MOSCOW — Protests held outside the Tagansky Court building in Moscow on Wednesday brought out many of Russia's leading cultural figures in a show of support for the jailed members of the feminist anti-Vladimir Putin punk band Pussy Riot, though their presence had little effect on the procedings inside. Artists, poets, journalists, and the general public joined in an impromptu festival set to coincide with the trial of the subversive group.

While Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina, and Ekaterina Samutsevich have been detained for over 100 days, the Moscow art community has organized a performance festival marked by poems and songs filled with protest lyrics. Participants including civil activist Evgeniya Chirikova, poet and writer Dmitry Bykov, blogger and media activist Anton Nossik, film directors Alexander and Evgeny Mitta, artists Georgy Litichevsky and Vladimir Dubossarsky have joined the action outside Tagansky Court to express their solidarity with the detained women.

On Wednesday, after Pussy Riot's court hearing had been rescheduled from June 15, activists gathered outside the building before noon and the boisterous festival transformed into a spontaneous sidewalk meeting as the artists, journalists, and poets were refused access to the courtroom. Police detained 11 people — some of whom were taken away in paddy wagons. Several detainees made their way back to the court building after spending two hours in the isolation ward.

Many were surprised that actress Chulpan Khamatova attended Samutsevich's court hearing. She left as quickly as she had arrived, all the while hiding behind her dark glasses. Her presence, however fleeting, illustrated how Russia's art world has become interlaced with its politics, as many poets and artists find themselves visiting the courts as often as they visit their studios.

The result of Wednesday's court hearing was unfortunately predictable: the band’s detainment has been prolonged until July 24. The group's lawyers predicted that prosecutors will seek 7-year prison sentences for the three women. To make matters worse, Pussy Riot's defense team has been denied sufficient time to become familiar with the case.

As the protest walks in May showed, neither batons nor threats of arrest can suppress Pussy Riot's supporters, whose numbers keep increasing as their trial continues. Unfortunately, it seems that the three women will not be released unless the Holy Mother actually follows the advice given during the band's controversial cathedral performance, and chases Putin out of Russia.

This article also appears on ARTINFO Russia.

Prep: French braids are easier to execute on air-dried hair, says Maegan. “It has more texture than blow-dried hair, and texture helps the braid stay in place.” Step 1: Part hair on the side. Use a 1-inch curling iron to create some wave and texture...

Here at Grazia Daily we have had well and truly enough of this bipolar weather. Not only are constastly we popping umbrellas up and down like we belong to a JLS tribute band, the wild extremes in temperature (and don’t even get us started on air-conditio

The star of David Cronenberg’s upcoming television series “Knifeman” will be the British actor Tim Roth, Deadline reported yesterday. Roth will play the self-taught 18th-century surgeon and scientist John Tattersall, who frequently used resurrectionists to get his hands on cadavers for his extensive experiments.

As originally announced in March, Cronenberg will direct the pilot and co-executive produce the series, which will be offered to networks as an entire entity. It is being adapted by Rolin Jones from a story by Jones and Ron Fitzgerald that is based on “The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery,” Wendy Moore’s biography of John Hunter.

Born in Scotland in 1729, Hunter started out as a cabinet-maker but became a dissection assistant to his brother Robert, a teacher of anatomy, in London around 1750. The allegations that the brothers were involved in the murders of pregnant women to provide corpses for a famous obstetrician have largely been discounted.

After medical training, Hunter became a surgeon and served with the British army in Belle Île near Brittany and in Portugal. Entering private practice with a dentist, he conducted relatively successful tooth transplants. In 1764, he set up his own anatomy school.

“In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful and often fatal, Hunter rejected medieval traditions based on ancient Greek orthodoxy to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiment,” Moore writes. “Using the knowledge gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known characters of the time, including the prime minister William Pitt, the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron.”

Among his other patients were Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, and the artist Thomas Gainsborough. In 1791, he offered to remove a nasal polyp from the nasally afflicted Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, but the offer was declined. Hunter’s poetess wife Anne wrote lyrics for Haydn and may or may not have become involved with him after Hunter died from a heart attack in 1793.

A naturalist and proto-Darwinist, Hunter dissected some of the animals imported to England by Captain James Cook, and was the first man to cut up a kangaroo and giraffe. In the grounds of his Earls Court house, Hunter set up a menagerie, conducting experiments on the animals’ carcasses. (It is said that his animals lived harmoniously and that Hunter was one inspiration for Hugh Lofting’s character Dr. Dolittle.)

Like many 18^th century doctors, Hunter carried out experiments on himself. In 1767, he contracted gonorrhea and syphilis from a self-administered injection of what he wrongly believed to be a dose of gonorrhea only. Claiming they were the same basic disease, he set back research into venereal diseases by five decades. It’s the kind of gruesome detail to make the Cronenberg of “Rabid” and “Dead Ringers” salivate. Body horror lives!

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LOS ANGELES — On the day of our interview with David Lynch, we took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Chateau Marmont and walked into the penthouse. The wraparound patio emerged beyond the living room, below the hotel’s peak, which looked like the confectionary top of a cottage. Down below, the bushy paths to the bungalows wound their way through the pools and greenery, and farther out the buildings of downtown L.A. seemed to sway in the heat.

At one point, a car smashed into another on Sunset Boulevard.

There’s a view of the hills that comes up behind Hollywood, but when craning our neck to the left to get a glimpse of the sign, we happened instead upon Lynch, sitting in a secluded area on the patio, eating salad and drinking coffee, gently pressing a napkin to his mouth at regular intervals.

It was Lynch’s last obligation of the three-day-long celebration for the bottle of Champagne he designed for Dom Perignon. We had seen him the night before, at Milk Studios, where he created an elaborate maze that led guests from one decked-out room to the next until the final auditorium, where a structure was opened up, revealing the customized bottles. 

But on Thursday afternoon it was a more subdued affair — the filmmaker chatting after lunch with a few journalists. Most of the other writers asked about the champagne, but we took a different approach. 

Hi, I’m Nate Freeman, it’s good to see you, David.

It’s good to see you, too, Nate.

What is your definition of the American Dream?

The American Dream is this: people should be free to fulfill their desires and have a shot of doing what they really believe in. I think it’s more of a human dream, but that’s what it is to me.

We’re here in the Chateau Marmont, which is a fabled part of the Hollywood legend. “Mulholland Drive” touched upon that in a very deep way. What role does this hotel play in the world of movies, in your real life, and the lives of the people who live in Los Angeles?

They have fried chicken and mashed potatoes on Sunday nights.

[long pause]

One last question—

I want to say one more thing about the Chateau. It’s got a great mood. It’s got a mood that’s keeping alive the golden age of cinema, and I think that’s really beautiful and important. 

I agree. Now, Dom Perignon, the original man behind all this, was a Benedictine Monk. You’re a very religious person...

I am?

In terms of transcendental meditation…

Well, in that way, yes, but transcendental meditation is not a religion. I do love monks, though. I love the monk life. 

Have you ever considered becoming a monk?

No, but I do love being alone to work. I don’t live the simple life, but I like the idea of the simple life.

Well, those are my questions

Thank you, Nate

Lynch went on, talking to the other writers about the early stages he’s in for a potential new film, his appreciation for Lana Del Rey, and the next field he wants to try and master (“Surgery,” he said).

And afterward we went down to garden for a Negroni, sitting at a table adjacent to Angelica Houston, the writer James Frey, and Jeremy Renner, star of “The Bourne Legacy.” No one acknowledged a thing.

We left in the evening, but before the plane took off, we walked the beach in Venice, the reflection of the sun spilling out on the surface of the ocean, bikers kicking up sand on the sidewalk, the squawking of the gulls, all drenched in the same shade of yellow that arrives at the time of dusk.

During our interview, Lynch described the scene better than anyone else could.

“I don’t feel confined by anything and I credit a lot of that to Los Angeles,” he said, looking out the window of the penthouse. “The light here makes me feel free, and that I can do anything. So it’s real important for me to be in L.A.”

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, June 18-22, 2012:

ART

— You are not going to believe the lavish, over-the-top art amenities being offered to students enrolling in Avenues, the new Chelsea based for-profit private school.

— Art+Auction launched its list of the 50 most collectible contemporary artists.

— London's Impressionist and Modern art auctions fared unevenly, with Sotheby's struggling despite a record-setting Miró, while Christie's did much better thanks to works by Degas, Picasso, Magritte, and a new Schwitters record.

— A Picasso at Houston's de Menil Collection was vandalized by a mysterious stencil artist.

— Caravaggio's "The Raising of Lazarus" was unveiled at the Palazzo Braschi in Rome after a thorough, five-month restoration process.

DESIGN & FASHION

— Employees at U.K. McDonald's restaurants received new "Man Men"-style uniforms for the Olympic Games.

— On the occasion of Full Figured Fashion Week, Ann Binlot explored the little-known $17-billion-per-year full figure fashion industry.

— Christie's prepared to auction 100 pieces from Daphne Guinness's wardrobe to help fund the Isabella Blow Foundation.

— Nate Freeman was in Los Angeles, where auteur David Lynch unveiled his new custom-designed Dom Perignon bottles and celebrated its launch with an elaborate party at the legendary Chateau Marmont.

— Ann Binlot pitted the fashion choices of the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder players against one another shortly before the former team won the 2012 NBA championship.

PERFORMING ARTS

— J. Hoberman reminisced about his longtime colleague after the esteemed film critic Andrew Sarris passed away on Wednesday.

— A new trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" revealed more details of the director's highly anticipated film about Scientology.

— Patrick Pacheco speculated that "Grace," a play premiering in the fall and set to star Paul Rudd, may reverse Christian-themed productions' bad fortunes on Broadway.

— Tim Roth was cast as the lead in David Cronenberg's new series about self-taught 18th-century surgeon John Tattersall, "Knifeman."

— Dutch director Paul Verhoeven landed a producer and a screenwriter for his long-germinating film about Jesus Christ.

This is the second part of Art+Auction's preview of the London auctions following last week's look at the Imp/Mod sales.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art - June 26

This weel, the focus swings to the contemporary arena. After the mania for abstract works by Gerhard Richter this past winter, Sotheby’s is banking on his "Untitled (687-4)," 1989, a lush waterfall of cascading silver and gray paint with sparks of red pushing to the squeegee-stroked surface. Carrying an estimate of £2.8 million to £3.5 million ($4.5-5.7 million), it is somewhat larger than but similar in style to "Kind" (“Child”), 1989, which the house sold in February for £3,065,250 ($4.8 million).

The house is also presenting a clutch of early-production Damien Hirst works, including the now-iconic medicine cabinet "My Way," 1990–91, whose name is a nod to the Sex Pistols’ cover of the Frank Sinatra classic. Made of glass, steel, multi-density fireboard and vintage pharmaceutical bottles, the piece was formerly owned by Charles Saatchi and is expected to earn between £1.2 million and £1.8 million ($1.9-3 million).

Sotheby’s, perhaps seeking to capitalize on the recent vogue for Surrealism, is also offering a major painting by Glenn Brown, "The Tragic Conversion of Salvador Dalí (After John Martin)," 1998. The dark dreamscape, with its allusion to Martin’s apocalyptic 19th-century works, is estimated to land in the £2.2 million to £2.8 million ($3.5-4.5 million) range. Rounding out the menu is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s densely packed acrylic-on-canvas "Saxaphone," 1986, tagged £2 million to £2.9 million ($3.2-4.9 million).

Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary - June 27

The indisputable star of this evening sale is Jeff Koons’s "Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue/Turquoise)," a high-chromium stainless-stee sculpture with transparent color coating from 1994-2008, estimated to crack £2.5 million to £3.5 million ($4-5.7 million). Although Koons’s auction performance has been somewhat spotty of late, another of the egg’s five versions, in orange and magenta, earned a resounding $6,242,500 at Christie’s New York last November. “It’s great to have the egg in London,” says Francis Outred, the house’s head of postwar and contemporary art, “and this version has arguably the best of the color combinations.”

Christie’s is also offering a fresh-to-market Lucian Freud, the handsome but somber oil on panel "Head of a Greek Man," 1946 (£1.5-2 million; $2.4-3.3 million), consigned by the heirs of John Craxton, who spent five months painting on the Greek island of Porus with Freud. Craxton acquired the portrait after the two artists exhibited their work jointly in London the following year.

The house has also coaxed the owner of a long-held, untitled silkscreen and acrylic paint piece by Basquiat from 1984 to part with the prize. Similar in style to the artist’s contemporaneous collaborations with Andy Warhol, the collage is pegged at £1.2 million to £1.8 million ($1.9-2.9 million).

Phillips de Pury & Company - Contemporary Art Part 1, June 28

The boutique auctioneer has front-loaded its key sale of contemporary art with Andy Warhol’s portrait of Princess Diana from 1982, carrying an estimate of £900,000 to £1.2 million ($1.5-1.9 million). It has been almost 15 years since Diana’s death in a Paris car crash at the age of 36, but this 50-by-42-inch portrait, with her bejeweled and regal in a purple dress, was completed when she was just 21. As Michael McGinnis, the house’s worldwide head of contemporary art, points out, the picture nails a Warholian trifecta: “It’s a disaster painting and a celebrity portrait, and it has a lot of commercial appeal.” At the other end of the formal spectrum, but perhaps equally foreboding, Phillips is offering Anselm Kiefer’s mural-size "Die Woge" (“The Wave”), 1995, a supercharged composition in canvas cloth, paint, ashes, tin, and cotton on board with an estimate of £350,000 to £450,000 ($570,000-731,000).

When UNESCO's World Heritage Committee begins meeting in St. Petersburg today, the agenda will include considering nominations of 36 sites for the World Heritage List. This sounds like business as usual — except that one of those sites has unusual historical, religious, and political resonance: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It is Palestine's first nomination to the list, and, not unexpectedly, the issue has quickly become politicized.

Palestine became a member of UNESCO in October 2011, raising the ire of the U.S., which subsequently canceled all funding of the organization, costing UNESCO an $80 million annual contribution, or 22 percent of its yearly budget. One of Palestine's first actions upon being granted membership in the organization was to ask that the Church of the Nativity be named a World Heritage site on an emergency basis, but the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which advises UNESCO on the nominated sites, rejected the request. In its draft decision, available on UNESCO's Web site, the World Heritage Committee stated that the application did not meet the required conditions of "damage or serious and specific dangers to the Church of the Nativity that make its condition an emergency that needs to be addressed... with immediate action necessary for the survival of the property." This rejection notwithstanding, the church's nomination will still be discussed at the St. Petersburg conference. 

Elias Sanbar, Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO, called ICOMOS's report "biased" and "politicized," saying that "those who lost the battle in the vote on Palestine's admission to UNESCO want to prevent us from exercising our rights," AFP reports. And, in fact, in a recent Jerusalem Post article, Tovah Lazaroff writes that "efforts are underway to block" the Palestinian request, citing an unnamed Israeli official who says that Israel opposes all unilateral efforts by Palestine until a two-state solution is reached by both parties. 

Despite ICOMOS's assessment that immediate action is unncessary, by all accounts the church seems to have dire problems. A Smithsonian Magazine article from March 2009 described a rotting roof, with "holes in the timbers [that] allow dirty water to drip upon the precious paintings and mosaics below." "The situation at the Church of the Nativity is strictly a crisis," Jaroslav Folda, an art historian and professor emeritus at UNC Chapel Hill who has studied the church's Crusader paintings, told ARTINFO France in an email. "The roof is leaking, the mosaics and icons on the columns of the nave are being damaged by soot and leakage. The church has been damaged by violence and a fire was set inside it at some point when it was occupied some years ago."

Bethlehem is located on the West Bank, about five miles south of Jerusalem, and legend has is that the Church of the Nativity was built over the cave where Jesus was born. The earliest church at the site was built in the fourth century by Emperor Constantine, but, when it was destroyed in a revolt in 529, Emperor Justinian built the church that still exists today. The Church of the Nativity is managed by the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and the Roman Catholic Church — not always harmoniously. Clergy occasionally come to blows over who has the right to clean certain areas of the church, since tradition holds that each part belongs to the sect that cares for it.

A UNESCO document on Palestinian cultural heritage recommends that UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and ICOMOS undertake a mission to assess the state of conservation of the main Palestinian cultural sites, including the Church of the Nativity. According to this document, such a mission has previously been proposed but "no answer has been received to its request." This reprimand may suggest that the committee will not grant the site World Heritage status this time around. Plus, all 21 states serving on the committee would need to agree. "The committee usually approves decisions unanimously," UNESCO spokesperson Roni Amelan told ARTINFO France via email. "Voting is very exceptional."

From the top of the Via Verde housing complex in the South Bronx, you can find sweeping penthouse-quality views of New York's northernmost borough. Twenty stories below, an immense urban experiment unfolds: towering brick projects spike up here and there, dwarfing the occasional church steeple; clusters of identical, vinyl-clad low-rises occupy a block carved out by crisscrossing streets. A neighborhood left to burn four decades ago is now visibly quilted with patches of trial-and-error affordable housing. The brand new Via Verde is the latest and most dazzling installment of the ongoing revival effort. Even from this privileged vantage point, I am reminded of this fact: the coveted corner penthouse at the top of the 20-story tower, usually reserved for the most moneyed, is sparsely furnished with rows of chairs; this is the community room. Views like this, the design seems to say, belong to everyone.

Completed in April of this year, Via Verde, or "The Green Way," is the result of a project six years in the making. In 2006, the New York City HPD teamed up with the AIA New York to launch an international design competition for an affordable and sustainable housing development on a plot of city-owned land. The two-stage New Housing New York competition attracted 32 submissions and narrowed the contest down to five finalists. The winning team paired New York-based Dattner Architects, known for their work with non-for-profit clientele, with Grimshaw Architects, an international practice acclaimed for its more avant-garde, high-end commissions. Together with co-developers Phipps Houses and Jonathan Rose Companies, the two firms drafted a plan to convert a skinny patch of former brownfield into a stunning declaration of the future of affordable housing.

The realized design is a triumph. Via Verde cuts a commanding figure in the Bronx skyline; its radical stepped form thrusts upward, seeming almost mirage-like to those ambling past the unkempt lots and potholed sidewalks along Bergen and Brook Avenues. As I got closer, the architecture did not disappoint: the stepped west side supports an impressive cascade of photovoltaic cells; the matte cement- and aluminum-clad façade is accented with wood panels and sequined with grilled sunshades protruding out from the tops of windows. Completely unrivaled in size and splendor, Via Verde is a striking new beacon of the neighborhood's steady upswing. But the real magic reveals itself on the inside.

At the heart of the project are two abutting inner courtyards. One is a colorful, rubber-padded play area – studded with cork toadstools – for the resident youth, and the other is a simpler, verdant quad. Wrapping around the two courtyards are 222 residential units, incrementally stacking and ascending in elevation as the building spirals upward from the ground level all the way to the apex of a 20-story tower. The stacking formation gives Via Verde its dramatic, stepped silhouette, lets in maximum daylight, and provides ample terrace and rooftop space for a host of communal facilities, including vegetable gardens and a fitness center. At higher altitude terraces, green roofs recycle storm water, and solar panels generate energy for basic building maintenance.

Inside Via Verde, thoughtful details in layout and functionality shine the brightest: colorful stairwells with windows let in natural light, encouraging residents to walk instead of ride the elevator; the two-story, two-bedroom apartments take cues from Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, with upper floors extending the full width of the building to allow for cross-ventilation; built-in homework desks are placed in line of sight of the kitchen, where parents may be preparing dinner in the evening; private penthouses, as mentioned earlier, are forsaken for public communal spaces.

These are the details that make Via Verde pulsate with a restorative sense of hope. Critics may argue that affordable housing does not need to be handsomely designed, especially if that results in draining subsidized budgets and solutions that are difficult to replicate. But Via Verde's slick perfection is reflective of an objective much greater than an architectural one. Via Verde is not merely a place for lower- and middle-income families to inhabit and comfortably carry out daily routines; it is a means, articulated through the plasticity of architecture and design, to foster a community and a role in that community of which to be proud. This call for pride and ownership is conveyed by the sweeping image of the building's exterior and the intimate nuances of its interiors.

With every recycled wood plank and rooftop cabbage patch in its intended place, the new beacon of the South Bronx has grand expectations to live up to. Last Monday, sometime after a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the first of the new residents began moving in. They are a lucky few, pulled from a lottery of over 7,500 applications contending for 151 rental units (the 71 co-op units are gradually coming off the market). The following day, however, Via Verde was still rapt in an almost eerie quietude, like a theatrical stage devoid of actors. The backdrop for a wholesome, meaningful life was there, but the life itself was absent. Evidently, beauty and innovation alone cannot declare the project a success.

From the onset, I could not help but draw parallels between Via Verde and St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe, whose televised demolition heralded the demise of public policy and the mythic failure of modernism. But rather than see the virgin quality of Via Verde as an omen of impending ruin – the naively misinterpreted calm before the storm – I thought it better to see this as a justly ambitious beginning. Not every new building in the Bronx can or will be a Via Verde. In fact, the adjacent, empty, city-owned lots have already been marked for less glamorous civic and residential projects. But Via Verde's inimitable design is not a shortcoming of the architecture. Rather, it points to the building's function outside the static boundaries of architecture, as an active participant in a larger, still-unfolding urban agenda. The lofty green citadel rises in the battered South Bronx as a bold visual proclamation, announcing to the neighborhood that the government is actually here, and it can accomplish great things for the people.

WHAT: “Jack Goldstein x 10,000”

WHEN: June 24 – September 9, Wednesday – Sunday 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Thursday 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

WHERE: Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach, California

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: The name Jack Goldstein may not be familiar to everyone, since his career was cut short when he died at the age of 57 in 2003. Nevertheless, Goldstein's contributions to the New York art scene of the '70s and '80s — and generations of artists who appropriate imagery from film and media — are vast. This month, the Orange County Museum of Art has mounted a posthumous retrospective of his work, the first survey of Goldstein's work in the United States, including 21 film works alongside paintings, sound recordings, and installations.

The artists he encountered in New York have become known collectively as the “Pictures Generation,” a name that grew out of a seminal 1977 Artists Space exhibition, curated by Douglas Crimp, which included Goldstein. His legacy can be seen in the work of contemporaries Troy Brauntuch, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Matt Mullican, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Philip Smith, and James Welling, among others, and is well documented in the now-classic book he edited with Richard Hertz, “Jack Goldstein and the Cal Arts Mafia.” Among his own best-known early pieces is a 1975 work that incorporates a clip of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion roaring on a neverending loop, turning this iconic moment into a hollow gesture, emptied of meaning. 

To see artwork from the exhibition click the slide show. 

Barry McGee has become an icon in the realm street art and its associated subcultures of skateboarding to graffiti. His style is a hybrid, incorporating refined typefaces, boldly colored geometric patterns, and eccentric characters. The San Francisco-based artist is having a busy summer, exhibiting in back-to-back exhibitions: a showcase of new work that opened at PRISM Gallery in Los Angeles in May, while a comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s career to date kicks off August 24 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, curated by Lawrence Rinder. Recently, ARTINFO reached out to the artist and asked him about his career, making work indoors, and where he gets inspiration. 

Your Prism Gallery show incorporates all new work... How did you approach the project? 

Yes, it is mainly all new work that I have been working on over the last year or so. Prism has an interesting layout. The space had been recently reconfigured and refined even further since the George Condo show. I came to the space with everything I had: scraps of paper, photo collages, rocks, and several boxes of debris from my studio. I have this problem of trying to put everything I have ever made in each exhibition, and this show was no departure. 

It's kind of a "Summer of McGee" — you're also about to be canonized with a retrospective at the UC Berkeley art museum. How did that show come about?

Oh dear... well, yes. Something is happening there. It's one of the most challenging spaces I've encountered. In the Brutalist tradition, it is a poured concrete spectacle. Every notion I've had for the show has been challenged by how to install into the concrete walls. Factor in some of my terrible pieces that I conceived decades ago and you have the making for disaster. Larry Rinder, who I absolutely adore, came up with the idea. 

The Berkeley show charts the course of your career. How would you describe your evolution?

I never really had the notion of a career when I first ventured out onto the streets with some friends. It always felt more pure, spontaneous, and exciting than anything that could happen in a controlled white room in a gallery. I still feel the same way to this day. The exhibition charts some of the pieces and ephemera that made it through that period. I'm trying to make it interesting in a kind of linear flowing way, but with some new configurations when it becomes too predictable. 

The Prism and Berkeley shows offer a nice contrast. Many artists hate having a retrospective because they feel that it means that their work is a part of the past. Do you find yourself consciously striking out in new directions with shows like the Prism exhibition?

In all honesty, I myself am curious how it will all look together. There are pieces that I have not seen for over 20 years, and works that I just assumed had vaporized or somehow disintegrated. There are also many pieces I wish would just disappear once and for all. I will certainly have a better grasp of all this at the end of August. 

What have been the main differences for you between planning shows for indoor spaces, like Prism and Berkeley, and working in the street?  

Work done illegally outdoors or without permission feels like pure freedom to me. I understand how it can upset many in our society, but in the bigger picture it is ultimately about freedom. We are living in a time where public space has become a commodity for corporations to control and dictate what is seen and heard. A large amount of time has been spent assuring the museum that I can restore it to a normal state, even though it is slated to be torn down soon.

How do you prepare for large-scale exhibitions, especially ones with large installation components? Is there a lot of preparation beforehand, or does it come together in the space?

That is a great question. I'm not sure how it happens. Great things happen in the 15 minutes before every opening. I want the show to feel spontaneous and on the verge of chaos when the bands start playing.  

Where do you find the inspiration these days?

Most inspiration still comes from bicycling around San Francisco. This city never fails to inspire me. It is one of the most vibrant cities – especially visually – with a constant influx of young energy arriving daily. I love it. 

To see artwork from Barry McGee's PRISM Gallery exhibition click the slide show. 

— Houston's Picasso Vandal on the Lam: A tipster has identified 22-year-old Houston-based painter Uriel Landeros as the vandal who stenciled Picasso's "Woman in a Red Armchair" at the de Menil Collection earlier this month, but the rogue artist has disappeared. (As Julia Halperin pointed out in her initial report, Landeros had been named in a YouTube video posted of the vandalism, and was just recently featured at a group show at Houston's Summer Street Studios.) Crime Stoppers of Houston is offering a $5,000 reward for any information leading to Landeros's arrest, and the Harris Country District Attorney's Office has officially charged him with criminal mischief and felony graffiti. [CultureMap]

— "Levitated Mass" Opens: After months of anticipation and decades of planning, Michael Heizer's Land Art installation on the LACMA campus, "Levitated Mass," finally opened to the public on Sunday, and the L.A. Times devoted not one but four articles to the momentous art event, even asking first-day visitors what they thought of the piece. "We’d like to put this in our backyard," said Nicole Mirante-Matthews of Silver Lake, "but it’s bigger than our house." [LATimes 1, 2, 3, 4]

— Koons Gets Art Historical in Frankfurt: Continuing his European takeover on the heels of his Fondation Beyeler retrospective, Jeff Koons is showing a new series titled "Antiquity" in a two-part exhibition in Frankfurt that includes the shiny "Metallic Venus" — an eight-feet-tall copy of a Hungarian porcelain figure from the 19th century — at the Liebieghaus museum. The other half of "Jeff Koons: The Painter and Sculptor," at the Schirn Kunsthalle, features Koons's works on canvas, included the infamous series portraying himself and his former pornstar ex-wife in bed. [Bloomberg]

— Christo and Jeanne-Claude Project Gets Traffic Review: The artist duo's "Over the River" project, a plan to drape large swaths of fabric over a 5.9-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, will be reviewed by the Colorado Department of Transportation for its possible impact to traffic on Route 50. "CDOT's local employees appear to have turned a blind eye to the predicted impacts on traffic on U.S. 50," said Dan Ainsworth, president of Rags Over the Arkansas River, a group that opposes the project, "as well as the risks posed to the public during the proposed OTR project." [DenverPost]

— Claudel's Rodin Bust Found in Truck: A bronze bust of the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin created by his student, muse, and lover Camille Claudel that was stolen from the Museum of Art and Archaeology Guéret in 1999 was found Tuesday in the truck of a French antiques dealer who had been under police surveillance for several weeks. The recovered sculpture, said to be worth some €800,000 ($1 million), will soon be returned to the institution. [Telegraph]

— Tunick Turns Munich Square Red, Gold, and Naked All Over: Spencer Tunick, the American photographer of large numbers of naked people gathered in public places, made his first foray into body paint on Saturday when he launched the Munich Opera Festival by shooting a crowd of 1,700 in front of the Bavarian State Opera in a series of compositions meant to evoke Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. "What was I doing, standing shivering and stark naked – except for a shimmering layer of gold body paint – in the middle of Munich at six on Saturday morning," asked one participant. "I wasn’t even drunk." [The Local, NY Daily News]

— London Gets Lathery Statue: The Korean artist Meekyoung Shin will clean up London's public art program when he unveils a grandiose equestrian statue of the Duke of Cumberland in Cavendish Square made entirely of soap on July 10. The temporary installation is a replica of a statue that occupied the same spot from 1770 to 1868, though Meekyoung's sculpture seems destined to be much more shortlived. [TAN]

— Shary Boyle to Represent Canada in Venice: The 40-year-old Toronto-based artist was selected by the National Gallery of Canada to represent the country at next year's Venice Biennale. "The Canadian pavilion has a long reputation of causing frustration to artists and curators alike," Boyle says. "It is a tricky space for many types of work. I, however, love it." [Globe and Mail]

— Roman Forum's Looted Menorah Was Once Yellow: New spectrometry readings of a bas-relief sculpture of the Menora that was looted by Romans after they destroyed Jerusalem's Second Temple in 70 CE revealed that the sculpture, which was repurposed in the construction of the Roman Forum, was originally painted bright yellow. “The Bible said it was gold, but the monument, as it was seen for centuries, told us it was white,” said Yeshiva University professor Steven Fine. “Isn’t it cool to be that much closer to the viewers of the first and second century?” [NYT]

— Rogue L.A. Sculptors Unmasked: A clandestine street art duo who have been creating surreal and very popular installations around downtown Los Angeles since last month — including a family of bathers at the bottom of an empty lot, and a herd of papier maché deer in an overgrown patch of weeds — have identified themselves as transplanted New Yorker Calder Greenwood and a local man known simply (but appropriately) as Wild Life. [LA Times]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Trailer for "Jeff Koons: The Sculptor and the Painter" at the Liebieghaus and the Schirn Kunsthalle

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Milan Men’s Fashion Week commenced last Saturday and the looks for spring 2013 ran the gamut, from candy-colored metallics at Burberry Prorsum to a retro 1950s Sicilian twist at Dolce & Gabbana. Versace rolled out its new men’s underwear and swimwear collections with muscular models decked out in gladiator belts, while Neil Barrett must have been watching the Oklahoma Thunder this season because backpacks were a constant in his spring 2013 collection. Jil Sander returned to her eponymous label with her signature minimalist approach, and John Varvatos took on a gangster lean with a series of American mob-inspired suits. ARTINFO looks at some highlights of the weekend shows at Milan Men’s Fashion Week.

Click on the slide show to see highlights from Milan Men’s Fashion Week spring 2013.

In 2007, Taliban forces drilled into the face and torso of a 1,500-year-old Buddha relief in Jahanabad, Pakistan, injecting explosives. The dynamite in the shoulders of the 20-foot-tall carving failed to go off, but the charges in the face exploded, sheering off all but the lower left chin and jaw. This callous act of destruction was ideologically motivated: Muslim extremists view the Buddha as a false idol, and have been destroying and defacing artifacts and antiquities for centuries before the terrorist group came to power. (Infamously, the Taliban dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan in 2001, demolishing them completely.)

Thanks to the work of an Italian archaeologist and his team, some of this international cultural heritage may be coming back together. Luca Olivieri, the 49-year-old head of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan, has been working in the area for two decades, though he was forced to leave in 2008. After returning in 2010, he has recently begun the conservation and reconstruction of the Jahanabad Buddha’s face. 

The Jahanabad reconstruction effort led by Olivieri is financed by the Italian government, which works with the Pakistani antiquities authority. The team is motivated than more than just reverence for the past: It hopes that the project will help return tourism to Swat, which had been popular with Asian religious tourists but has become more isolated during the recent periods of violent upheavel. 

Whatever the outcome of Olivieri's efforts, however, a perfect reconstruction of the relic is all but impossible. "Whatever you do in the absence of perfect data is a fake," he told the AP.

A sensation in Sundance, Cannes, and points in between, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is set to explode on the nation’s screens this week. My only concern is that Benh Zeitlin’s exuberantly ramshackle exercise in gumbo magic realism may have been a bit oversold.

Unforgettable in its location, the movie is set amid the picturesque dereliction of the southern Louisiana delta, filmed by cinematographer Ben Richardson as a free-form barnyard cum ramshackle, interracial wonderland. The natives call it The Bathtub. “Beasts” is populated mainly with non-actors and, like Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” — the season’s other must-see American movie — it’s a fairytale for adults, made with kids. The protagonist-slash-main attraction is a motherless six-year-old ragamuffin known as Hushpuppy, who is played by the amazing Quvenzhané Wallis with an upswept corona of copper-colored hair and a mouth full of millennial folk jive, not to mention the poise of Shirley Temple and the spunk of Memphis Minnie: “We is who the earth is for,” she matter-of-factly explains in voiceover.

As befits its galumphing title, “Beasts” begins more or less mid-mad carnival, with Hushpuppy front and center and the camera trotting right alongside her. The Bathtub is celebrating, which is to say preparing for, the apocalypse. The polar ice cap is melting, the local school teacher explains, and “Y’all better learn how to survive now.” Survival in this world is part inspired bricolage, part magical thinking, and the rest sheer cussedness. Hushpuppy is left on her own with the disappearance of her irascible father Wink (furiously performed by Dwight Henry, proprietor of New Orleans’s Buttermilk Drop Bakery and Café). She’s hyper-resourceful in a six-year-old sort of way, even if she does nearly set the world on fire. Wink returns (in a hospital gown) just in time for the big storm. The Bath Tub floods. The levee breaks. Humongous prehistoric monster tusked pigs (the eponymous “beasts”) are on the prowl. Hushpuppy, her daddy, and all their friends are forcibly evacuated, maybe …

There’s a bit of Jim Jarmusch drollery in “Beasts”’s calmer, more contemplative moments, a sense of Zora Neale Hurston (or at least the idea of Zora Neale Hurston) in the tall-tale whoopin’ and hollerin’ that characterizes life in The Bathtub, and a sense memory of Les Blank’s backwoods music and eating documentaries in the party scenes. All three precursors are present in the dreamy sequence set in an off-shore bordello called the Floating Catfish Shack — with Fats Waller singing “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” while the gals dance with Hushpuppy and the other washed-up foundlings. But that said, as forceful as its invented mythology is, “Beasts” mainly feels like something new.

Running just over 90 minutes, the movie has its repetitions and longueurs. There’s a bit too much funkball philosophizing for my taste and, despite the fact that “Beasts” seems very much a collective project, it’s hard to shake the feeling that, no matter how much time the filmmakers spent in the Seventh Ward, they may not be entirely entitled to this material. Maybe that’s unfair — the Rolling Stones did do a great cover of Alvin Robinson’s la-bas beat classic “Down Home Girl” — and it’s certainly unfair that the movie is nearly overshadowed by its own virtuosity.

There were times, particularly towards the end, I found myself less watching the action than wondering just how did they make this? (The shooting ratio must have been astronomical.) Still, they did make it happen, and the movie’s mad gusto is truly infectious.

Read more J. Hobrman on Movie Journal