul Wendkos? I don’t know — check the book!” I referred to my tattered, underlined copy so often as to have whole chunks engraved in my memory: “What burst of Buddhist contemplation was responsible for such a haunting exception to such an unexceptional career?”

I knew Andy for over a decade as a colleague at the Voice. He was a vivid character, a big guy with deep-set, raccoon-ringed eyes (too many movies?), an instantly recognizable hearty laugh and a roguish sense of humor. We had our critical differences, and even a few battles, over the years, but I never doubted — or was less than inspired by — his devotion to the two media we shared, movies and newspapers. His capacity to make a deadline was also impressive.

I also knew Andy, before I could call him that, when I was a grad student at Columbia and was, as one of my work-study obligations, the projectionist for a class he taught in Hollywood melodrama. Projecting can be a tense job — things can go wrong — and professors, who are “on stage” themselves, are not always patient with a snafu. Sarris, however, was a brick. If there was ever a problem, he simply flung himself into the breach and launched an extemporaneous lecture.

I can hear his voice now and I expect I always will. Andy, I salute you.

Read more J. Hoberman on Movie Journal

In the Spotlight: Twin Shadow's Epic "Five Seconds" Video, Paul Verhoeven's New Film Has a Producer and a Writer, and More Culture News

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Christie's London Tallies Robust $145-Million Imp/Mod Sale Fueled by Degas, Picasso, and Magritte

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Christie's London Tallies Robust $145-Million Imp/Mod Sale Fueled by Degas, Picasso, and Magritte
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LONDON — Packed with more desirable works than its arch rival Sotheby’s, Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale delivered a solid and reassuring £92,583,550 ($145,541,341) tally with 56 of the 70 lots offered finding buyers. The total came within striking distance of the £100 million high estimate and the buy-in rate was a decent 20 percent by lot and 16 percent by value. Two artist records were set, four lots made over five million pounds, 27 works hurdled the one million pound mark and thirty-six exceeded one million dollars. That compares to Christie’s June 2011 evening sale that made £140,019,200 ($219,816,142).

For the statistically minded, the average lot tonight, including buyer’s premium, was £1,653,278 ($2,598,953). The overall numbers would have been presumably higher were it not for the pre-auction private sale of the top-priced offering, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s fleshy nude, “Baigneuse” from 1888 (est. £12-18 million) that sold to a buyer for an undisclosed price somewhere within the estimate, according to Christie’s.

“We had a private sale offer,” said Jussi Plykkanen, president of Christie’s Europe and the evening’s auctioneer, “and the vendor (seller) decided to accept it.” When Pylkannen made the announcement of the Renoir withdrawal at the start of the evening sale, surprised gasps were heard in the audience. The painting last sold at auction in November 1997 at Sotheby’s New York for a toppy $20.9 million.

Hints of a game market flashed episodically throughout the long evening as Pablo Picasso’s large-scaled “Femme au chien” from 1962, featuring his wife Jacqueline and Kabul, the artist’s beloved Afghan hound, and backed by a third party guarantee, sold to a telephone bidder for £6,985,250 ($10,980,813), just within its estimated £6-9 million range. Another Picasso, the heavily impastoed and richly colored “Femme assise” from 1949 grabbed the top lot, selling to William Acquavella of New York’s Acquavella Galleries for £8,553,250 ($13,445,709), well above its £5-7 million estimate. The 1949 Picasso last sold at auction at New York’s Parke-Bernet Galleries, a forerunner of Sotheby’s, for £37,000 in 1960. Asked about the evening, Acquavella succinctly observed, “good things do better and other things have a tough time.”

That was apparent as Edvard Munch’s Fauve-like landscape, “Hagen I Asgardstrand” from 1904-05 expired at £2 million (est. £2.5-3.5 million). The picture last sold at auction for £2,057,250 at Sotheby’s London in June 2008, a time when the market was humming.

Decorative, easy living pictures continued to attract strong interest as Paul Signac’s Pontillist styled “La Corne d’Or, les Minarets,” with boating traffic and the skyline of  Constantinople, painted in 1907, sold for £6,201,250 ($9,748,365) — just over its £4-6 million estimate. Another boating scene, Claude Monet’s “Le chantier de petits navires, pres de Honfleur” from 1864, ignited a bidding battle, selling to New York private dealer Stephane Connery for £2,785,250 ($4,378,250), outpacing its £1.2-1.8 million estimate. The fresh-to-market picture, always a plus sign for finicky buyers, last sold at Sotheby’s New York back in May 1982 for £89,390 and is considered one of the artist’s earliest surviving oils.

A tranquil Paul Gauguin landscape, “Paysage aux troncs  bleus” from 1892, a recently re-discovered painting from the time of the artist’s first trip to Tahiti sold for £4,521,250 ($7,107,405), within the £3-5 million estimate. Gilbert Lloyd of London’s Marlborough Gallery was the underbidder.  

There were also long moments of conspicuous consumption when a dazzling group of fourteen small-scaled Edgar Degas bronzes, all cast from the artist’s wax models after his death, appeared in succession. All of the bronzes carried a third party guarantee and a handful of the group made dizzying prices, including the twelve-inch-high “Cheval au gallop sur le pied droit” from an early 1920s cast that sold for £2,617,250 ($4,114,317), vastly exceeding its £300,000-400,000 estimate. Another Degas, the 28 3/8-inch-high mini-study version of the iconic “Petite danseuse de quatorze ans” sold to a bidder seated in the front row of the salesroom for £2,841,250 ($4,466,445), just over its £1.8-2.5 million estimate. The same American bidder, who later declined to give his name or the time of day, bought Degas’s “Femme assise s’essuyannt le cote gauche” for £825,250 ($1,297,293), more than triple its high estimate of £250,000. All fourteen Degas sold for £10.9 million, including the added-on buyer’s premium, compared to the £4.5 million low estimate.

A rare to market and decidedly time-worn Kurt Schwitters collage, “Merzbild 9A Bild mit Damestein (L Merzbild L5),” a cutting-edge work from 1919, comprised of oil, paper, card, canvas, metal, and wood assemblage on cardboard in the artist’s frame sold for a record £1,273,250 ($2,001,549), nearly double its £700,000 high estimate. Bidding opened at £620,000 and instantly jumped to one million pounds, indicating the impatience of a determined buyer, not to mention the serendipitous possibilities of a deep-pocketed market, at least when it wants to be.

That was quite evident for the early and tough subject René Magritte painting, “Les jours gigantesques” from 1928, featuring a naked woman being sexually attacked by a dressed man, though in Surrealist fashion — the duo were literally intertwined as if in a dream or fantasy. Despite the condition issues of the painting, including a repaired tear near the woman’s throat, it soared to £7,209,250 ($11,332,941), more than four times its high estimate of £1.5 million. It sold to New York financier Wilbur Ross, seated near the front of the salesroom. At least eight bidders chased the early Magritte, including London dealer Daniella Luxembourg.

A later Magritte, “Le monde des images” from circa 1961, featuring a sunset scene seen though a broken window with shards of the glass reflecting the sun’s colors, sold for £4,857,250 ($7,635,597), well above its £3 million high estimate. Late Magrittes typically outperform the tougher and darker early paintings but as David Rogath, a Magritte collector and art dealer from Greenwich, Connecticut, observed, “I think the prices are justified and in a short period of time will go much higher. Magritte is still undervalued.”

It was also a very good night for another Belgian artist, as the multi-figured and wickedly satirical James Ensor painting, "Les jours," featuring a card cheat from 1902, sold to a Belgian private collector for £1,609,250 ($2,529,741), doubling its £800,000 high estimate. Though the buyer declined to identify himself as his entourage exited Christie's, his agent was more obliging. "It's a museum piece," said Ghent dealer Louis Lannoo, "and we've only found one Ensor (for my client) in the past five years." Lannoo also pointed out that  the former owner of the Ensor had a very good eye since he also sold the 1928 Magritte tonight.

The evening action resumes here on Tuesday with contemporary art at Sotheby’s.

Click the slide show to see highlights from the Christie's Imp-mod sales in London.


[Updated]: 3 Key Facts About New York's Museum of Biblical Art, as Reports Surface of Its Looming Budget Crisis

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[Updated]: 3 Key Facts About New York's Museum of Biblical Art, as Reports Surface of Its Looming Budget Crisis
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NEW YORK — Though admired for years as a well-performing underdog in a big city, the future of New York's Museum of Biblical Art (MoBiA) has begun to look more and more precarious. USA Today reports that funding for the seven-year-old institution may dry up in the next few years, even as director Ena Heller, citing a wish "to run another museum," will be stepping down from her post in July. Though her departure is on amicable terms, no successor has yet been named. In addition, there have been rumors — vigorously denied by the museum's board — that the institution may lose an uncommonly generous lease on their building at 61st and Broadway.

As MoBiA awaits its fate, ARTINFO assembles a brief guide of what you need to know about the scrappy Upper West Side institution:

Leveraging Its Assets

Even if you haven't heard about MoBiA's work, it has managed to pull off some impressive scholarly feats with its resources. In New York, it may be best known for shows that would be hard to place anywhere else, including last month's exhibition "Selection of Soldiers' Bibles," but its biggest contribution might be its work with other museums, many of which are much more prestigious. "Adoration of the Magi," a Renaissance altarpiece by Bartolo di Fredi now on view at the museum, was originally created as a tryptich. To reassemble it for exhibition, the museum took loans from the University of Virginia Art Museum in Charlottesville, Siena's Pinacoteca, and the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, Germany, in addition to borrowing another Fredi rendition of the "Adoration" from the Metropolitan Museum and his "Adoration of the Shepherds" from the Cloisters.

Friends in High Places

Who supports MoBiA? By far the museum's biggest benefactor has been the American Bible Society, a bicentenarian organization with reported assets of $532 million in 2011. Itself a non-profit institution, the ABS founded the museum in 2005 and has contributed to about 50 percent of its annual budget. Since it has announced plans to wind down its support to zero by 2015, questions have emerged about who will take their place.

Biblical Art Museum with a Secular Purpose

Although MoBiA's focus has been on art related to Judaism and Christianity, the museum prides itself as a non-denominational, non-profit institution. This isn't to say, however, that they are without conservative ties; board member Roberta Ahmanson was named by TIME's among the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" in 2005, and the LA Times reports that her husband's company, Fieldstead & Co.donated more than $1 million to "Yes to 8," an organization dedicated to upholding California's ban on same-sex marriage.

UPDATE: Ena Heller, who could not be reached immediately for comment, responded on Thurdsday afternoon to concerns about the the ABS's plans to reduce its funding for the museum. "That’s something that we’ve known all along," Heller told ARTINFO, naming an array of private and public institutions that will make up MoBiA's support system in years to come, including the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Samuel Kress Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the David Berg Foundation, and the Andy Warhold Foundation.

Heller also spoke to questions about her successor as director, telling ARTINFO that the museum will appoint an Acting Director to fill her duties while the search for a permanent director is still underway. The acting director should be named next week, she said, adding, "I feel that I leave this museum in a good place."

Critical Art Ensemble Performance Sparks Major Police Operation at Documenta

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Critical Art Ensemble Performance Sparks Major Police Operation at Documenta
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KASSEL — Police were deployed in large numbers on Tuesday evening after two glass vials containing an unknown substance were found at Documenta. The suspicious receptacles were discovered by two employees of the exhibition inside of the old Customs House at the front of the north wing of the Kulturbahnhof. The venue, which holds a large-scale installation by Cyprian and German artist duo Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer, was immediately evacuated

The contents of the test tube-like glass vessels could not be immediately verified, hence the mobilization of local police. Specialists from the Landeskriminalamt, the centralized police force for each German state, were flown in by helicopter to help identify and diffuse the potentially hazardous materials. They quickly took the containers back to their headquarters 200 kilometers away in Wiesbaden to be analyzed.

Later Tuesday evening, the operation came to a successful, if not slightly anti-climactic end, with authorities reporting that the vials were filled with nothing more than cooking oil. The faux-terror scare was eventually revealed to be the work of Documenta participants Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), which was executing a performance for which they filled test tubes with cooking oil and drops of blood and distributed them to Documenta visitors. Allegedly, a pair of those viewers decided to unburden themselves of the vials within the old customs house, sparking the massive police investigation.

(This is not the first time that CAE's boudary-blurring art has gotten its members in trouble with the police. In 2004, collective member Steve Kurtz was put through a major ordeal and became a cause célèbre after he became the target of a terrorism investigation on account of biological materials found in his studio which he had been planning to use in an art installation. The charges were definitively dismissed in 2008.) 

A version of this post originally appeared on Berlin Art Brief.

The Victoria & Albert Museum Unveils High-Tech Furniture Gallery as Part of its "FuturePlan"

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The Victoria & Albert Museum Unveils High-Tech Furniture Gallery as Part of its "FuturePlan"
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As part of the Victoria & Albert Museum's mission to revitalize and renovate its facilities (which it adorably refers to as its "FuturePlan"), it's bringing the old furniture out of the vault. Starting December 1, the museum will be home to a new, permanent Furniture Gallery, providing a space to display pieces that haven't been on view for more than 30 years.

In collaboration with Glasgow-based NORD Architects, the V&A is building a futuristic way of looking at the past. The collection stretches back to 1509 with a gilded cassone made for Italy's Duke of Urbino. Though the 200 pieces set to go on display (most of them from Britian and Europe with a few objects from Asia and the United States) date back 600 years, they'll be labeled with digital touchscreen interfaces, while contemporary experts like David Adjaye and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen will lend their voices to the audio tours.

Highlights in the new wing include what you’d expect: design mainstays like the Eameses make an appearance with one of their signature Storage Units, as does Frank Lloyd Wright with his high-backed, uncomfortably rigid-looking dining chair for the Ward Willets House (1902). Watch out for pieces by mid-Georgian marvel Thomas Chippendale and the postmodernist stylings of Ron Arad, too.

 

 

 

 

Saving "Grace"? Paul Rudd Tragicomedy May Rescue Christian-Themed Broadway

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Saving "Grace"? Paul Rudd Tragicomedy May Rescue Christian-Themed Broadway
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Shows with Christian themes are fleeing Broadway faster than you can say “Amen.” Last month, “Leap of Faith” shuttered quickly, and “Sister Act, the Musical” recently  announced that it will be closing its convent doors on August 26th. The producers of “Jesus Christ Superstar” have also given notice that if ticket sales don’t miraculously pick up, the curtain will come down on the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice revival on July 1st. That sea of red ink suggests that Broadway audiences tend to shy away from religious themes unless they are treated with some skepticism (John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt”), mystery (John Pielmeier’s “Agnes of God”), or satire (“Book of Mormon”).

Jesus will be soon be resurrected, however, in Craig Wright’s “Grace,” which opens on September 13th for a limited run with Paul Rudd, Michael Shannon, Ed Asner, and Kate Arrington. In this tragicomedy,  Rudd and Arrington play a fundamentalist Christian couple who move to suburban Florida and plan to open a string of religious-themed “Sonrise” motels with the motto “Where Would Jesus Stay?” Shannon, an Oscar nominee for “Revolutionary Road,” plays an embittered neighbor -- disfigured in an accident which killed his fiancée -- who proves a challenge to the God-fearing, faith-abiding couple. Asner seems a perfect fit for the role of a meddling  pest controller. Dexter Bullard, who collaborated with Shannon in the off-Broadway production of Wright's "Mistakes Were Made," will direct. Wright, a former Methodist seminarian turned playwright and screenwriter (“Recent Tragic Events,” “Six Feet Under”), has received acclaim for handling Big Issues with complexity, humor and sensitivity. “Wright never appeals to a least-common-denominator formula, and the result is a powerful, scorching drama that chips away at theology and the essence of spiritual belief,” wrote a critic when “Grace” had its world premiere at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in 2004. (It subsequently had well-received productions in Los Angeles and Chicago.)

Given its star power, “Grace” looks to have strong commercial prospects -- unlike the other flop shows mentioned above. Even “Sister Act,” which was presented by Whoopi Goldberg and ran for more than a year on Broadway, lost well over $10 million. What it received in return was a brand ii it no doubt will bill itself as the “Broadway hit musical” when it begins its North American tour in Toronto in October.

Read more on theater on Play by Play

Slideshow: NBA Fashion

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Smoke and Mirrors: David Lynch and Dom Perignon Team Up For a Three-Day Affair at L.A.'s Legendary Chateau Marmont

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Smoke and Mirrors: David Lynch and Dom Perignon Team Up For a Three-Day Affair at L.A.'s Legendary Chateau Marmont
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LOS ANGELES – Room 33 of the Chateau Marmont has views of downtown Los Angeles out of one window, the palm tree-dotted garden cafe out of another, and out of a third, the hotel’s Bungalow 2, where James Dean swung into a window to audition for “Rebel Without a Cause.” The director Nicholas Ray and co-star Natalie Wood were waiting for the actor to arrive, and there he was, catapulting into the room, ready to get the part.

It’s just a small sample of the lore that surrounds the Chateau Marmont, the 1929 hotel atop a first bump of Beverly Hills. And you can add this to the list: on Tuesday, it played host to an opening dinner for “The Power of Creation,” a limited edition Dom Perignon bottle designed by David Lynch.

The legendary Tinseltown hotel – a staging ground and muse to filmmakers, artists, and writers for decades – houses 63 rooms, one of which is Room 33. Room 33 looks familiar. You’ve seen it in movies, and the people you see in movies have seen it. The same stuff is all there. Like an old General Electric refrigerator, ample ashtrays, a silver ice bucket, copies of art books by Terry Richardson and Ed Ruscha, coasters, letterhead-stamped stationery, matchbooks, a bottle of Dom Perignon vintage 2003, potted plants, an ottoman...

OK, so perhaps the Dom Perignon doesn’t always show up. But this week, the classic Champagne makers had taken over the Chateau Marmont and other locations in Los Angeles to celebrate its collaboration with Lynch. The bottle he designed depicts the bubbly deconstructed to its DNA: sparkly glass-bits and spiky curves, glowing like a star nebula. The centerpiece of the event was Lynch’s “reveal” of sorts ­­– an elaborate series of rooms and smoke and video screens – that took place last night, down the boulevard at Hollywood’s Milk Studios. It was kept heavily under wraps.
 
Choosing the Chateau Marmont makes sense to devotees of Lynch’s film “Mulholland Drive.” It was shot here, along with Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere,” “The Doors,” and the video for Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games.” Likewise, the people who make the movies have had their share of fun at the place (too much fun, in the case of John Belushi).

“If these walls could talk,” the woman at the front desk said to someone checking in.

If the walls of Room 33 could talk about the reporter who came in on Tuesday, for the first day of Lynch’s reveal, they would say something about the ashtrays getting messy with ash, ice falling into the ice bucket and traveling to whiskey glasses, that bottle of Dom Perignon getting a few milliliters lighter rather quickly, and ink staining the letterhead-stamped stationery with words.

But the walls couldn’t say much about the opening dinner, as it took place in the garden below. Guests, mostly the insiders who would put on the big party the next day, went for more vintage 2003 as the shadows rolled down the hills, the Hollywood sign, and then Hollywood Boulevard. 

Richard Geoffroy, the Chef de Cave of Dom Perignon, was stuck in San Francisco.

“Richard, he’s like the Karl Lagerfeld of the wine world,” someone whispered.

It was mostly press that first night – writers from Japan, from France, from New York City – but as grilled branzino segued to a lemon tart, friends in town began to show up. Someone texted the actress Natasha Lyonne and she took a seat and spoke of moving back east. Someone texted singer Sky Ferreira and she came, too. Someone texted Ke$ha but she never showed.

The crowd split ways soon after, some heading to the packed Bar Marmont and others to a Grimes show at the Echo. The after party was at the Overpass, a shack in Silver Lake that blasted oldies into a haze of cigarette smoke.

The next morning, a few hours before David Lynch unleashed his reveal upon unsuspecting Angelenos, those staying at the Marmont took a car that drove (well, a car that sat in traffic for an hour) to the Museum of Contemporary Art for a private tour, arranged between Dom Perignon and the curator Jeffrey Deitch (who was, sadly, in New York for the whole affair). Along with the Warhols and Rauschenbergs and Rothkos there was the feature exhibition, “The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Warhol.”

“Are we going to see the James Franco exhibition?” someone asked. She was referring to MOCA’s “Rebel,” which the actor/writer/curator Franco calls an “interrogative ode” to James Dean and “Rebel Without a Cause.”

“I hear he has a recreation of the Chateau Marmont in it,” someone else said, referring to the bungalow Dean had jumped into when auditioning for the movie.

The driver pulled up the driveway of the hotel.

“How meta,” she said.

But that exhibition is actually at MOCA’s auxiliary space, on North Highland Avenue, and the private tour did not make it there. Instead, the cars drove back to the Chateau Marmont, the real one, and we went back to the real Room 33.

TEST 6.21 - FASHION tag


One-Line Reviews: Our Staff's Pithy Takes on Tomas Saraceno, Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, and More

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In the Spotlight: The First Trailer for Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina," Divine Fits First Song, and More Culture News

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Heat vs. Thunder: NBA Finals Spur Post-Game Fashion Showdowns

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Heat vs. Thunder: NBA Finals Spur Post-Game Fashion Showdowns
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The NBA Finals are in full swing, and on the basketball court, the Miami Heat leads the Oklahoma City Thunder 3-1. Should the Heat win game 5 tonight in Miami, the team will take the home the Larry O’Brien Trophy — but that’s not the only battle taking place between the two teams.

A select group of players have turned the post-game press conferences into another competition of sorts — the game of NBA fashion. The tables serve as runways from which clothes are presented, and the players act as models who wear everything from fluorescent-hued geometric patterns on their shirts to funky eyeglass frames (without lenses).

The sartorial choices of the players have become the subject of as much media fodder as the actual game itself, and snarky comments abound. Even the players are firing at each other.

“I’ve been wearing glasses since I’ve been in the league,” Oklahoma City point guard Russell Westbrook said at a press conference last week. “I think everybody else just started wearing them now.”

Miami Heat forward LeBron James disagreed.

“It’s a look, it’s a fashion thing,” he said when he heard about Westbrook's comment on June 13. “But he absolutely didn’t start it.”

ARTINFO pits the Oklahoma City Thunder’s three most fashionable players — Westbrook, Kevin Durant, and James Harden, who take a younger hipster approach — against the Miami Heat’s Big 3 — James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade, who lean in a more GQ-esque direction. We take a look at the brands they favor, their appearances in the fashion world, and their overall sense of style. Who will score the most points and win the title of the most fashionable team of the NBA Finals? Click on the slide show to find out.

 

Yves Saint Laurent Co-Founder Pierre Bergé Weighs In on Hedi Slimane's Plans to Rename the Revered Fashion House

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Yves Saint Laurent Co-Founder Pierre Bergé Weighs In on Hedi Slimane's Plans to Rename the Revered Fashion House
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The fashion industry may be torn about Hedi Slimane’s decision to change Yves Saint Laurent to Saint Laurent Paris, but the newly-appointed creative director has the approval of one person who matters: Pierre Bergé, the fashion house’s co-founder and longtime partner of the late designer.

“I’m very happy. Anything that makes the house more Saint Laurent is welcome,” Bergé told WWD. “I am happy that Stefano Pilati is gone, just as I was happy when Tom Ford left.”

The original Yves Saint Laurent ready-to-wear line went by Saint Laurent Rive Gauche when it debuted in 1966.

A spokesperson for the fashion house told WWD that Slimane would return to the “original branding,” thus “restoring the house to its truth, purity, and essence — and taking it into a new era” while “respecting the original principles and ideals.”

When WWD spoke to Bergé on Thursday, he informed the fashion trade publication that Slimane had alerted him about his plans by telephone several weeks ago.

Bergé also approves of Slimane’s decision to design the collection from Los Angeles, where the designer has been living for the past few years while pursuing a photography career.

“The creative studio is in a designer’s head, it resides within the person,” Bergé told WWD. “Hedi lives in Los Angeles. He should be left to do fashion in a city he likes.”

It looks as if Slimane can do no wrong in Bergé’s eyes — it will be interesting to see how the rest of the fashion world responds once the rebranding rolls out with the spring/summer 2013 collections.

 

David Lynch Turns Hollywood's Milk Studios Into a Fun House for the Reveal of His Custom Bottle for Dom Perignon

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David Lynch Turns Hollywood's Milk Studios Into a Fun House for the Reveal of His Custom Bottle for Dom Perignon
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LOS ANGELES – An hour into the reveal of “Dom Perignon by David Lynch,” the walls of Milk Studios in Hollywood, California started to shake. They shook until the center ruptured and opened, like a mouth, engulfing the masses and their Champagne flutes into a void of fog and neon. And beyond the wobbly precipice, before a dark tunnel of which we could see no end, stood a blank black chalkboard that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

“Are we not impressed?” said a man in a topcoat, hat, and pocket watch. He gestured not to the admittedly impressive array of tanned bodies and bottles of bubbly, but rather to the chalkboard he presided over, where men and women began to take pieces of chalk, put them to the board, and make impressions of their names.

“Step right up!” the man said, handing over a piece of chalk. “I myself cannot write, you know.”

Beside the names Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince – the two members of rock band the Kills, the night’s entertainment – Kelly Osbourne, some Chinese characters, and a slew of names surely vital to certain spheres in Los Angeles, went the name Nate Freeman.

“I’m not even sure why I’m here,” Bret Easton Ellis told us, standing on the marble patio outside. Regardless, he seemed to be in a very good mood. “I’m on deadline” – this reporter can’t reveal for what – “and I ran into too many people I know.”

Perhaps he counted among his friends these dozens of the L.A.-based artists and creative types that walked through the cracked wall and down the spooky hallway, but he certainly knew Shannyn Sossamon. She was in the film version of “The Rules of Attraction,” Ellis’ second novel.

“You know, I’m not sure how I feel about the crab thing,” Sossamon said to us.

We picked one up.

“Crab and raspberry?” we said.

This room, at the other end of the cloudy corridor, was an arcade devoted to Lynch’s madcap vision for Dom Perignon. Levers and pulleys suspended bottles, part of a giant gadget that seemed to be on the fritz, like a stolen part of a Rube Goldberg contraption. The brand’s shield symbol was encased in an empty fish tank filled with smoke instead of water, a light shining on it to create a sort-of bat signal on a screen, which displayed an abstract video, shapes merging and moving. Laser beams shot out at a group of jewels and diamonds, which were then refracted all over the room — like what living inside a broken disco ball must be like. Also, there was a man on a platform pitter-patting his knuckles on a MPC2000XL beat machine.

“Shrimp cocktail?” a man said. He was holding skewers with wriggles of shrimp meat on one end, a plastic sack filled with red liquid on the other. The shrimp is consumed and the cocktail sauce in the sack goes through a tube. Sossamon declined.

And then the walls rumbled again, and through another crack guests found an enormous concert hall with bleachers on either side of a stage, waiters with even more Champagne and a big rectangular edifice with no discerning purpose whatsoever. There was also another enormous television screen, this one displaying a silver-haired man facing the big black chalkboard, chalk in his hand, writing down his name: David Lynch.

The director walked into the tunnel of smoke, the path lit only by the baby blue florescent lights imbedded below. Holding the hand of his wife, actress Emily Stofle, Lynch walked past the mini cranes of the other room and approached the big rectangular edifice. A circle grew around him.

“Right here, right now!” he said with a flourish of his wrist.

At once the walls cracked, lifting up the hollow wood, revealing jeroboams and bottles of the filmmaker’s custom Champagne. Hundreds huddled around the glittering things, each stamped with a label he designed.

Then Lynch walked to the stage, to the microphone, the ringleader addressing his circus, the wizard addressing his Oz.

“And now, it is my big pleasure to introduce one of my all-time favorite bands,” he said. “This is modern music, so hold onto your Champagne, and hold onto your hats. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Kills!”

Mosshart and Hince (or, as he’s known in some circles, Mr. Kate Moss) followed Lynch onto the stage and rampaged through a set loaded with live timpani, brassy shrieks, and a hearty amount of bluesy/punky guitars. They were followed by super-DJ Diplo, who segued from niche favorites like Zebra Katz’s “Imma Read” to Usher’s “Climax,” the slinky hit that Diplo himself wrote and produced. And he played much more, late into the night, but did we mention the Champagne? After a few glasses too many we slipped back past the reveal of those Lynchian bottles, through the mechanical acrobatics of the fish tanks and metal levers, through the fog-drenched tunnel, until we reached the black chalkboard completely full of names.

“Where did David Lynch sign it?” we asked the man in a topcoat and pocket watch.

He pointed to a run of chalk that curled into loops and dips with five dots pressed below, not too far from the name we wrote down earlier in the night.

“Believe it or not,” he said. 

Click on the slide show to see images from the David Lynch reveal party for Dom Perignon.

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