The art market mystery of the year may just have been solved: American businessman Leon Black was the successful bidder for "The Scream," the $119.9-million Edvard Munch pastel auctioned off at an exciting Sotheby's evening sale on May 2. The news comes courtesy of the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow — who has been on the case since moments after the hammer came down. According to the article, several people close to the billionaire collector confirmed that he is, in fact, the owner of the painting, but a spokesman for Black declined to comment (also, it's already listed as fact on Wikipedia).

After the sale, speculation was rampant regarding who may have purchased the work — rumors claimed it was a Russian, or the Qatari royal family, or perhaps American hedge fund manager Steve Cohen — but few people pointed fingers at Black, possibly because he is more well-known for his collection of Old Masters.

Black, who made his $3.4 billion fortune in private equity, is number 330 on Forbes list of billionaires, and had quite the art collection before the latest Munch graced his walls. Previously, he turned heads in the art world for purchasing a Raphael drawing, "Head of a Muse," for $47.6 million — setting the record for a work on paper. He also owns works by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and J.M.W. Turner, and sits on the boards of both of New York City's major art institutions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA, which Crow suggests may set up a tug-of-war between the two museums over who eventually might end up with it in their collection.

That's a mystery that will take a few more decades to solve.

SYDNEY — Although this edition of the Sydney Biennale has its flaws, it also includes some outstanding works of art that deserve a closer look. The exhibition is undoubtedly still a big success thanks primarily to the triumphant highlights, for which it's more likely to be remembered than the experience as a whole.

One of the most engaging and awe-inspiring works of the exhibition is Liu Zhuoquan’s "Two-Headed Snake," 2011, a huge collection of bottles whose insides have been painted with haunting silhouettes of snakes. Resembling scientific specimen jars, the ghostly images painted on the bottles' interiors represent objects that exists in spirit, but not in the flesh.

The overall range of video works selected for this edition of the Biennale is rather disappointing. There is, however, an outstanding example that makes up for the other less than engaging offerings. Guido van der Werve’s "Nummer Acht: Everything is going to be alright" (2007) makes use of the video medium to great effect with an incredible play on perspective that is thoroughly engrossing.

The groundbreaking use of animated black and white images on acetate to display the beautiful paintings of Aboriginal artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu makes the work titled "Light Painting" (2010) one of the most beautiful and surprising offerings of the Biennale. As the different images slowly change over, blending and bleeding together, the viewer is treated to a truly spiritual experience of time and place.

Architecture meets art meets biology in Philip Beesley’s epic "Hylozoic Series: Sibyl" (2012) installation on Cockatoo Island. The amazingly complex structure is both a feat of engineering and a wonderfully artistic expression of a thought-provoking concept. Seeing visitors enthralled and amazed as the “interactive garden” comes alive in response to being touched and explored is an experience in its self.

To see a slideshow of the full top ten Sydney Biennale showstoppers, click the slide show.

This article appears on ARTINFO Australia.

“Every salad begins with good vinegar,” says Rob Gentile, chef of Buca . Once wine becomes vinegar, it works the same as a sourdough starter, a small sample used to turn future batches of wine into vinegar. It’s the same principle as zombification...

Our next The United Grapes of America feature moves from this country's newest state to the oldest, Delaware, and Nassau Valley Vineyards, a winery that was listed in the original StarChefs.com post. Nassau Valley will be celebrating their twentieth...

The director Walter Hill has struck a deal to remake one of Hollywood’s greatest horror melodramas – in fact, the greatest horror melodrama about Hollywood. A new version of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” (1962), for which Robert Aldrich coaxed indelible performances from arch-enemies Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, will be written and directed by Hill (“Streets of Fire,” “The Long Riders”) and co-produced by him and Adell Aldrich, daughter of the late auteur.

In Aldrich’s Gothic masterpiece, Davis, then 54, played Jane Hudson, a demented has-been actress in her sixties who’s tormented by her memories of childhom stardom. Crawford, 57, played her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche, whom Jane tortures – with such delicacies as a dead rat for lunch (see video below).

The thought of Hill’s reboot will already be exciting the agents of such actresses as Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Dianne Wiest, Anjelica Huston, Sissy Spacek, and Melissa Leo. What about Susan Sarandon (with her Bette Davis eyes) for Jane and Charlotte Rampling (playing against her malicious persona) as Blanche?

“The two equal leads demand great performers – that is a given,” Hill told the Hollywood Reporter. “The intensity of the gothic storyline makes a reconfiguration of the drama still a potentially searing experience. The idea is to make a modern film without modernizing the period. It needs to resonate the golden age of Hollywood.”

Hill will adapt the movie from the original screenplay by Lukas Heller, which was based on Henry Farrell’s novel. The unexpected success of Aldrich’s film, which was nominated for five Oscars (winning for Best  Costume Design), prompted him to team Heller and Farrell on the screenplay for “Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964), a slab of Gothic grand guignol, originating in a Farrell story, that was set in the antebellum South.

The plan to reunite Davis and Crawford ran aground when Crawford, who was upstaged by Davis on “Baby Jane” and jealous because her rival had been Oscar-nominated, quit the production after four days, feigning illness. She was replaced at Davis’s suggestion by her friend Olivia de Havilland, and another Davis loyalist, Mary Astor, was also in the cast. Davis indicated that her contempt for Crawford wasn’t feigned when I interviewed her in 1987.

Although “Charlotte” isn’t as critically well regarded as “Baby Jane,” it was also a hit and received seven Oscar nominations, then the most for a horror movie. Davis, playing another woman who goes mad, wasn’t nominated that time, but Agnes Moorehead, cast as the housekeeper, got the nod in the Best Supporting Actress category. Looking back on this bizarre diptych, one may conclude, “Hysteria isn’t what it used to be.”

A tasty morsel for Blanche in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?":

Read more culture coverage on Spotlight

CASORIA, Italy — Apparently attempting to put an end to a form of anti-austerity protest that has gained international attention, officials from the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities have ordered a halt to the destruction of works of art administered by flamboyant artist and curator Antonio Manfredi of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) outside of Naples. Beginning in February, Manfredi had attracted worldwide media attention for a series of actions, titled "CAM Art War," in which he began incinerating the museum's art collection piece-by-piece in protest of budget cuts affecting his small regional art institution. In his view, the sensational action was a desparate measure for desparate times, an apt metaphor for the chronically precarious state of art funding in Italy, and a potentially effective form of protest. The state's seemingly heavy-handed intervention may prove that he was right.

Signed by Dr. Franco di Spirito and Stevano Gizzi, both high-ranking officials from the Neapolitan Ministry of Heritage and Culture, the letter attempting to halt Manfredi's art burning could possibly be read as a concession. Describing CAM's collection as "a broad international panorama," it seems to validate the museum and its founding mission by invoking a 2004 legislative decree on the protection and preservation of Italy's cultural heritage, and calls for a meeting between Manfredi, the regional office of the Ministry of Cultural Activities, and the Naples regional council about "possible collaborations" on the museum's future exhibitions. Naming the long list of countries represented in the 878-work collection, the letter characterizes the museum as "a unique, unrepeatable, important, and prestigious collection of art."

Two days ago, it was announced that videos from Manfredi's "CAM Art War" would be included in the dOCUMENTA(13) exhibition in Kassel, Germany. "Then just this morning, I got this letter," Manfredi told ARTINFO. "The coincidence seems very strange to me." Over the phone, Manfredi described the legal basis of the letter as more or less laughable; he pointed out to a paragraph in the referenced decree that exempted works of art made by a living artist and executed in the last 50 years — an exception that would apply to virtually every work of art in his museum, which focuses on supporting emerging art. As CAM has been wholly supported by private donations, he added, the state furthermore had no right to impose a law that was meant for publicly-owned institutions.

"This is a coup," he told ARTINFO. "It's something out of Stalin's Russia." 

Manfredi was all the more perplexed by the offer of a meeting with the regional office of the Ministry of Cultural Activities and the Naples municipal government. When he called Elena Coccia, the vice president of the Naples regional council, he says she knew nothing about it. The culture ministry and the regional council "are completely different bodies," he told ARTINFO. "For this I have no words."

During the 120-day time period during which Manfredi may appeal, no site has been specified for him to deposit the works of art which are now, purportedly, in the state's care. With no plans outlined for CAM's financial future, Manfredi's tone remains sardonic and defiant. "There are only obligations and no real advantages for the museum," he says. "They only say it's under their protection."

To see footage of the "CAM Art War" actions, click on the video below:

Walking by 210 11th Avenue in Chelsea, you might see some new names on the list of tenants posted outside the front door: Thom Browne, Stella McCartney, Simon Spurr. Though galleries long dominated this building, they are increasingly being replaced by an influx of fashion designers, marketing firms, and other creative businesses that can better afford the rising rents. And 210 11th Avenue isn’t an exception. Over the last two years, ARTINFO has noticed, dealers have been quietly trickling out of multi-tenant buildings in Chelsea, opting instead to deal privately or move to the Lower East Side.

In recent months, Robert Mann, Valerie McKenzie, and Marvelli Galleries have all announced plans to move out of their multi-tenant Chelsea buildings, while previous years have seen quiet transitions for Daneyal Mahmood Gallery and Alan Klotz Gallery, both formerly located at 511 W 25th Street who are now dealing privately out of their homes. Still other tenants, including Fotosphere and In Camera Gallery, have shuttered.

The problem with these buildings, dealers say, is that rents are increasingly inversely proportional to foot traffic. “There are so many huge ground floor spaces that people just don't bother to come upstairs anymore,” said Valerie McKenzie, who ran her eponymous gallery out of 511 West 25th Street for ten years before leaving the neighborhood to open a gallery at 55 Orchard Street this fall. “That was not always the case. It’s the proliferation of so many gigantic ground floor spaces. Unless people are really adventuresome, they just don’t wander into the multi-tenanted buildings anymore.”

Another cause of the exodus — at least that out of 511 W 25th Street — is the frequent change in management. The company Pembrook Capital took over the 195,000-square-foot building in 2010 and then flipped it in February to real estate developer Related Companies for $93 million. During its stint as landlord, Pembrook raised the rent from $35 per square foot to $50 per square foot, and briefly sought to turn the building into a condominium — a proposal that led a crop of galleries, including Margaret Thatcher Projects and Brenda Taylor Gallery, to leave. “Dealers that are making $1 million a year are not going to buy their unit,” Taylor said.

The second shift came after Related took over. It resurveyed a number of spaces and increased what it considered “usable square feet,” charging galleries, in some cases, 10 to 15 percent more for spaces than they had paid under Pembrook Capital. Though dealers in the building say the new landlords have become a bit more flexible in negotiations recently, some are still considering a move. “I’m actively looking,” said dealer Rick Wester, who is in the midst of renegotiating his five-year lease. “They may be asking market rates, but it’s a shock.”

Indeed, the situation at 511 West 26th is symptomatic of changes taking place throughout Chelsea. “Rents in Chelsea are going to start escalating,” said Wester. “It has to do with the High Line, it has to do with the gentrification of the neighborhood — I don't think we've seen anything yet in terms of rents rising. Bloomberg's legacy of developing the West Side is going to dramatically put money in the pockets of people who own buildings here.”

Not surprisingly, the departure of smaller galleries has come alongside a profusion of megaspaces from blue-chip names. The coming year will see the opening of new Chelsea spaces from Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, Andrea Rosen, and Hauser & Wirth, among others. And of course, there is only so much ground floor space. “I think there's going to be an increased movement of the small to medium size galleries being pushed out,” said McKenzie.

Some smaller dealers say they just don’t feel they fit in in the neighborhood anymore; the culture has changed too much. “I’m tired of Chelsea,” Marvelli Gallery’s Marco Marvelli told ARTINFO after announcing his move away from the neighborhood after 10 years there. "I'd been on 25th Street for 10 years, and witnessing the transformation, Chelsea became less interesting to me," said Daneyal Mahmood, who has dealt privately for two years but is considering opening a space in the Lower East Side, which he considers less "stale" than Chelsea.

“There’s something artificial about Chelsea,” noted McKenzie. “It was, essentially, created by developers.”

Today, George Michael confirmed long-gestating rumors that his new single — his first since 2004 — would feature a music video starring none other than Kate Moss. He had previously teased the surprise on his Twitter account.

“Oh and by the way, in the video, a certain supermodel (our Kate) saves my life. We shot two endings, one with the heimlich [sic] menouvre [sic]... and one where she gives me full on CPR. Mouth to mouth. Not really:}”

A spokesperson confirmed that the dramatic-sounding video for the single, called “White Light,” will be released August 12.

There’s literally no one else we’d rather see lip-syncing someone else’s song, so here’s an extremely detailed recap of Kate Moss’s history in music videos.

In 1994, acclaimed director Anton Corbijn shot Moss with Johnny Cash in “Delia’s Gone,” the first single from the country legend’s comeback album, “American Recordings.” The model plays the slain Delia, killed by the song’s narrator, and thus is mostly lying in a graveyard plot six feet deep while Cash buries her. It was a dark start to her music video career.

Then, Moss and fellow model Devon Aoki played stone-cold bandits in a 1997 video for Primal Scream’s “Kowalski.” The two of them steal a cherry red Dodge Challenger, shove a guy’s face into a bowl of Fruit Loops, and eventually beat up the members of Primal Scream. There’s also a wonderful scene when Moss, who’s driving the Challenger, has Aoki apply lipstick to her lips across the front seat of the car. It’s not easy to remember who Primal Scream is these days, but they certainly knew the strengths of a young Kate Moss.

Next up is Elton John, who featured Moss in his not-quite-classic 1997 ballad “Something About the Way You Look Tonight.” The fact that most of this video is Elton John playing piano in an empty auditorium, the camera swooping in overhead, is disconcerting. Given that he had Kate Moss on set, it strikes us as a bit of a mistake. Her biggest scene is at the beginning, when she opens a letter — how ’90s! — that’s something of an invitation to an Elton John show. She goes, and for the rest of the video she dances around in a big crowd. At once point, she sits in a metal chair that’s a lot bigger than her. Verdict: not Kate’s best work.

Marianne Faithful focuses the attention back on Moss with her 2002 video for “Sex With Strangers,” directed by Roman Coppola. It’s a perplexing clip. What begins as a close interpretation of the song’s title — Moss wakes up, changes from a nightgown, picks up her brick-sized cell phone seeking a stranger to do the obvious thing with — gets a little confusing when Kate Moss ends up finding the person waiting for her is actually… Kate Moss. Then her palm turns into a pair of lips and there’s a TV with Marianne Faithful talking on a cell phone. We’re confused.

Thankfully, a year later Moss made a video with a very simple concept. Here’s director Sofia Coppola’s pitch to the White Stripes: “I don’t know — how about Kate Moss doing a pole dance?” New York Times Magazine reporter Lynn Hirschberg was on the set of that video, for the band’s scorching cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself,” and she captured all the action of Moss grinding in her underwear on the stripper pole, as Jack and Meg White looked on. Zoe Cassavetes was also present, for some reason.

“Moss, who turned down a short white robe offered by an assistant, was remarkably comfortable in her underwear and sat with her feet up in front of a fan,” Hirschberg wrote.

We’re not sure “White Light” will have a video as striking and elegant as the one Coppola directed, but a new video with Kate Moss is always welcome. 

The biggest honoree at this weekend's ArtHamptons art fair — the first of this summer's big art events on Long Island — will be Cheech Marin, one half of the seminal stoner comedy duo Cheech and Chong, and the world's foremost collector of Chicano art. In addition to receiving the distinction of Arts Patron of the Year and celebrating his birthday with a big opening night bash, Marin has filled Los Angeles gallery Thomas Paul Fine Art's booth at the fair with works by young Chicano artists. With the works safely installed and his birthday party preparations underway — he turns 66 on Friday — Marin spoke to ARTINFO about bringing Chicano art east, and how he decided to become a champion of the under-appreciated genre in the first place.

Why are you being honored this weekend at ArtHamptons?

I'm a big collector of Chicano art, which I'm exposing to the patrons of the Hamptons art fair. It's the first time they've had Chicano art here, and I'm bringing along several up-and-coming new artists of the next generation of Chicano artists. And I have the largest collection of Chicano art in the history of the world.

Chicano art seems to have a much bigger following on the West coast than on the East coast; did that influence your selection of works for this exhibition?

Yes, absolutely. I'm promoting these young artist because they need the exposure, but I'm also exposing ArtHamptons and folks back East in general to the concept of Chicano art because there's little or no knowledge of it back here. My mantra has been that you can't love or hate Chicano art unless you see it, so I'm letting everybody see it.

How did you first start collecting Chicano art?

In the mid-1980s is when I started collecting. The gap in my art knowledge was contemporary art, I didn't know a lot about it, so I started going to galleries on the west side of L.A. That's where I first encountered these Chicano artists. And as I looked at their art I thought, "These guys are really good, they're very, very good painters." I'd seen good painting all of my life and I knew what it was. But they weren't getting any traction at all, so I decided to become their champion.

Since this is an art fair, after all, will you be looking to buy, or are you strictly there as an exhibitor?

I just might. You never know. But hopefully collectors will come to my booth and they will purchase some of this art, so that it becomes a part of them and a part of the American language of art.

You've exhibited works from your collection in several exhibitions over the last decade; do you have plans for any shows in the near future?

I've done three large touring exhibitions, the latest one of which, "Chicano Visions," toured the country for seven years — it went to the Smithsonian, the de Young, LACMA, and so on. Now I have a smaller show called "Chicanitas," an exhibition of small paintings that's touring right now. But I'd hoped to bring some out here as soon as we can, and ArtHamptons is the first step towards doing that.

ArtHamptons runs July 13-15. The exhibition of Chicano art curated by Cheech Marin will be on view in Thomas Paul Fine Art's booth next to the Collector's Lounge.

Frank Gehry's architectural style, with all the fragmentation and glare of its facades, might seem to be out of place on a residential street and better suited for, say, a Disney Concert Hall. Yet, as one of the 21 architects Brad Pitt enlisted for his Make it Right Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to displaced residents of post-Katrina New Orleans, he's shown that with a little toning down, he can building something in a family neighborhood and feel right at home.

A duplex of Gehry's design was just completed in the Lower 9th Ward, the area hit hardest by the devastating 2005 storm, absent of the deconstructivist flourishes that normally characterize his work. The details in the design were actually chosen by the homeowner, a 9th Ward resident who plans to live in the front of the house and rent to tenants in the back. She had her say in everything, down to the paint colors and cabinetry, and the result was a LEED-certified, pastel pink and purple, 1,780-square-foot home, complete with a waterproof solar canopy and 510-square foot roof terrace. 

"I wanted to make a house that I would like to live in and one that responded to the history, vernacular and climate of New Orleans," said Gehry in a statement. "I love the colors that the homeowner chose. I could not have done it better." (In fact, the peachy tone of the siding, exposed wood beams, and solar panels give it a slight likeness to Gehry's own Santa Monica residence, known for being a mish-mash of workman-like materials).

Since Make it Right's launch in 2007, the foundation has been able to build 86 homes, including ones by starchitects David Adjaye and Shigeru Ban. This is Gehry's first home in Louisiana, and one of only 22 Gehry houses in the entire country.

To see more of Frank Gehry's duplex and other homes built for Make it Right, click the slide show. 

By a bizarre coincidence, the hubristic experience of a fantastically wealthy woman who calls home Versailles – a stately pleasure dome that seals her off from massive social upheaval – is the partial subject of two new movies. Set 222 years apart, they are timely moral fables about money being the root not of evil but of ignorance, the willful refusal to see and understand.

Benoît Jacquot’s captivating “Farewell, My Queen,” which opens today, takes place in the original Versailles of Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), whose detachment from the imminent French Revolution is observed by the devoted young servant, Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux, affecting as the film’s protagonist), whose job is to get books from the palace library and read them to the languid, tetchy monarch. The film was adapted by Jacquot and Gilles Taurand from a 2002 novel by the French historian Chantal Thomas.

The queen of Lauren Greenfield’s reality documentary “The Queen of Versailles,” which arrives next Friday, is the nouveau rich American spendthrift Jackie Siegel. Its Versailles is the 90,000 square-foot palace, a mash-up of the Île-de-France château and Las Vegas’s Paris Hotel, that she and her self-made billionaire husband David built in Orlando just before the subprime mortgage crisis struck his Westgate Resorts time-share empire. They were forced, temporarily, to stop building America’s largest house and Siegel lost control of a 52-story resort in Vegas into which he had poured over $400 million.

“Farewell, My Queen” is as brisk and suspenseful as Patrice Chéreau’s “Queen Margot” (1994) and Bertrand Tavernier’s “The Princess of Montpensier” (2011). French heritage dramas like these are less formal and reverent than their British equivalents. They are also rougher, more socialistic, and candid in their approach to physical and moral squalor.  A history teacher once told my class there was a recorded instance of a French aristocrat who found a cockroach eating the scalp beneath her Pompadour wig — a handy metaphor for the decadence of the Ancien Régime.  “Farewell, My Queen” doesn’t go that far, but it quickly establishes the class divisions in France on the cusp of conflagration: it begins with Sidonie, who lives with other maids in a sparsely decorated flat, scratching mosquito bites after waking; soon afterwards there’s a shot of the sans culottes with their pigs.

The labyrinthine palace itself is far from pristine and the corridor in its bowels where servants and court officials throng, gossip, and expostulate whenever terrible news arrives from Paris is as murky and threatening as a Le Marais street at night. In the palace, there are rats, real ones, alongside those courtiers who are quick to make their getaways with priceless objets d’art when the end draws near.

News comes that the Bastille has fallen and Sidonie and her co-workers react with appropriate apprehension, or get drunk in the case of the little old librarian who’s Sidonie’s mentor. The queen, instead, ponders fabrics and fashions and frets about her relationship with the imperious, conniving Duchesse de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen), with whom she is infatuated. Even when it dawns on her that there’ll be no escape, all she can do is burn her old love letters.

Sidonie is educated and intelligent as well as beautiful (Jacquot tilts the camera up and down her cleavage several times before eventually disrobing her) but blinded by her platonic love of the queen as Marie Antoinette is blinded by her subliminal lust for the duchesse. Desirous of becoming the queen’s closest confidante, Sidonie herself encounters hubris – and potential capture and death – when she takes on that role in a scheme to get the duchesse out of Versailles. Ironically succeeding in her goal, even as Marie Antoinette evaporates from the movie, she finds herself stripped of her clothes, her livelihood, and her identity. Her personal revolution leaves her like Les Mis’s Cosette, minus the success story, but the journey to nowhere is riveting.

The journey of Jackie Siegel, a onetime beauty queen and model, and her husband, a self-anointed “king” who had himself painted as one, is equally involving, but since it’s not distanced by the passage of epochs its aftertaste lingers longer. The plight of the Siegels is the plight of everyone who foreclosed in 2007-09 writ larger than life.

“Do you just gawp at it?” a colleague asked when I told her about the documentary’s immersion in the Siegels’ vulgar opulence and its schadenfreude-inducing tale of their lifestyle. You can’t help yourself. Greenfield piles on little metaphors as the Siegels, who dwell in a temporary mansion home as they wait for their dream house to be completed, plunge into debt. They have eight kids (including an adopted punkette), but none of them takes care of a pet lizard, which dies. After most of the servants are released, no one cleans up after the dogs. The most telling detail is that Siegel had erected a Xanadu for his family, but hadn’t provided for the kids’ education.

At Christmas, the reckless Jackie goes crazy with a credit card in a toy store. The increasingly depressed David, interviewed on camera, bluntly says she’s no help – “it’s like having another child.” Unlike the solipsistic Marie Antoinette, though, Jackie is good company, an open, optimistic woman with not a hint of fatalism or falseness. She’s the de facto star of a persuasive film about the American diseases of overreaching, pathological consumerism, and sticking one’s head in the sand — together they might be labeled the Versailles Syndrome.

Since David threw Greenfield and her crew out of their lives, he has sued the director for defamation. His chief complaint seems to be the film’s indication that his business was collapsing. In an interview with the New York Times, he stated that Westgate Resorts was still profitable and that Versailles’ construction is proceeding. The Times’s Joe Nocera suggests the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed.  

In Clip Art, Spotlight's editors choose five of the most visually engaging music videos from the previous week or so, and present highlights from each in a video supercut and image gallery. Today ...

1. Peaking Lights, “Beautiful Son”
Director: LEGS

2. Twin Shadow, “Patient”
Director: George Lewis, Jr.

3. Purity Ring, “Fireshrine”
Director: Young Replicant

4. Justice, “New Lands”
Director: Canada

5. Bill Fay, “Be At Peace With Yourself”
Director: Dan Huiting

Read more culture news on Spotlight

As the co-founders of New York-based Art Production Fund, Doreen Remen and Yvonne Force Villareal have helped numerous artists realize their larger-than-life dreams. They started the non-profit organization in 2000 and over the past 12 years have pushed a multitude of ambitious art projects into the public realm, bringing art to many who might not otherwise come across it. 

Among the most memorable installations are Elmgreen and Dragset’s 2005 “Prada Marfa” sculpture, a fake boutique that resembles a Prada store in a desolate stretch of U.S. Route 90 in Texas; the 2010 Shepard Fairey mural on the side of the former Cooper Square Hotel in New York; and “White Ghost,” a giant 2010 Yoshimoto Nara sculpture of one of his cartoony characters on New York’s Park Avenue. Two current Art Production Fund projects are Kiki Smith’s “Chorus,” freestanding sculptures that celebrate America’s Golden Age, on 46th Street and 8th Avenue; and Yoko Ono’s “Imagine Peace,” which will promote the artist’s anti-violence message on screens throughout London during the 2012 Olympics.

Remen and Villareal have a knack for merging fashion with the art world. They got Prada to provide the clothing and shoes for the Elmgreen and Dragset installation, and partnered Proenza Schouler with Kalup Linzy, Haim Steinbach, and Karen Black for a presentation at Pitti W. The two count designers Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, and fashion photographer Ellen Von Unwerth among those in their large circle. And did we mention? Both ladies have impeccable style. So naturally, they couldn’t be a better fit for ARTINFO’s Tastemaker series.

Click on the slide show to see Art Production Fund’s Doreen Remen and Yvonne Force Villareal’s Tastemaker picks.

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Architecture, Fashion & Style, and Performing Arts, July 9-13, 2012:

ART

—Yayoi Kusama fever swept New York. Check out our review of her Whitney Museum retrospective, coverage of the star-studded opening, and look at her polka-dotted Louis Vuitton collaboration. 

—Ben Davis reflected on the meaning of the sudden end of Artnet magazine and the time he spent working there. 

—The buyer of the $119.9 million Edvard Munch "The Scream" pastel at a May 2 Sotheby's sale was finally revealed to be American businessman Leon Black.

—An online catalogue of 2,500 hours of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist's recorded interviews with hundreds of cultural luminaries is set to debut July 29. 

—Julia Halperin investigated why smaller dealers are choosing to leave Chelsea for cheaper rent and the Lower East Side. 

ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN 

—Zaha Hadid has been commissioned to build a Z boat for mega-dealer Kenny Schachter and the results are straight out of a Christopher Nolan movie. Holy smokes, Schachter!

—Check out our slide show of the 10 most extreme works of LEGO art, from an M.C. Escher homage to a retelling of the Bible. 

—McCarren Park Pool was revamped and reopened just in time for the dog days of Summer. Kelly Chan queries, can civic architecture take the heat?

—The Barbican Center opened an exhibtion devoted to international spy and apparently style icon James Bond. Check out our slideshow of 007 artifacts from big names like Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Tom Ford, Hubert de Givenchy, and Miuccia Prada. 

—Tech-savvy industrial designer Yves Béhar raised $1 million dollars on Kickstarter in just 8 hours for a new Android-based gaming system called Ouya. 

FASHION & STYLE 

—Ladies in London are sick of paying upwards of $595 for Christian Louboutin heels and have taken matters into their own hands by mimicking the designer's signature and painting the soles of their shoes red. 

—Dolce & Gabbana releases their first ever couture collection in a fashion show frenzy of chandeliers and enormous red capes. 

—In celebration of her forthcoming appearance in the music video for George Michael's first single in eight years, we look back at Kate Moss's many music video appearances.

—Co-founders of New York-based Art Production Fund, Doreen Remen and Yvonne Force Villareal contribute their style picks to this week's Tastemaker series slideshow. 

—"Dallas" Costume Designer Rachel Sage Kunin talked cowboy boots and Ralph Lauren in an interview with Ann Binlot.

PERFORMING ARTS

—The Spice Girls are finally giving fans what they want, what they really really want in an all new musical based on the girl band's music. Patrick Pacheco talked to "Mamma Mia" producer Judy Craymer on harnessing girl power in “Viva Forever!”

—Kenneth Lonergan’s 188-minute-long movie “Margaret” starring Anna Paquin is finally being released in an extended cut after a seven-year editing battle with Fox.

—Recent Tony winner Nina Arianda is set to play Janis Joplin in an upcoming movie based on the singer's life.

—Director Walter Hill has signed on to remake horror melodrama "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" But will the director be able to fill the shoes of the film's original divas Joan Crawford and Bette Davis?

—Scott Indrisek interviewed Danish filmmaker Nicolas Refn about his upcoming film "Valhalla Rising" and how to make a movie like a drug. 

VIDEO

—Tom Chen documented the Yayoi Kusama madness surrounding a wax replica of the artist in Louis Vuitton's 5th Ave store window and captured remarks by Whitney Director Adam Weinberg and curator David Kiehl at a  Museum press conference: