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KASSEL, Germany — With 50 days left of documenta 13, the exhibition has several records in its sights. Between its June 9 opening and July 28, it is estimated that documenta will bring in over 378,000 visitors. That is slightly more than half of the total 751,000 visitors who came to documenta 12 in 2007, the quinquennial's record-holding attendance year, and 58,000 more than that exhibition’s halfway tally of 330,000. Should previous editions’ tendency towards increased visitor volume in the exhibition’s second half, artistic director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and CEO, Bernd Leifeld’s documenta 13 should squash that previous record easily.

“It makes me very happy that visitors from Geramany and the world are enjoying dOCUMENTA (13), visiting many of the locations from the Kulturbahnhof to the far reaches of the Karlsaue,” Christov-Bakargiev said in a statement. “It makes me especially happy that many visitors are also returning several times, feeling at home in an exhibition that provides both sensual and perceptual experience, as well as an intellectual challenge.” As ARTINFO Germany previously reported, many of those repeat visitors are buying season tickets, with over 10,000 sold in the first half of the exhibition, more than double the amount for the entirety of documenta 12.

Certainly, documenta 13 needs to break records. With the additional facilities, such as the numerous wood cabins in the Karsaue Park, and record number of staff, its five-year budget was estimated at €24.6 million ($30.3 million). Leifeld hoped that much of this budget increase would be offset by increases in ticket sales.

Also notable is the smoothness with which this documenta has ru. Since June 9^, there has only been a slight misunderstanding with the Disability Advisory Committee, which was cleared up by the addition of tours specifically designed for the blind. And even before, Per Busch, a Kassel native and unofficial spokesperson for Apple’s accessibility features in iOS 6, wrote to ARTINFO that the exhibition was, “also pretty good for the blind.”

There has hardly even been a negative word from critics and the press. Steven Henry Madoff said documenta 13 was the most important exhibition of the 21 Century to date. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith was slightly more hesitant, writing, “I would not have missed this seething, shape-shifting extravaganza for the world, and I’d rather not see its like again, at least not on this dwarfing, imperious, self-canceling scale.”

With summer vacations still to come or still underway for Germany and the world at large, documenta seems poised to become the most publically and critically lauded iteration of Kassel's marquee art event to date.

This article also appears on Berlin Art Brief.

One face was ubiquitous in Berlin last month, and it didn’t belong to Spider Man. S-Bahn stations and bus shelters across the city were festooned with a poster announcing Alison Klayman’s documentary-portrait “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.” Has this 55-year-old Chinese conceptual artist cum political activist supplanted Damon Hirst or Jeff Koons as the art world’s reigning superstar?

Certainly, Ai is the contemporary artist with the greatest claim to a global perspective and the most profound investment in social media. “I spend 90 percent of my energy on blogging,” he told an interviewer in May 2009, a month before the Chinese government liquidated his website, acting to forestall any mention of Tiananmen Square’s 20th anniversary. Undeterred, Ai, who had blogged daily since 2006, continued on Twitter …

Klayman’s documentary, which she began shooting in late 2008, captures the artist in the first flush of his new fame, preparing for one show in Sao Paolo and another at the Tate Modern that would require 100 million sunflower seeds: “At this point, my head is empty,” he tells the filmmaker. In fact, Ai had just lived through the turning point of his career. The previous spring, he’d responded to the cataclysmic Chengdu, Sichuan, earthquake — in which thousands of children died in the rubble of poorly-constructed schools, a scandal to which the government had responded with an information blackout — by undertaking a massive cyber memorial that would post online the names of the dead.

As Ai’s art is, in part, a series of material gestures (as when he inscribes the Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese vase), he is, in some ways a successor to Warhol, Beuys, and Duchamp. (Asked by Klayman to describe his work, he characterizes himself as a chess player.) But unlike those citizens of bourgeois democracies, he plays for far higher stakes. More than anything else, it has been Ai’s ongoing insistence on transparency — most obviously in the case of the Chengdu disaster — that has frightened and infuriated Chinese authorities.

There’s a sense in which both Ai’s willingness to confront the powers that be and his considerable media savvy are overdetermined. As the son of the distinguished poet Ai Qing, a Communist who, declared an “enemy of the people” in 1957, was sentenced to clean latrines in one of the more remote regions of Mao’s China, Ai experienced firsthand the capricious power of the state (and its fear of artistic expression); as a self-exiled artist who spent a formative decade in New York’s post-punk East Village, Ai received a post-graduate education in grassroots production, media provocation, and aesthetic self-promotion. Having kept a ten-year “camera diary” (exhibited last summer at New York’s Asia Society), he returned to relatively liberal Beijing of 1993 well prepared to assume a leading role in its new cultural underground.

“China is a nation that likes to express itself — just look at karaoke,” the artist once blogged. Ai has no difficulty speaking his mind. He was among the first (and few) Chinese intellectuals to attack the pretense of that summer’s Beijing Olympics — an ongoing critique all the more scathing in that it came from one the architects who worked the monumental stadium known as the Bird’s Nest. Classic Ai: The artist’s immediate response to the opening ceremonies was a blog post characterizing the megamillion dollar spectacle, the most-watched event in the history of television, as “the archetypal example of bogus ‘traditional’ rubbish, a blasphemous ‘spirit of liberty,’ a visual crap pile of phony affectation and hypocritical unction.”

“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” further includes the period during which the million-dollar studio that Chinese authorities encouraged the artist to build in Shanghai opened and was, less than four months later, demolished — a failed exercise in cooption that might be considered a government-sponsored artwork. But its central theme is Chengdu. As self-reflexive as he is, Ai documents his own surveillance. The film includes footage he furnished of a midnight police raid during which he was so severely beaten he required brain surgery — as well as a scene in which Klayman attempts to film Ai’s subsequent attempt to file a complaint at the police station. (The story is ongoing. It was while Klayman was editing that Ai Weiwei was arrested at a Beijing airport, taken into custody and, after being held for 81 days in an unknown location, was placed under house arrest.)

“If I were making a film about life, I would pay more attention to reality,” Ai blogged in February 2008. “Reality is extremely harsh, but the subject must be broached. I’ve said before that all the defects of my era are reflected in my person, and if I were filming, I would be unscrupulous.” “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” may not be that but this low-key, surprisingly polished first film is an invaluable portrait of the artist as a defiantly free man.

Read more J. Hoberman on Movie Journal

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Architecture, Fashion & Style, and Performing Arts, July 23-27, 2012:

ART

— A little sports competition know as the Olympic Games got underway in London, and its many cultural components included Martin Creed's nation-wide bell-ringing performance — which culture secretary Jeremy Hunt bungled badly — a red double-decker bus rigged to do pushups, and an artist who tried to grow a soccer ball from living cells, as well as a host of Olympics-themed attractions and the city's famous galleries. Banksy even managed to paint two Olympics murals despite a police crackdown on graffiti.

— We ranked the visual art efforts of some of our favorite (and most despised) musical artists, from the great photos of Patti Smith to the not-so-great digital art of Ringo Starr.

— Judd Tully looked back on the life and collection of Herbert Vogel, the former mailman and beloved art collector who died this week.

— Julia Halperin remembered the Austrian sculptor Franz West, who died suddenly in Vienna at age 65.

— We looked at the first half of Modern Painters magazine's list of the 50 most influential art collectors under 50, from Jen Bekman to Fawaz Kanoo. (Look for Part II on Monday!)

ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN

— Frank Gehry's research and development firm Gehry Technologies launched GTeam, a new cloud-based design software.

— A dispute erupted over the fate of an urban plaza in Trenton, New Jersey, designed by artist Athena Tacha, which the state government wants to demolish.

— Janelle Zara visited the Museum of Modern Art's playful new retrospective of toy design, "Century of the Child."

— The Royal Institute of British Architects released its shortlist for this year's Stirling Prize, including two buildings by Rem Koolhaas and none by past winner Zaha Hadid.

— Kelly Chan wondered whether the under-construction Simon Bolivar Mausoleum in Caracas isn't really a $140-million monument to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's ego.

FASHION & STYLE

— Beloved fashion house Yves Saint Laurent revealed its new logo, and the world was never the same.

— Ann Binlot bestowed medals on five countries — including Jamaica and San Marino — for their stylish Olympic uniforms.

— Tiffany & Co. tapped four artists — including Danielle Dimston and Ellis Gallagher — to make love-themed murals on its future SoHo store's construction fencing.

— Former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld released the first (animated!) image from her hotly anticipated CR Fashion Book.

— Polymath James Franco shot his second ad campaign for high-end denim designer Seven For All Mankind, this one starring Victoria's Secret model Lily Donaldson and Dennis Hopper's son Henry, among others.

PERFORMING ARTS

— J. Hoberman reviewed Alison Klayman's documentary "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," about the outspoken Chinese artist, activist, and social media addict.

— "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson tried to extend his two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" into a trilogy.

— The first trailer for Zach Snyder's new Superman movie, "Man of Steel," brought plenty of Terrence Mallick-ian imagery to bear on the classic superhero story.

— J. Hoberman noted how weirdly fitting it was that California's Ronald Reagan Presidential Library should be hosting an exhibition of works from the Walt Disney archives.

— Bryan Hood looked into the sudden spike in spiritual music programed by the world's leading orchestras and classical music festivals, from the Salzburg Festival to Lincoln Center's White Light Festival.

VIDEO

— Tom Chen and Kyle Chayka spoke to social media artist Man Bartlett about his projects on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and other platforms.

Last night was a triumph for film director Danny Boyle. The London 2012 Opening Ceremony he masterminded was an astounding spectacle, which took the billion viewers watching worldwide from Britain's bucolic past to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the Internet, via the fights of the Suffragettes, the UK's rich pop music heritage, and its threatened National Health Service. Boyle's "Isles of Wonder" was surreal, festive, and irreverent. Although it occasionally struggled to keep its momentum, the £27 m ($42.5 m) show stretched the opening ceremony model to its limits, proving that it could be more than a mere patriotic chest-beating exercise. For one evening, Londoners forgot the ticketing scandals and overcrowded transport network, and the world got a taste of what makes Britain such a special place.

Loosely inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest," "Isles of Wonder" showed Boyle's storytelling talent at its best. It opened to the sound of the largest tuned bell in Europe (tolled by Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins), on a pastoral vision of 18th century Britain, with suspiciously healthy peasants dancing among live cattle on rolling hills. But the show really kicked off with the arrival of legendary engineer Brunel, played by actor Kenneth Branagh, who watched with glee as the gray chimneys of the industrial revolution sprouted from the ground. "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises; Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not," he declared, reciting Caliban's celebrated lines from Shakespeare's play. Scores of factory workers appeared to pour molten metal to create a monumental gold ring — and one of the most enduring images of the ceremony. The ring slowly rose from the stadium to meet four others, interlocking mid-air.

In Beijing four years ago, film director Zhang Yimou — who had almost twice Boyle's budget to play with  — dazzled with his hundreds of performers in perfect sync. The Chinese opening ceremony projected the vision of a smoothly-run mega-nation. More in keeping with the British style, Boyle favored the aesthetics of organized chaos. The 10,000-plus volunteers often enacted scenes and stories in various parts of the stadium simultaneously — and each time things got a bit too earnest, the artistic director pricked it with a joke, or a dare. Immediately after the golden Olympic rings, a film interlude showed Daniel Craig as Agent 007, picking up Her Majesty in a helicopter, before apparently jumping out. Minutes after two parachutists landed in the middle of the set, the real Queen emerged and took her seat, unfrazzled.

Opening ceremonies aren't usually the place for political critique, but Boyle didn't shy away from dedicating a whole section to the NHS — as it faces some of the most dramatic reforms in its 64-year history. Health workers from Great Ormond Street Hospital jived away under the glassy stare of Prime Minister David Cameron. The nurses put kids to bed and the scene turned nightmarish, peopled with some of the most famous fictional British villains including Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts, and Harry Potter's Lord Voldemort. Only J.K. Rowling reading Peter Pan, and a flying squad of Mary Poppins, could lift the darkly ominous atmosphere.

The opening ceremony's second half focused on music and the digital revolution. Rowan Atkinson, or rather Mr. Bean, laboriously fooled his way through "Chariots of Fire" along with the London Symphony Orchestra. The narrative then turned love story between two teenagers who danced from David Bowie to Dizzee Rascal, "updating" their social media statuses for TV viewers as they went. Reaching the 1990s and rave, performers gathered to form the smiley symbol indelibly associated with ecstasy and club culture. When the lovers finally kissed, a midly daring film montage showed some of the great media smooches: a celebrated lesbian kiss from soap opera Brookside, Shrek and Princess Fiona, Charlton Heston and an ape, Prince William and Kate Middleton.

For all its cheek, the London 2012 Olympic Ceremony closed with a genuinely moving moment. The torch was brought to Stratford by a dapper David Beckham on a speedboat, and it entered the stadium carried by five time Olympic gold medalist Steve Redgrave. But the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron wasn't given to a sporting legend, as is customary. Instead, seven unknown budding athletes lit the metal petals of an extraordinary contraption designed by Thomas Heatherwick. One of Britain's great strengths is the unshakable trust it has in its youth. In a few weeks time, when the Olympic fairy dust has settled and the country wakes up to a double-dip recession hangover, the lighting of the Olympic cauldron will be a powerful image to remember.

The high-energy, low-profile collector Basma Al Sulaiman resists easy classification. Divorced and living in London since 2000, she has built a collection that is remarkable for the breadth of its holdings in Chinese, Indian, and South Asian contemporary art. She has also become a patron of art in and from her native Saudi Arabia. And although Al Sulaiman might have joined the museum building boom in the Middle East or created a  private institution in London, she has opted for a more egalitarian platform. The Basma Al Sulaiman Museum of Contemporary Art — or BASMOCA — is the first virtual museum to present an actual private collection to a limitless global audience of wired visitors. Launched in April 2011 with a ceremony in the port city of Jeddah, where Al Sulaiman was raised and keeps a second home, BASMOCA allows visitors to assume avatars and interface with friends or fellow visitors as they make their way through a sleek virtual museum that, at least in cyberspace, occupies a palm tree fringed island oasis surrounded by a tranquil blue sea.

It is my first visit to Al Sulaiman’s art- and antique-filled townhouse in London’s Belgravia district, and a bow-tied servant graciously serves coffee as I wait in the formal drawing room. The collector’s laughter drifts in. Biding my time, I scan the generously proportioned Georgian salon, with its elaborately plastered ceiling and French windows overlooking a small park. I spot a Thomas Gainsborough, set like a trophy between the windows, but on close inspection it proves to be Banksy’s "Fetish Lady" of 2006, a modified found canvas sheathed in a gold frame and depicting an elegantly frocked, demurely posed woman sporting a black leather S&M mask. A studded dog collar rests against her pearl necklace and is connected by a chain to a wrist strap. The Banksy maintains a provocative counterpoint to the antique furnishings, Venetian glass chandelier, grand piano, Persian rugs, and other accoutrements of the high-style interior.

Other contemporary works in the room are equally challenging, if less transgressive. A stainless steel scholar’s rock by Zhan Wang perches on a table. Above the fireplace hangs Zhang Xiaogang’s severe "Comrade" painting from 1995, one of two owned by Al Sulaiman from his storied "Bloodline" series. Yang Shaobin’s "No. 4," 2001-02, an abstracted figurative composition in crimson tones, commands more wall space. Al Sulaiman acquired the painting at Christie’s Hong Kong in 2007 for HK$1,807,500 ($233,393). Impressive in its own corner is an aluminum and bronze sculpture of stacked suitcases, Subodh Gupta’s "Kuwait to Delhi," 2006, which was inspired by the Indian laborers who travel back and forth between their homeland and their work in the Middle East. One of Shao Fan’s much-admired deconstructed chairs, this one a Ming example reassembled with Plexiglas, is just visible in a corridor. Although a small Gerhard Richter abstract typically sits on an easel in the drawing room (today it’s absent) and a Georg Baselitz painting hangs on one wall, the majority of works by Western artists are installed elsewhere in the house. In the dining room, for example, the two parts of Tracey Emin’s large neon "Our Angels (Foundlings and Fledglings)" — a bird on a leafy branch and a cursive text — cast a soft blue glow from opposite walls. The piece was  shown in the British pavilion during the 2007 Venice Biennale.

When Al Sulaiman enters the room, casually attired in a shortsleeved pink blouse, dark blue slacks, and sandals, she enumerates the highlights of recent trips to Asia, which included stops in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, and Singapore. "I really go to a lot of places for art appreciation," she says. But she is not jetting from one art fair to another to party and network. Rather, Al Sulaiman regards these trips as occasions to "enlighten" herself about international culture.

Reared in Jeddah in the protective comfort of a prominent Saudi family active in banking, real estate, and retail enterprises, Al Sulaiman has always been a person of means. In Jeddah she earned a degree in English literature, and the subject of education threads through her conversations. To get her bearings as a collector she enrolled in a diploma course in modern and contemporary art offered by Christie’s. Al Sulaiman cites her visit to the "Sensation" exhibition in London — the 1997 Royal Academy of Arts show of the Saatchi collection that introduced the YBAs to a wider public — as the moment she came of age with respect to understanding contemporary art. "Saatchi has definitely been an inspiration," she says, "and I’ve tried to follow his model in the way I collect Saudi art, to look into new artists, to support and collect them. But there is a big element of commercialism in it [Saatchi’s activities], and I’m not a fan of that aspect."

Al Sulaiman has concentrated on cutting-edge international art for well over a decade but still owns her earliest acquisition, purchased at the start of the 1990s: a painting of ornamental birds by the British artist Marmaduke Craddock (circa 1660–1717), similar to one owned by Tate Britain. "For me, the main thing is that I have to like it," says Al Sulaiman about the appeal of any artwork. "Sometimes it’s a personal kind of attraction that grabs me. I never think of a specific place to put it, and I never think in terms of color or medium. Most of the time, the work finds its own right place, and it’s been that way for me since the very beginning."

With few exceptions, Al Sulaiman acquires works by young or emerging artists whose fame and prices have not yet soared. She works closely with dealers, chief among them Pearl Lam, the globe-trotting Shanghai and Hong Kong gallerist. "Living in London has really given her the confidence to be herself," says Lam of Al Sulaiman. "She has a good eye and is willing to learn, and she doesn’t depend on art advisers." Lam, who is a member of the BASMOCA advisory board, has sold several works to Al Sulaiman, including the Shao Fan chair and one of Zhang Huan’s early ash paintings of skulls, which is made of incense ash collected from Buddhist temples in Shanghai. "My Chinese collectors wouldn’t go near those works," says Lam, adding with a chuckle, "Basma is a very extraordinary Arab girl." According to Lam, Al Sulaiman’s constant refrain is "Show me new things!"

When it comes to new things, Al Sulaiman has a genuinely international and notably pan-Asian appetite. "She is one of the few Saudis who have been collecting actively in this arena," says Melissa Chiu, director of New York’s Asia Society Museum. "A lot of collectors share similar collecting interests, while Basma is very much someone with her own approach and an interest that is predominantly non-Western. That in itself is quite unusual." Judith Benhamou-Huet, a Paris art critic and the author of the 2008 book Global Collectors, comments on another aspect of Al Sulaiman’s independent streak: her embrace of Chinese art, with its preponderance of images of the face and body, which violates the Islamic proscription against depictions of the human figure. Asked about her pursuit of Asian art, Al Sulaiman simply replies, "There’s a big change in the geography of art, and interest is definitely turning to the East."

Saudi artists, however, are not being neglected. They are particularly well represented in basmoca, which Al Sulaiman describes as a way "for Saudi and Middle Eastern artists to exhibit their work for all to see. It is a location where anybody from anywhere in the world can get in touch with these artists and start a dialogue. It’s social networking for the art world." Since last year’s launch, she’s been promoting the site in Europe and the Middle East. "In the first months, we got thousands of hits," she reports, "and then it got slower, so the weekly curve goes up and down. During an average week we get 200 to 400 hits, but at peak times it can go up to 1,000. The audience is very international, not just regional."

Of course, behind the virtual museum is a real-world collection of physical objects. Al Sulaiman was early in her support for emerging Saudi artists — a number of whom have received international attention thanks to the touring exhibitions sponsored since 2008 by the London-based initiative Edge of Arabia and to the debut of a Saudi pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale — and has commissioned several works from Saudi artists associated with Athr Gallery in Jeddah. In that respect, says Mohammed Hafiz, who cofounded the gallery in 2009, "She’s more a patron than a collector. She’s done so much for Saudi art."

Among the Saudi works in Al Sulaiman’s collection installed at her Jeddah home are two sculptures by Abdulnasser Gharem, Concrete Block II, 2009, and Road to Makkah, 2011, both made of rubber stamps and industrial lacquer paint on wood. The latter piece was featured earlier this year in the exhibition "Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam," mounted by the British Museum, in London, in partnership with the King Abdulaziz Public Library, in Riyadh. Al Sulaiman also owns Ahmed Mater’s mixed-media "Illumination Diptych 1 & 2," 2008, from a series in which the artist places X-rays of the human skeleton in compositions that evoke the pages of illuminated Islamic manuscripts. There are a dozen or so photographs from the "I Am" series, by Manal Al Dowayan, who shoots portraits of women and labels them "I Am a Doctor," "I Am an Architect," "I Am a Mother," "I Am a TV Producer," etc. in an effort to come to terms with her own uncertain role within Saudi society. Mater and Al Dowayan both appeared in "The Future of a Promise," a pan-Arab collateral exhibition during the Venice Biennale of 2011.

"I’m trying to create an awareness in the West of art from the Middle East," explains Al Sulaiman, adding, "Saudi art in particular." She’s eager to counter the Western misconception that the people from that part of the world are backwards "because we are all covered and live behind the veil." Conversely, she wishes to educate her countrymen, saying, "I would like to take on many roles other than just being an art collector." Paris dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, who has sold Western work to Al Sulaiman, including pieces by Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer, says admiringly, "She really took on much more than any other private collector to do something for her country, to connect Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world in terms of contemporary art. She wants her collection to have meaning and impact. I think this is really extraordinary."

With the goal of exchange in mind, Al Sulaiman, with a group of enthusiasts, is organizing the first international sculpture park in Saudi Arabia, which will display works by such major Western artists as Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, and Victor Vasarely. The large-scale pieces, selected by an art-loving mayor, were acquired in the 1980s by the municipality and displayed for a time along the Jeddah waterfront. Today they are worth in excess of $100 million, according to valuations by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. "It will be in The Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive sculpture park in the world," boasts Al Sulaiman. The project is part of an ambitious municipal initiative to develop the city’s Corniche Road and waterfront.

Plainly these modernist works, destined for a public context, are not as confrontational as the contemporary art in Al Sulaiman’s private collection. She is keenly sensitive to her country’s conservative ways and acknowledges the challenge of educating viewers who have no inkling about advanced art. "I try to push boundaries but in a very subtle way. You don’t want to shock but you want to take small steps forward." That respectful approach was evident shortly after the basmoca launch, when Al Sulaiman, interviewed on Saudi television, was conservatively attired in a black headscarf and traditional dress.

In the course of a later conversation with Al Sulaiman, I recalled the bondage flavored, Gainsborough-esque Banksy in her London drawing room, which she sold at Christie’s London last February 15 for £265,250 ($416,973), above its high estimate of £200,000. When I inquire about it, Al Sulaiman sighs, saying, "I had to sell that one. I’m trying to replace it right now with either a James Turrell or an Antony Gormley." The budget is not limitless. For international art, Al Sulaiman generally sets her price ceiling at around $200,000.

Making acquisitions can raise not only financial issues but philosophical ones as well, as was the case with some recent purchases of video and new media. At ARCO Madrid last February, Al Sulaiman acquired Bill Viola’s "Father and Daughter," 2008, a high-definition color video presented on a 42-inch plasma screen, from Blain/Southern, in London, as well as two works by the Russian artist Marina Alexeeva from the Marina Gisich Gallery, in St. Petersburg. Alexeeva’s "Museum" and "Mozart and Salieri," both from 2011, are mixed-media pieces from the artist’s "Live Box" series that incorporate video and holograms in light boxes. "The big question I ask myself," Al Sulaiman says, "is will this move to media art evolve, will it stand up to time as painting and sculpture do?"

There is no equivocation, however, where Saudi art is concerned. Al Sulaiman is working full tilt on researching and acquiring art for the next BASMOCA exhibition, tentatively titled "Dissect" and conceived as a history of Saudi art from primitive times to the present. She has been traveling throughout Saudi Arabia to prepare the virtual show, which is scheduled to "open" by late July. "It takes so much research," says Al Sulaiman about her latest challenge, "because it’s never been done before."

To see works from Basma Al Sulaiman's home, click the slide show.

This article appears in the July/August issue of Art+Auction.

The national pride! The athleticism! The spectacular Opening Ceremony! The 2012 London Olympics are finally here — and to mark the occasion, we felt it was necessary to put together a slide show of some of the most interesting Olympic-themed nail art on the Web. Flags popped up on fingers and Olympic rings embellished tips. We even saw silhouettes of gymnasts, volleyball players, and swimmers. Which Olympic manicure are you rooting for?

Click on the slide show to see nail art celebrating the 2012 London Olympics. 

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.

Mohammed Afkhami
Dubai/New York
Managing partner of MA Partners dmcc, a commodities derivatives consultancy based in the Middle East, Afkhami also serves as an adviser on capital placement to several of the largest global alternative investment firms. He collects international contemporary art, in particular Middle Eastern art, and is a founding member of the British Museum’s Middle East and North African art acquisition committee.

Laura and John Arnold
Houston
Recently retired founder of the Centaurus Advisors hedge fund and self-made billionaire, John Arnold, the “king of natural gas,” and his wife, Laura, are committed philanthropists and art collectors. The couple live in a Cubist-inspired house designed by New York architect Alexander Gorlin and collect predominantly modern and contemporary art. Inspired by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, they have pledged to give away half of their wealth over the course of their lifetime.

Haro Cumbusyan and Bilge Ogut-Cumbusyan
London/Istanbul
“I think a collection should be worth more than the sum of its parts. It should put the artworks into context, reveal unexpected relationships, or allow for surprising new readings,” says Haro Cumbusyan. He and his wife, Bilge, collect mainly video, film, and new media. Because both of them work with technology in their professional lives — Bilge as an investment consultant in technology, media, and telecommunications; Haro as a management consultant — they feel very comfortable with “emerging technologies and connecting cables,” as they put it. Focusing their collection on moving images provided them the opportunity to acquire artworks on a modest budget.

“Everything goes back to art institutions: Bilge and I started dating at the Guggenheim and got engaged at the Whitney,” recounts Haro. Their interest in art institutions motivated the two to open Collectorspace, a nonprofit venue in Istanbul dedicated to making works in private collections publicly available in exhibitions. Says Haro, “For an artwork to be relevant, it should enter the public consciousness.”

Hilary Hatch-Rubenstein
New York
A psychoanalyst by trade and a chairman of the Junior Associates at MoMA, Hatch-Rubenstein has an appetite for art influenced by her parents’ longtime involvement with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her first individual purchase, at the age of 15, was an Andy Warhol print of Greta Garbo. Since then her collection has grown to include artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Jim Lambie, Nick Relph and Oliver Payne, Franz West, Tomma Abts, and Mark Leckey.

Alexander Heller
New York
The son of New York–based dealer Leila Heller, Alexander obviously learned quite a bit from his upbringing in the art world. “I first attended Art Basel at the age of 4,” Heller recalls. Now, his eclectic collection of roughly 70 pieces is divided, he says, between Western and Middle Eastern work, including that of Farhad Moshiri, Shiva Ahmadi, Afruz Amighi, Damien Hirst, George Condo, and Marilyn Minter.

“The period of art which I most admire is the 1950s and ’60s movement in America, particularly Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg,” he says.  “Leo Castelli is a hero of mine, and one day I hope to have a collection full of works by the artists whom he represented and promoted.”

Jamie Cohen Hort
New York
Daughter-in-law of notable collectors Susan and Michael Hort, Jamie is an art consultant who earned her chops working at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the IBM Gallery. Her family has also been an influence, and last year she curated the installation in the couple’s home for their exclusive Armory Week brunch. In addition Hort often advises the various charities she supports, such as the Jewish Community Project and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, which offers grants to emerging artists (and support to cancer patients). Like her mother- and father-in-law, Hort has a passion for emerging artists. Her particular affinity is for the gallery scene on the Lower East Side, which she told the Financial Times in 2011 “generally has the advantage of a lower price entry point.”

Susi Kenna
New York
Having worked for both Jim Kempner Fine Art and Christie’s auction house, Kenna now runs the Creatives Agency, which offers branding, special projects, and design services to the art world. She’s been actively collecting since 2005. “I can tell you a story about every piece,” she says. “If I can’t connect a work to a meaningful person, place, or thing — it’s not for me.” Recent acquisitions that she’s especially proud of include mixed-media works by Andrea Mary Marshall and Eric Mistretta. They join a collection that includes multiple pieces from Hew Locke, Carlos Charlie Perez, and Sam Schonzeit.

Nathan Köstlin
Berlin
“I don’t see myself as a collector,” says the 39-year-old Köstlin, sitting in the family portrait room of the building — including a two-floor commercial space, formerly his venture, ArtBar71 — he shares with his husband, Ulrich Köstlin. While traditional portraits in the room show the faces of his husband’s family, dating back to the 1500s and further, a hamster cage by Franziska Holstein — homage to Nathan’s pet name — places the Vietnam War orphan in a rightfully different light.

Like his portrait, Köstlin’s collecting is far from traditional. “It’s one thing just to have a Warhol, a Lichtenstein — that becomes status. It’s another to know the artists, to understand their motives and the whole evolution that brought them to create the pictures that you love. But it’s also another thing to support them so that they can make further strides. The only way to get them there is to push them a little bit,” he explains. Thus, while the collection does have a fair share of established names — Christo, Heinz Mack, Thomas Florschuetz, and Manfred Butzmann among them — Köstlin’s focus is on the young and struggling talents in Berlin. Much of the work was purchased directly from studios, including the two large light-box paintings by Cornelia Renz that adorn the cavernous dining room, one of Stevie Hanley’s first corner paintings, and a self-portrait by Michael Müller. “We’re trying to make constant Polaroids with artists who are feeling with their ear to the ground the pulse and the rhythm of where our world is today and then putting it in a historical context,” he says. Perhaps pulling from his own past, one senses that Köstlin sees himself as adopting these “lost souls,” as he calls them, collecting lives as much as tangible works in the process.  — Alexander Forbes

Andrea Kusel
Glasgow
Curator of art at the Paisley Museum since 1996, Kusel is also chairman of the board of Street Level Photoworks, a nonprofit organization in Glasgow committed to fostering public interest and participation in photography. Her academic training in film and television studies, museum studies, and art history has enabled her to bring a modern perspective to the museum’s historical collection, as well as to her own purchases.

Dean and Mara Landis
New York
CEO of Entrepreneur Growth Capital, Dean is a third-generation financial manager. Along with his wife, Mara, Dean actively contributes to a number of children’s charities when not buying works by contemporary artists such as Julianne Swartz.

Suzanna Lee and Manish Vora
New York
Lee, a member of the Whitney Contemporaries steering committee and the Creative Time creative council, lives with her boyfriend, Vora, cofounder of Artlog and Grey Area, and their burgeoning collection. “It seems that portraits have been dominating our collection and that many of the artists we love live in Brooklyn,” Vora says. “Most recently we have acquired a beautiful portrait from Sarah Kurz, a Jackie O portrait on a Vogue magazine cover by Andrea Mary Marshall, and a Peggy Guggenheim portrait by Rachel Kaye. We also have two large, full-body portrait canvases from Panamanian artist Miky Fábrega that we have decided to loan to friends, as we could not fit the works in our East Village apartment.” Lee and Vora are anticipating the arrival of newly acquired works from Natalie Frank, Nic Rad, and Nir Hod.

Daisuke Miyatsu
Ichikawa, Japan
Miyatsu lives in what he terms his “dream house,” still under construction and conceived in collaboration with the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, who had never before undertaken an architectural project. Inside, one finds a commissioned work by Yoshitomo Nara, an ink-and-wash work on a sliding screen, made as a personal favor for his longtime collector and friend; bathroom wallpaper by Japanese conceptual artist Shimabuku; a trompe l’oeil ceiling in the main bedroom by young Japanese artist Teppei Kaneuji, in which strange creatures fashioned from paper peek out from knots in the wood. On the landing stands a mirror whose frame was created for him by Yayoi Kusama. Meanwhile, Miyatsu’s formal collection — the one that was celebrated in a special exhibition at MOCA Taipei last year — is miles away in a temperature-controlled, earthquake-proof Tokyo warehouse.

Miyatsu happily calls collecting an addiction, and he has fed his habit for the past 18 years, even though he has nothing like the money that most connoisseurs bring to the endeavor. In fact he is widely known in Asia as the “salaryman collector,” having financed his impressive collection of international contemporary art with the paycheck from his job as a Tokyo office worker. Miyatsu’s passion was sparked while he was still at school, when he came across the work of Andy Warhol. But it was Japan’s eccentric genius Yayoi Kusama who transformed him into a collector. “Do you know how the astronaut feels in '2001: A Space Odyssey' when he encounters space?” Miyatsu asks. “That’s how I felt when I first stood in front of her work.” A few years later, when he had a steady job, he launched his collection with a small Kusama drawing from 1953. In the years that followed, Miyatsu’s Kusama collection grew, and he also began collecting works by the likes of Nara and Olafur Eliasson. “There is something egotistical about being a collector,” he says. “And that is why it is my responsibility to keep the collection safe in storage so that one day it can be passed on.” — Madeleine O’Dea

José Antonio Marton
São Paulo
One of the most successful designers in Brazil, Marton began to collect in 1990, when a friend gave him a Renina Katz painting, “Os Retirantes,” as payment for a job. In 1995, with his brother Fernando, he founded Marton+Marton, a firm dedicated to design, architecture, and art projects. Every month the company advises an average of 30 to 50 artists. Most of the 400 or so works in Marton’s collection are by artists who launched their careers in the 1980s and ’90s. “My focus has always been Brazilian artists like Vik Muniz, Ernesto Neto, Rosângela Rennó, Valeska Soares, Marcelo Cidade, Marcius Galan, and Ana Tavares, among others,” Marton says. That’s not to say his collection stays within national boundaries — he also owns work by Anselm Kiefer, José Pedro Croft, and Charles Long.

Andreas Melas
Athens
A dealer as well as a collector, Melas began his career at Deitch Projects, in New York, before branching out with Andreas Melas Presents, in its initial manifestation as a project, and then as a bona fide exhibition space in Athens. In 2011 Melas joined up with Helena Papadopoulos (of Berlin’s Nice and Fit) on their eponymous Greek gallery. Melas’s collection includes work by Sterling Ruby, Martin Boyce, Cyprien Gaillard, Urs Fischer, and Joe Bradley.

Jillian Murphy
New York
While working at C24 Gallery and also acting as co-director of the independent migratory curatorial organization AD Projects, Murphy finds time to add to a personal art collection that she began around 2006. That year she was given a Gary Simmons painting, “Untitled #1 (Study for Marnie’s Room).” “It definitely shaped the direction for my collection,” she says, “as it’s aesthetically beautiful but also inherently disastrous. Everything I have collected since is both beautiful and chaotic.”

Valeria Napoleone
London
Napoleone, married to a banker and the mother of three, collects art exclusively by women. With well over 200 pieces — paintings, sculpture, photography, film, video, and installations — her collection includes work by Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer, Joanne Greenbaum, Nina Canell, and others. She has been a judge for the MaxMara Art Prize for Women and chairs the development committee at the nonprofit Studio Voltaire.

Alden and Janelle Pinnell
Dallas
Texas collectors are known to have a penchant for glamour, but Alden Pinnell is cut from different cloth. The 41-year-old cosmetics magnate is just as likely to be spotted in jeans, cooking a whole roasted pig alongside artist Virginia Overton at his kunsthalle-like art space, the Power Station, as he is chairing a high-profile charity art auction. Alden’s boundary-breaking spirit is the driving force behind his art space, which opened a year and a half ago in a sprawling former Dallas Power and Light warehouse.

Since then, the Power Station has hosted ambitious installations by Overton, Matias Faldbakken, Oscar Tuazon, and Jacob Kassay. “The Power Station allows artists to make work outside the white cube,” says Alden. “Not all art is collectible.” Which isn’t to say he doesn’t collect. Though he never displays his collection at the Power Station, Alden and his wife, Janelle, have been quietly assembling some 200 pieces of contemporary art over the last decade with the help of art adviser (and Power Station board member) Rob Teeters. As their kunsthalle demonstrates, the Pinnells eschew showy, Pop-inflected pieces for a more contemplative aesthetic. Work by artists like Mark Manders, Michaël Borremans, Lucas Samaras, and Nigel Cooke fill their home. “The art that we like the best in our collection isn’t too seductive,” Alden says. “It’s like music: The songs you don’t understand immediately are the ones you are still listening to 20 years later.” — Julia Halperin

Sharmin Parameswaran
Kuala Lumpur
Formerly an accountant and now a manager of the media company Astro Malaysia, Parameswaran grew up in an art-collecting family; her father, Malaysian diplomat Datuk N. Parameswaran, has one of the country’s largest collections. After starting her own collection with a small painting by Raja Azeem Idzham, Parameswaran launched Interpr8 with childhood friend Cindy Tang. The company, dedicated to making Malaysian art more accessible to young collectors, recently had its inaugural exhibition, “At First Glance,” at White Box @ Publika in Solaris Dutamas.

Piper Perabo
New York
The multifaceted Perabo — a stage and screen actress who is also in the restaurant business as a co-owner of SoHo spot Jack’s Wife Freda — is an art lover and collector. She has expressed fondness for an eclectic roster of artists, from Ryan McGinley to Anish Kapoor to Gordon Matta-Clark.

Lauren Prakke
London
“Super contemporary!” exclaims Prakke, when asked how she would describe her collection. The London-based American, originally from New York, worked on Wall Street and in the City before venturing into the art world. She’s since become a stalwart of Britain’s younger generation of collectors and patrons. “I did the usual,” she remembers of her early art days. “Make a few mistakes, do a degree in contemporary art, make fewer mistakes, go to all the fairs under the sun, absorb, start to get the hang of it, and read copiously.”

Prakke is the founding chairman of Tate’s Young Patrons group, now the institution’s fastest growing network of supporters. She also spearheads the cultural production company Restless Buddha, serves on the Junior Leadership Circle of Women for Women International, and is the founder of Prakke Contemporary, a production and consultancy agency that operates on a project-by-project basis. “My philosophy is that if you throw yourself in the water, you will swim,” Prakke says. Her collection includes works by such edgy luminaries as Thomas Houseago, Wangechi Mutu, Vanessa Beecroft, Barry Reigate, and Matthew Day Jackson. — Coline Milliard

Rodney Reid
New York
In cofounding the Contemporaries, a nonprofit art and social club that exposes young professionals to contemporary art and culture, Reid directed his passion for art collecting toward fostering a community of like-minded people. The invitation-only collective has approximately 2,000 members in Atlanta, London, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City. Reid, executive director at UBS, is an aficionado of contemporary photography whose collection includes Alec Soth, Vik Muniz, Pieter Hugo, and Chuck Close.

Christian Schwarm
Berlin/Stuttgart
Head of the international marketing agency Dorten, Schwarm is more recognizable as founder and managing director of Independent Collectors, a social network site for contemporary art enthusiasts. As the largest online resource of privately owned art, the free-to-join Web site has grown to about 4,000 collectors from almost 90 countries since its inception in 2008. Schwarm himself began collecting in 1995 with the acquisition of works by Fiona Banner and Peter Piller, whom he continues to follow. Today his collection includes about 200 works by artists such as Haegue Yang, Jonathan Monk, and Fiete Stolte.

Dan Tanzilli
New York
A director at the art-focused public relations firm Fitz & Co, Tanzilli is building a private collection while acting as cochair of the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council (YCC). “I have a lot of really great drawings and works on paper, which are clearly more accessible and work well in my small Union Square co-op,” he says. “I have an incredible painting by Angel Otero and a great geometric abstraction by Marc Swanson that I just love; they’re real focal points.” Tanzilli’s collection also includes works from Klara Kristalova, Alex Da Corte, Michael Velliquette, Sam Durant, and Jim Hodges. At the moment, he’s gearing up for the YCC’s Guggenheim International Gala after-party this fall.

Maurice van Valen
Amsterdam
In 2011 Van Valen made headlines when he donated 63 artworks to the Stedelijk Museum, including pieces by Atelier Van Lieshout, Isa Genzken, and Rachel Harrison. The gift was a godsend for an institution that had been heavily criticized in the press since the arrival of MOCA veteran Ann Goldstein as director. It was also a declaration of local support from the lawyer and encouragement for others to follow suit in a country where philanthropic gifts are not a major part of the cultural landscape.

Van Valen bought his first artwork — a series, actually, of lithographs by the Dutch artist Corneille — when he was only 15, with money he had saved from Christmases and birthdays. “I had this awareness: This is the beginning of something beautiful, of something big,” he remembers. The budding collector then moved on to Pop art: He bought a series of Keith Haring screen prints that he sold at Christie’s before turning 18 and began collecting in earnest. Today his collection, he says, is “a mixture of artists from all ages,” with a particular focus on “artists’ artists” and the lesser-known figures. Dutch artists like Johan Lennarts feature prominently, as do artists from Los Angeles — such as Eric Wesley, Yutaka Sone, Morgan Fisher, and William Leavitt — where Van Valen lived for a while. He also keeps a close eye on U.K.-based Michael Dean, Andy Holden, and Andrea Büttner. In 2003 Van Valen opened a commercially successful but short-lived gallery. “I strongly disliked the activity of selling art,” he says. Yet he’s not against renewing his holdings. “For me collecting is not working on a static thing, it is always fluid.” — CM

Christiane zu Salm
Berlin
Founder and CEO of the private equity fund About Change Ventures (ACV), zu Salm developed an interest in contemporary art during her 15-year career in the media industry. After revamping MTV Central Europe and founding two TV channels while CEO of Euvia Media AG, she founded ACV and an accompanying exhibition initiative, “About Change, Collection,” at Berlin’s Am Kupfergraben 10, in 2007. Since then, zu Salm has organized a number of shows and projects around her collection, which has grown out of an initial focus on the collages and assemblages of artists like Kurt Schwitters and Picasso to include works by Arnulf Rainer, Carsten Nicolai, Cy Twombly, Franz West, Hanne Darboven, Jon Kessler, Jörg Herold, Josh Smith, Karl Holmqvist, Lee Friedlander, Martha Rosler, Nam June Paik, Pae White, Thomas Hirschhorn, Tobias Rehberger, and Yves Klein. — Tracy Stuber

This is part two of an article that appears in the July/August issue of Modern Painters magazine. Click here to read part one.

WHAT: “America Through A Chinese Lens”

WHEN: Through September 10, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday 11am-6pm, Thursday 11am-9pm.

WHERE: Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street (between Howard and Grand streets), New York.

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: The exhibition does extactly what its title promises: shine a light on American geography and society through the photographs of Chinese and Chinese-American artists. The unique show, organized by the Museum of Chinese in America (formerly the New York Chinatown History Project) features over 60 photographs by both fine art and documentary photographers, and non-artists, lumping voices from the museum’s varied collection into a diverse conglomerate in pursuit of the “American dream.” Separated into three sections, the social and physical landscape of the country is seen through haphazard snapshots, sweeping panoramas, and family portraits.

“Tourism and the American Landscape” juxtaposes the awe-inspired connection many feel in the presence of the country’s vast landscape, as opposed to the isolation of being a tourist in a foreign land. Ann Woo’s minimalist color studies (whose compositions focus on the rainbow-hued palette of the American landscape) recall with simplicity the elegance of Chinese scrolls.

Many of the photographs in “Alientation in Suburbia” document fragments of American pop culture, alongside the class and race issues that were prevalent in the 1950s. Jiajia Zhang’s dilapidated storfronts could be said to be a metaphor for the experiences of many immigrants upon settling in the U.S.: the American dream faded by the mundane reality of suburban living.

“Big City Noir” tracks the rise in urban immigrant living following the repealing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943. The crowded harmony of urban life is reflected in Chien-An Yuan’s hyper-saturated film stills, whose forced perspective drowned in fluorescent light is reminiscent of a the exaggerated scenery in video games – suggesting fiction rather than real life­.

Artist An Xiao will be completing a complimentary ongoing series throughout the duration of the exhibition by documenting and posting to Tumblr a live visual essay of her journey through the American West and Southwest. Her project brings the show’s voice full-circle to the present, helping to complete a picture of the country through the eyes of one of its largest immigrant populations.

To see photographs from the exhibition click the slide show. 

Is the much-discussed Leonardo da Vinci painting “Christ as Salvator Mundi” back on the market?

The Dallas Museum of Art is currently in possession of the work, which was just re-attributed to the Italian master last July. Under the new direction of Maxwell Anderson, the museum is after a “destination painting,” and is considering purchasing the Salvator Mundi for $200 million. However, the high price would require many of the institution’s major donors to band together to come up with the funds, according to Art in America’s Brian Boucher. That may prove to be an insurmountable hurdle: not everyone is convinced it is worth the fat pricetag, as it is not in top condition.

"For me Dallas would make a more serious splash by going after several lesser priced paintings in very fine condition,” New York-based Old Masters dealer Richard Feigen told A.i.A.

The Salvator Mundi, reportedly owned by a group of private dealers including Alex Parish and Robert Simon, was first re-attributed to da Vinci in July 2011. Rumors of its next owner abounded, especially after it was sent to London’s National Gallery for the “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” exhibition, which ran from November 2011 through February 2012. Simon told Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn that he didn’t have any intention to sell the work. “I’ve assured the National Gallery that the painting isn’t on the market and that there are no plans to sell it after the exhibition,” he said.

HUDSON, NY — This weekend the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) held its second annual pop-up exhibition in the uptstate New York art haven of Hudson, home to several galleries, many artists' studios, and, soon, Marina Abramovic's Rem Koolhaas-designed performance art institute. Unlike its inaugural edition last summer, where participating galleries filled the floor of Basilica Hudson with as much work as the converted 19th-century factory could hold, the event this year featured just one artwork from each participating gallery, giving it the increasingly fashionable curated feel of Volta and other fairs.

The strict single-piece limit (a few sneaky detractors notwithstanding) made for a much more pleasant viewing experience, allowing the diverse crowd of attendees — equal parts upstate townies, summering New Yorkers, and large portions of the Lower East Side and Brooklyn art scenes — to engage with each work. Indoors the highlights included Brent Owens's wooden sandwich log for Invisible-Exports — all but one foot-long's worth of which had been sold when ARTINFO spoke to the aproned artist on Saturday afternoon — William Stone's sculpture of a Buddah in a telephone booth for James Fuentes, and Marianne Vitale's family of wooden forms for Zach Feuer Gallery.

Outside, a blue, mossy cage sculpture by Lizzie Wright for Regina Rex looked like a giant lobster trap that had washed up miles from shore, while Chris Fraser's meditative light installation for San Francisco's HIGHLIGHT reminded one of Fred Sandback by way of James Turrell. A video program in a theater-like space adjacent to the exhibition's main room proved more successful than last year's performance program, particularly the surreal video by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery artist Jonathan Ehrenberg, a satirical revolutionary chic mock-commercial by Lisa Kirk, and a stunning animation incorporating human body scans by Amy Globus.

Gallerists noted that many collectors had been passing through, but that the emphasis of the exhibition was definitely not on making sales. "It's nice to see good work from galleries outside New York," said Helen Toomer Labzda of Lower East Side gallery toomer labzda, who brought a tall plexiglas sculpture by Jerry Blackman, which stood alongside two painted canvases draped over chairs by Kristan Kennedy for Portland, Oregon gallery Fourteen30 Contemporary.

But back to those tasty wooden sandwiches. Despite the no-pressure sales approach, Owens's sandwich sections sold like hotcakes. "I think it's partly because this is one of the more affordable works here," the artist said, noting that he may start taking orders for more sandwich sculptures given the piece's popularity with the hunger of the upstate crowds.

To see highlights from this weekend's NADA Hudson, click the slide show.

Chris Marker, one of cinema’s most innovative philosopher-explorers (and latterly a multimedia artist), has died one day after his ninety-first birthday. Though best known for his sole fiction film, “La Jetée” (1962), the globetrotting, left-wing French filmmaker directed a host of experimental essay-documentaries, some never completed or released, that variously analyze the nature of memory, probe how different societies respond to transition, and deconstruct the notion of history as truth. The films he made in Peking, Siberia, Cuba, Israel, Japan, and his native Paris pose alternative views of those locales to those force-fed by conventional documentaries and in television reports.

Marker’s death during the Olympics is not without a certain poignancy since he twice used the games as a backdrop. “Olympia 52,” shot in 16mm 60 years ago in Helsinki, was his first film. “The Koumiko Mystery” (1965), filmed at the time of the 1964 Olympiad, is based on an interview with a modern Tokyo woman that shows how globalism had eroded the Japanese national identity.

Although he encouraged the myth that he was born in Ulan Bator in Mongolia, the habitually secretive and determined non-celebrity Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve probably hailed from Belleville in Paris or from Neuilly-sur-Seine in the city’s Western suburbs. A philosophy student before World War II, he fought in the French Resistance during the Nazi Occupation and may (or may not) have served as a paratrooper with the United States Air Force.

After the war, Marker began work as a journalist, poet, and fiction writer on the Marxist magazine Esprit and also contributed film reviews alongside his friend André Bazin, later writing for Bazin at Cahiers du Cinéma. He started to travel extensively as a journalist, wrote a novel about aviation published in 1950, and an illustrated essay on the playwright and novelist Jean Giraudoux.

Affiliated with the Left Bank Film Movement, Marker befriended Alain Resnais. In 1953 they made the African art documentary “Statues Never Die,” so critical of French colonialism that it was banned in France. He also assisted Resnais on his Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog” (1955), partially filmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Madjanek.

He next made his first essay film, the documentary short “Sunday in Peking” (1955), which constantly draws attention to the filmmaker and his audience’s outsiderdom by drawing attention to the manufactured performance aspect of Peking life served up for Western tourists.

“Letter From Siberia” (1957), Marker’s first feature, describes the erosion of Siberia’s cultural identity through the use of footage shot in the region by the director himself, newsreel footage, cartoons, and stills. At one point Marker points out a resemblance between a Siberian and André Gide; at another, he inserts an image of Mad’s Alfred E. Neuman. The film is most famous, though, for the inclusion three times of the same sequence of streets, a bus, and workmen repairing a road to make different ideological (or non-ideological) points.

Marker’s “Description d’un combat” (1960), woven from original and archival footage, offers an intricate portrayal of modern Israel, incorporating kibbutzin, orthodox Jews, and the Arab minorities. The battle of the title is not military in nature but of the struggle of the people of a new nation to form an identity.

In January 1961, Marker interviewed Fidel Castro and the pro-Revolution Cuban priest Joris Bialin for Cuba Si!, which ends with an anti-American epilogue about the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It attempted in Marker’s words, to capture “the shudder, the rhythm of a revolution,” but appears less ideologically Marxist than a celebration of the Cuban people’s vitality espoused in revolutionary songs. It was made to counter the negative reporting of Castro in the French press by emphasizing his program of national reforms. As a result, the film was banned in France,  the authorities fearful of the effect it could have on opinion about the Algerian War of Independence. It was eventually released uncut in 1963, by when Algerian was independent.

In 1962, Marker published a collection of cinematic photographs and essays about everyday life in post-Civil War Korea – in which he refused to demarcate North from South – that reflected his visit there in 1957.

“La Jetée” similarly blurs the distinctions between film and photography, comprised as it is of stills and only one live-action sequence. Set in the aftermath of World War III, it concerns a prisoner who, subjected to time-travel experiments by scientists, constantly recalls the face of a woman he saw on a boarding platform at Orly Airport before he saw a man die there – she became his lover in the pre-war period but seeking to rejoin her after a visit to the future, he learns that the man killed, by an agent working for the scientists, was himself. Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys” (1995) was a partial hommage to Marker’s 28-minute sci-fi masterpiece.

Marker simultaneously made the two-and-a-half-hour vox pop documentary “Le joli ma” (1963), filmed by Pierre Lhomme, on the streets of Paris – its subject of personal happiness inflected by people’s feelings about France’s social and political future. In 1967, Marker curated Loin du Vietnam, a film protest against the war with segments directed by himself, Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Claude Lelouch, Joris Ivens, Michele Ray, and William Klein.

Putting his own filmmaking activities (and his habitual solitariness), he meanwhile founded the collective SLON (later ISKRA, after Lenin’s newspaper) to encourage industrial workers to form their own film collectives. One of the fruits of this organization was “The Train That Never Stops,” which is about the cine-trains on which the Russian documentarist Aleksandr Medvedkin and his team traveled as they filmed the new Soviet state; it was shown as a prologue to Medvedkin’s “Schastye,” which the group had had re-released in France.

Marker then made two films about Chile, one about his friend Yves Montand’s benefit concert for Chilean refugees, the other, “La Spirale” (1974), which deals with Allende’s election, his assassination, and the 1973 coup which led to Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

“A Grin Without a Cat” (1977), Marker’s analysis of the socialist movement before and after May 1968, contrasts early hopes with later disillusion. His last great film was “Sans Soleil” (1982), an ambitious philosophical meditation on Japan, Africa, technology, how different times and nationalities converge, and memory, the latter leading Marker to invoke Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”

Never restricted by the limitations of what a filmmaker should be or do, Marker made “Immemory” (1998, 2008), an interactive CD-ROM that sends the user into a music-and-laden Proustian mystery story set in different zones of travel, war, and cinema. As with Resnais, memory was his ultimate subject, not ideology.

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