In a double coup of non-obvious casting, Michael Douglas has been cast as President Ronald Reagan and Christophe Waltz as Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in “Reykjavik.” The movie, which will depict the arms summit in the Icelandic capital in October 1986, is to be directed by Mike Newell. Ridley Scott, who had considered directing Kevin Hood’s screenplay, will be one of the producers.

Having played the title character in Rob Reiner’s 1995 “American President,” Douglas has occupied a Hollywood White House before, but he will have to get out more than a bottle of Grecian Formula to play Reagan. Similarly, Tarantino favorite Waltz will need more than a port-wine stain on his forehead. It remains to be seen whether they play the world leaders straight or try to impersonate them.

At the historic conference, Reagan and Gorbachev discussed the elimination of all ballistic missiles held by the two nations and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons. But Reagan’s controversial proposal of the Strategic Defense Initiative (the “Star Wars” shield) led to a sticking point over one word that broke off the negotiations.

The one word was “laboratories.” According to an account by former ambassador James B. Goodby on the Arms Control Association website, Gorbachev “insisted that all research and testing of space-based ballistic missile systems be restricted to laboratories.

“Reagan did not want to enter into a negotiation that he viewed as amending the [1972 Antiballistic Missile] treaty. He had accepted a ‘broad’ interpretation of the treaty, under which wide latitude was allowed for space-based testing,” Washington, wrote Goodby, read Gorbachev’s proposal as an attack on the Strategic Defense Initiative. “That one word, ‘laboratories,’ obviously rang alarm bells in the minds of those who had been operating under tense conditions for two days.”

Nonetheless, the conference, Gorbachev later wrote, “actually gave an impetus to reduction by reaffirming the vision of a world without nuclear weapons and by paving the way toward concrete agreements on intermediate-range nuclear forces and strategic nuclear weapons.” It duly paved the way for the end of the Cold War, which technically concluded with the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

The $10 million “Reykjavik” is scheduled to begin filming in Germany in March. The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news of Waltz's casting yesterday, noted in August that Participant Media, the company behind it, “is no stranger to hot-button political topics, having backed the Oscar-winning documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ [about Al Gore’s campaign to heighten awareness about global warming] as well as upcoming films whose subjects range from Abraham Lincoln to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.”

The movies in question are Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” which opens on November 9, and Pablo Lorrain’s “No,” a New York Film Festival entry that will open on February 15. The latter is Chile’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. 

There’s a snazzier hybrid car on the way, in the form of a special trim level for the 2013 Toyota Prius. The Japanese automaker will offer its popular hybrid in a new model called the Prius Persona Series Special Edition. Upgrades to the model consist of...

The blockbuster sale Friday evening at Sotheby’s London of Gerhard Richter’s magisterial “Abstraktes Bild (809-4)” from the collection of rocker Eric Clapton set a record for a painting by a living artist, bringing in a staggering £21.3 million ($34.2 million). It smashed the previous Richter record set this past May at Christie’s New York when “Abstraktes Bild (798-3)” (1993) sold for $21,810,500.

Oddly, the 10-page catalogue entry of text and pictures about the star lot at Sotheby’s failed or neglected to mention that when the 1994 painting last sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2001 (just two months after 9/11) for $3,415,750, it was one of three identically scaled paintings in the lot, each measuring 88½-by-78¾ inches, sold by noted Berlin collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch. The other two were similarly listed in the authoritative style of numbering used in the the Richter catalogue raisonne as “Abstraktes Bild 809-1” and “Abstraktes Bild 809-2.” (There is also a fourth painting in the “809” series, “809-3.”)

All of the four 809 pictures were previously exhibited in London at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in the 1995 exhibition, “Gerhard Richter: Paintings in the Nineties,” which is where the Pietzsch’s acquired the three works. It is understood that Eric Clapton retains “809-1”and “809-2” from the group. Basically, the situation sounds as if a Richter triptych was broken up to serve the market, erasing its triplet or quadruplet paternity along the way.

The explosive growth of the Richter market, especially for the large and variously colored abstracts, executed in his brushless, squeegee style, now rivals Warhol. Were the Pietzsch/Clapton paintings a pastiche put together without the permission of the artist by a savvy collector or dealer, as one might do with a silk screened group of Warhol “Jackies,” or was it actually conceived and meant to live as a stand-alone grouping (the way it was presented when it came to auction back in 2001)?

There have been other examples of Richter triptychs coming to market and subsequently being broken up, as evidenced by “Fisch (588 1-3)” and “Schiff (589 1-3)” (both 1986), comprised of six 63-by-59-inch paintings that sold as a single lot at Christie’s New York in May 2001 for the modest sum of $1,436,000 to San Francisco dealer Anthony Meier. The paintings were sold by the UK-based BOC Group PLC and had hung together in the company’s reception area in Surrey, according to Christie’s catalogue notes. The auction catalogue also noted the works were acquired directly from the artist. Meier subsequently sold one of the triptychs to a German museum and the second triptych to a private collector.

Referring to the Clapton paintings, Meier, a longtime Richter secondary market dealer, discounted their triptych heritage, noting, “Those were just three paintings from the Pietzch collection and arbitrarily put together as three and sold accordingly. Clapton happened to be the buyer. It’s not as if a triptych was broken up.” In Meier’s view, “There was no moral obligation or fiduciary duty o the part of the owner to keep the works together. 

Seasoned New York dealer Lucy Mitchell-Innes of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, who underbid the Pietzch pictures back at Sotheby’s in November 2001, recalled that notes she took at the time also indicated the paintings were simply presented as one lot comprising three works. Still, she was puzzled about the lack of clarity in the Sotheby’s catalogue for the Clapton work and the absence of any reference to its past association with two other abstracts. “Why didn’t Sotheby’s say anything about it?” asked Mitchell-Innes.

“Probably, what we should have said is that this was one of three [from that sale], but we didn’t,” remarked Tobias Meyer, the worldwide head of Sotheby’s contemporary art who also represented the underbidder over the phone during Friday's battle for the record-breaking Richter in London.

The auctioneer reiterated that the paintings were not conceived as a triptych but that the original owners who acquired the paintings at Anthony d’Offay in London put them together that way. “Although we sold them as paintings together in 2001, they are indeed three completely separate paintings.”

Meyer also observed that “it was a unique situation at the time,” considering the trio made a then-record price for a Richter lot at auction. “We’re happy to have this painting back,” he added, referring to Friday's record-busting lot, “because out of the three, this is the most vibrant and the one with the most amount of red in it. Red is a very successful color these days.”

Reached in Paris where her gallery is represented at FIAC, Marian Goodman, Richter’s longtime dealer, also had questions about the painting. “It never was a triptych,” she said. “There are four paintings [in the group] — if you look at the numbers in the catalogue raisonne you can see. I don’t know what happened to the fourth ('809-3').” Goodman said she had discussed the situation with the artist himself yesterday, “and that there are a lot of open questions.”

It turns out that “809-3” is in the Artist Rooms Collection, held jointly by the Tate, London and National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. It was acquired jointly through the d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund in 2008. Efforts to reach Anthony d’Offay, the retired London dealer and art donor, were unsuccessful at press time.

Asked about the veracity of the triptych appellation or any other description of the Clapton lot, Robert Storr, the author and former Museum of Modern Art curator who organized the “Gerhard Richter-Forty Years of Painting” retrospective there in 2002, said the painting, “which is not complete in and of itself,” has long since been treated by the market “as a self-sufficient work.”

As Storr reminds us, “Naturally the artist has no responsibility for these transactions, could not have prevented them had he wanted to do so, and does not benefit from them. It all strikes me as pretty strange, but ‘money talks’ even when it has nothing to say.”

The unique can now be seen at dealerships is disguise of both Coupé and Roadster variants. With the highly performance-oriented GT variant, the range has now grown up to five models. This Mercedes conveys more dynamism and athleticism. It is fitted as...

Although Universal’s fresh take on “Scarface” has acquired a new writer, still no director has been chosen, according to latest reports. Michael Mann, perhaps the American filmmaker most likely to do justice to the crime thriller, will surely factor in discussions for the job. Mann’s last two features, “Miami Vice” (2006) and the John Dillinger film “Public Enemies” (2009), were both distributed by Universal.

Deadline reported yesterday that Paul Attanasio, whose writing credits include “Quiz Show,” “Donnie Brasco,” and “The Good German,” had been hired to rewrite the draft of the script commissioned last September from David Ayer, the writer of “Training Day” and writer-director of “End of Watch.” The intention, apparently, is to put a contemporary spin on the rise-and-fall saga of a vicious immigrant gangster while avoiding a straightforward remake.

The movie will include aspects of the 1932 and 1983 versions, which respectively starred Paul Muni as an Al Capone-like Chicago Mob boss Tony Camonte and Al Pacino as Miami cocaine cartel kingpin Tony Montana. I

Written by Ben Hecht and directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson, the first “Scarface” was one of the most violent films of the Pre-Code era. Complaints by censors that the film glamorized the gangster life led to producer Howard Hughes making cuts and having the ending reshot. Instead of Camonte being mown down by cops, in the second version he went to the gallows (a double standing in for Muni). But this failed to appease the censors so Hughes released a slightly modified cut of the original through United Artists.

Along with two Warner Bros. orgamized crime dramas set in Chicago, Mervyn LeRoy’s “Little Caesar” (1931, starring Edward G. Robinson) and William Wellman’s “Public Enemy” (1931, starring James Cagney), “Scarface” popularized the gangster genre during the early talkie era and set many of its tropes.

Brian De Palma’s operatic remake, written by Oliver Stone, achieved cult status after initially receiving poor reviews (the New York Times’s Vincent Canby being one of its few supporters). Excessively violent and proliferated by the word “fuck” and its compounds, it featured a flamboyant turn by Pacino – convincing as a Cuban, though real Cubans objected – and, as the icy Elvira, a starmaking one by Michelle Pfeiffer. The climax, a bloody Götterdämmerung that begins with Montana announcing “Say hello to my little friend” as he blasts through a door with his grenade launcher, features one of the greatest upward crane shots in cinema.

Unless a modern master like Mann is assigned to the new “Scarface,” De Palma’s film will be a tough act to follow, not least as a pop culture icon. It has spawned comic books, video games, and Tony Montana action figures. “Say hello to my little friend” has been quoted in at least ten movies and become an internationally popular ringtone.

“Scarface” Mark III is being produced by film industry veteran Martin Bregman, who produced De Palma’s film, and Mark Shmuger, former co-chairman of Universal. Shmuger launched his Global Produce production company last year.

During FIAC, Paris celebrates art in all its shapes and forms. Whether it’s gallery-hopping during the Nuit des Galeries, checking out a plethora of shows at the Pompidou Center, or taking in a dance performance at the Swiss Cultural Center, the city is overflowing with shows to see and new things to experience during the big fair. Here is ARTINFO France’s selection of our top ten things to do during FIAC.

Click on the slideshow for ARTINFO France’s top 10 art events during FIAC.

This article originally appeared on ARTINFO France.

PARIS — Larry Gagosian opened his latest outpost this week on the edge of the private airport Le Bourget with a show by Anselm Kiefer, playing to a jet-set crowd with a space designed for large-scale art.

On Monday, blue-and-white Gagosian Gallery flags lined the street, hinting that this was probably the most excitement this area of offices, warehouses, and airport facilities had seen for awhile — though the French Air and Space museum is also just up the road. The gallery's facade almost blends in with its surroundings, aside from the fresh white paint and a large gate reprising the aforementioned Gagosian blue.

Inside, French starchitect Jean Nouvel has staged a soft intervention, accentuating the central, cube-like exhibition space with white walls on each side, adding staircases, and linking the passageways to give mezzanine views onto the space from its four corners. A total of nine exhibition spaces of different sizes could be available to artists.

"I saw a hangar that was full of old materials, it was white and gray, somewhat dirty," said Nouvel about his first on-site visit in June. "You had to discover and develop the character of the space, try to redeem the element of construction, particularly with the reinforced concrete."

The 1,650-square-meter result has a clean industrial feel, replete with exposed concrete and white walls, skylights in arched ceilings, and a mix of tinted and opaque windows allowing plenty of daylight. Sturdy old beams and a system of pulleys help move heavier works through the space, with a drawbridge at the main gate opening when needed.

Currently holding the floor at its center, the main exhibition space designed for larger works holds a petrified field of golden wheat — albeit in steel, sand, cotton, plaster, fabric, clay, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, terra-cotta, stone and lead — that Anselm Kiefer has installed for his exhibition "Morgenthau Plan," inspired by the unexecuted plan by the Roosevelt administration to dismantle Germany's industry, in effect turning the country agrarian, after World War II. Word of the plan was used as a Nazi propaganda tool.

"It's effect was completely perverse. Hitler and Goebbels told the Germans that if they didn't fight, they would all die because they would be subdued and become farmers," Kiefer explained. "I like the Morgenthau Plan because it didn't happen. I like all these ideas that don't happen."

Kiefer's field is set in a large cage, 4.8 meters high. "I wanted to give it a border, to make it a sculpture," the artist explained, adding that each straw was handmade, "like paintings, done one by one."

Three objects are spotted in the field  — a terra cotta snake, a stone trough, a lead book — symbolizing fire, water, air — with the sand being earth. It also references the four Archangels and their role in Hebrew tradition, Kiefer said. To soften up the work, the artist asked Bianca Li to dance through the wheat. "I thought it needed some human traces, it made it vivid," the artist told ARTINFO France, adding that he filmed the performance. "I need to edit it but if it's good, I will show it," he promised.

Several flower paintings are also on show in smaller rooms, and these are closer to traditional oil-on-canvas than Kiefer's trademark intricate mixed-media work. Still, tensions remain. "Beauty itself is something difficult, you need a reason for a beautiful painting," mused the artist. "Beauty needs a reason. And if I connected it to the Morgenthau Plan, it would show these flowers growing all over Germany when the industry was all gone."

Kiefer has a studio near the aerodrome at Croissy-Beaubourg and had serenaded Gagosian's space with a poem by Walther von der Vogelweide when his exhibition was first announced. "It's always a space of transition, you arrive and you leave. That's important for me," he suggested.

The airport location appears to be part of a multi-pronged strategy for Gagosian, who opened his first French gallery in the Triangle d'Or in 2010. Finding a space without load-bearing columns and with generous daylight was a first concern. About 200 yards from the runway, the gallery is able to welcome discrete visitors and their private jets. But it is also set between Paris and its major airport, Charles de Gaulle. "If you look at the percentage of people who arrive from abroad for FIAC, a good number of them will be passing by here," noted Nouvel.

The general public may find it slightly more challenging to get there, at least by public transport — the nearest RER (or light rail) station is about 20 minutes walk away. Still, the gallery's ambition remains to be open. "The idea is to have three or four shows a year and I imagine that the artists will respond with large installations, even if this will not always be simple," said Serena Cattaneo, director of the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. "It will function like our gallery in rue de Ponthieu, with normal gallery hours."

"There is a strong French market and interest," she added. "Geographically in Europe, it's a place that many people come through. There are many projects now slightly offset from the center of Paris. The French are very interested and don't fear traveling to go and see something."

To see images of the new Gagosian Paris, click on the slideshow.

Always an outsider, Frida Kahlo’s imaginative wardrobe set her apart from the women who wore prim, tailored skirt suits and dresses that were popular in the 1930s. Instead of donning the latest designs from Europe, Kahlo would procure exotic fabrics from China, lace from Europe, and brightly colored textiles from her native Mexico. She would then hand the materials to a seamstress, who would assemble Kahlo’s vision — a bold combination of pieces echoing the silhouettes of traditional Mexican clothing mixed in with Kahlo’s own inventive styling.  

Nearly 60 years after her death, Kahlo’s look lives on. The Mexican artist’s thickly braided updo (often accented with flowers or ribbons), vibrant maxi skirts, and loose peasant tops have transcended time, remaining a constant influence on fashion designers.

“I specifically drew inspiration from Frida’s use of color and bold personal style interlaced with Havana’s beautiful faded grandeur,” New York-based designer Misha Nonoo, whose spring 2013 collection was based on a fictional trip made by Kahlo to Cuba, told ARTINFO via email.

Spanish designer Maya Hansen also injected Kahlo touches — intricate braided hairdos and unibrows — into her Mexican-themed collection. “All these elements are very iconic and [we] knew we were going to get people to think about her and Mexico when seeing the models,” Hansen said in an email.

For the first time, Kahlo’s wardrobe will be featured in an exhibition, “Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo,” which opens at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City on November 22.

“She had a strong character and uniqueness,” said Ximena Gomez, coordinator at the museum. “She didn’t care that she was the only one who dressed like that. She created her image through her wardrobe.”

Kahlo’s husband, artist Diego Rivera, requested that her wardrobe and bathroom be locked up for 50 years, until 2004, when a committee at the Frida Kahlo Museum decided it was time to open them. They discovered a wealth of Kahlo’s possessions, including documents, photographs, sketches, books — and clothing.

Curated by Circe Henestrosa, who has worked with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and designed by British architect and designer Judith Clark, the exhibition will feature 11 Kahlo ensembles every three months. Forty outfits will be shown over the course of a year.

“They worked hand-in-hand, her art and fashion, it was like a construction of her complete image,” said Gomez. “The same color palette that she used in her paintings, she used it in her dressing.”

Additionally, Vogue Mexico is producing a room for the exhibition that will feature commissioned work from contemporary designers who have been influenced by Kahlo. A rep for the magazine declined to reveal the specific designers working on the project, but said that “they are international designers and one Mexican designer — all of them are very recognized in the fashion industry.”

Just like her paintings, Kahlo’s daring fashion sense served as a reflection of the courage she showed after enduring several hardships — dealing with Rivera’s numerous infidelities and coping with spina bifida.

“It was so creative, and so unique, and so avant-garde then,” said Gomez of Kahlo’s style. “She wasn’t afraid of combining contrasting colors, or putting extravagant things, flowers on her head, or wearing these necklaces, rings that were eccentric or big. She wanted to show like her paintings.”

Click on the slideshow to see Frida Kahlo’s style evolution.

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

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Once again, our intrepid staff has set out from our Chelsea offices, charged with the task of reviewing what they found in a single (often run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews in illustrated slideshow format, click here.)

* Ahmed Alsoudani, Haunch of Venison, 550 West 21st Street, through November 3

Swarming with clouds of fused body parts, wires, machine parts, flying furniture, and scraps of clothing, the Iraq-born Ahmed Alsoudani’s paintings suggest the despairing nightmares of an expressionist like Otto Dix, but the whole thing is remarkable less for its hints of social critique than for the way it limns this bleak imagery with a frieze-like, classical aura, the miasmic human fragments looking scrubbed clean, brightly lit, and sharply defined, like a landscape after a storm. — Ben Davis

* Rackstraw Downes, at Betty Cuningham Gallery, 541 West 25th Street, through November 24

Besides his much more vacant paintings of the Texas desert, Downes’s present-day panoramas of bridges, tunnels, and towers at Manhattan’s edges, whose cropping and lighting choices mimic photography, recall the affectionate manner of David Hockney, another British expatriate with an affinity for American cityscapes. — Reid Singer

* Louise Fishman, at Cheim & Read, 547 West 25th Street, through October 27

As a technician, painter Louise Fishman is masterful — her gobs, sweeps, and scrapes of blue and green paint are muddy only if and when she wants them to be — but as an image-maker in a world where abstract expressionism feels conservative, she's less than memorable. — Julia Halperin

* Natalie Frank, “The Governed and the Governors,” at Fredericks & Freiser, 536 West 24th Street, through November 3

Like thrilling hybrids of Jenny Saville, Francis Bacon, and Neo Rauch, Frank’s bruised, disfigured, deconstructed, and generally female figures uneasily occupy thickly rendered Gothic spaces interrupted by sudden ruptures in figuration and ghostly, abstract apparitions. — Benjamin Sutton

* Rosemary Laing, "leak," Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, through October 20

Laing's large-format photos take an invented ruin as their subject matter, a skeletal wooden structure resembling an upside-down house that the artist constructed in the pastoral, alien Australian landscape, seen being overrun by the surrounding vegetation — and in one case visited by a herd of sheep, pictured scurrying away like frightened fish. — Alanna Martinez

* Walid Raad & David Diao, at Paula Cooper, 521 West 21st Street, through October 27

Raad's subtle geometric prints provide a gentle counterweight to his densely hung series of small, bold works inscribed with tiny, foreign, and faded texts, while Diao's layered paintings of Russian architect Konstantin Melnikov's studio dynamically complete the show's aesthetic triangulation. — Sara Roffino

* Lucas Samaras at Pace Gallery, 508 West 25th Street, through October 27

Samaras's softly surrealistic, digitally modulated mosaics of flea market bric-à-brac in the first room of Pace Gallery's new 25th street location do not prepare you for the quantum leap into a hyperchromatic computer-generated imaginary in the back room, where spooky humanoid characters materialize out of kaleidoscopic fractals and dance in arcane nowhere-lands. — Chloe Wyma

* Beth Cavener Stichter, “Come Undone,” at Claire Oliver, 513 West 26th Street, through October 20

Pacific Northwest sculptor Beth Cavener Stichter's stoneware beasts incorporate such memorable flourishes as a deer run through with arrows that is draped in a lace veil, and a crouched wolf that spits streams of pink ribbons, but they actually could stand alone without such baroque ornamentation — and those that do are the most stunning in their feral beauty. — Allison Meier

* Andro Wekua, “Dreaming Dreaming,” at Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, through November 3

Like a scrapbook, this mixed-media compilation of works gives body to Wekua’s memories — empty dollhouses whose insides have been forgotten, an unfinished mannequin frozen in limbo, inchoate paintings that reveal many layers of revisions, and a looping, phantasmagorical video — each a fragment of time that the artist has seized and bound to the page. — Rachel Corbett

 – Richard Prince Releases His Own Soft Drink: From soup to sex toys, there seems to be no limit to what contemporary artists can brand. Now, Richard Prince is teaming up with the iced tea company AriZona to create a new lemon-flavored drink called Lemon Fizz. The drink, described as "a slightly carbonated beverage that contains natural lemon flavor and is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, honey, and sucralose," will come packaged in a 23-oz can partially designed by Prince himself. Strangely enough, iced tea enthusiast Prince approached the company about teaming up, not the other way around. The fizzy drink will debut at Art Basel Miami Beach. [Bevnet] 

– Donald Young Gallery to Close: After 29 years and nearly 200 exhibitions, Chicago's Donald Young Gallery will close at the end of October. The announcement follows the death of the gallery's founder in April. Young was known for his early involvement with media artists such as Bill Viola, Rodney Graham, and Joshia Mosley; he also showed work by Minimalists Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, and Sol LeWitt. Save for a brief move to Seattle in the early 1990s, the gallery was firmly rooted in Chicago and placed important work in collections across the Midwest. [Press Release]

– SOFA New York Shutters: The Sculpture Objects and Functional Fair (SOFA), which took place every spring at the Park Avenue Armory in New York for 15 years, has folded. SOFA Chicago, which kicks off November 2 at Navy Pier, will continue. The fair's owner, Mark Lyman, said the cost of exhibiting at the Park Avenue Armory had tripled in recent years and that "galleries just weren't position to pay the kind of rent that I have to charge to make it happen." He said his company is working to organize a new fair in New York in a different location. [AiA]

– Gagosian Now Represents Helen Frankenthaler: Larry Gagosian, who apparently never takes a day off, has added the estate of American abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler to his ever-expanding roster. (Gagosian already handles the estates of Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and other legends.) Former MoMA curator John Elderfield, who wrote the 1989 monograph of Frankenthaler's work, will organize an exhibition of her paintings this spring at Gagosian's West 21st Street gallery in Chelsea. Until it closed last year, Knoedler Gallery represented Frankenthaler's estate. [NYT]

– Neon Museum's Lights Back On: Next week Las Vegas's Neon Museum will reopen after a two-year hiatus in a fitting new setting — an old 1960s motel — though its displays are decidedly more DIY than other sign preservation institutions like Cincinnati's American Sign Museum or Glendale's Museum of Neon Art. "They make wonderful habitats for pigeons," said Dennis Connor of the Federal Heath Sign Company, which restored many of the Neon Museum's signs. "There’s something beautiful about a patina’d sign." (To see a preview, click on our VIDEO OF THE DAY, below.) [NYT]

– South African Art on the Rise: Wednesday's sale of art from South Africa at Bonhams London fetched a total of £3.1 million ($4.9 million) and set new records for three of the featured artists, including Vladimir Griegorovich Tretchikoff and Stanley F. Pinker, both of whom saw their works sell for more than triple their high estimates. "The message of this sale is that while the best South African artworks continue to reach world record prices in London where the world comes to buy," said Bonhams director of African art Giles Peppiatt, "bidders are being far more selective." [ArtDaily]

– Italian Winery Serves Up Installation Art: Do you like contemporary art with your Chianti? Then take a trip to Castello di Ama in Tuscany, a winery that is also home to a dozen site-specific contemporary art installations by some of the world's most revered artists. The vineyard's owners, Lorenza Sebasti and Marco Pallanti, have commissioned one artist every year to create a work of art inspired by the surrounding landscape. Anish Kapoor, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Louise Bourgeois, and Daniel Buren have all taken part. [WSJ]

– Baltimore Museum Wing Reopens With Oppenheimer: When the Baltimore Museum of Art's revamped contemporary art wing reopens on November 18, it will boast its first permanent installation, by New York artist Sarah Oppenheimer. Visitors passing through the museum's main staircase will be greeted by strange, disorienting views through a series of mirrored openings in the walls and floors — although the museum vetoed her original plan to cut into the staff bathrooms. [WSJ]

– Huntington Buys Wright Dining Room Set: San Marino's Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has acquired 13 pieces of furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, including a nine-piece dining room set that the famed American architect and designer created in 1899 for Chicago's Husser House. That set, plus four chairs, were purchased directly from New York collectors Joyce and Erving Wolf, who had been loaning the pieces to the Huntington since 2009. [LAT]

– Bob & Roberta Smith Paints Protest Letter for U.K. Secretary: The outspoken artist known as Bob and Roberta Smith has created a new artwork that he'll carry during Saturday's A Future That Works march in London. The work, titled "Letter to Michael Gove," calls on the British education secretary to restore art's place in the country's schools. "Michael a look at your tie and shirt combinations in images of you online informs me you are not a visually minded person," Smith's painting reads. "You need to rethink the role of creativity in society and realize innovation comes from optimism, creativity, risk-taking, and art." [Guardian]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Preview of the reopened Neon Museum in Las Vegas

trailer: The Grand Opening of Neon Museum 2012 from bartek rejdych on Vimeo.

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

Where’s Francesco? That was the question on everybody’s mind last night at the New York Academy of Art’s 21st annual Take Home a Nude Benefit Art Auction and Dinner, honoring artist Francesco Clemente. A well-heeled crowd that included such notable guests as Padma Lakshmi, Brooke Shields, and Will Cotton — who also had one of his paintings up for auction — took over Sotheby’s 10th floor galleries to mingle, imbibe, and bid on more than 150 artworks to benefit the figurative art school co-founded by Andy Warhol.

“I wanted that!” exclaimed Naomi Watts when she saw that Aliene de Souza Howell’s linocut, “Ursa Major Lost at Sea” (pictured above), had been snapped up for the Buy-It-Now price of $2,800. Her partner, Liev Schreiber, was still determined. “I got here too late, but I’m now trying to find the artist,” he told ARTINFO.

While Clemente was nowhere to be found, ARTINFO did bump into several of the artist’s friends amid the circus-uniform-wearing stilt-walking auction workers, including one of the event chairs, his longtime friend and gallerist, Mary Boone. “I think I met him the first day he was in New York,” Boone said. “He came to my Julian Schnabel opening dinner, and he was just wonderful.”

Finally, the mystery was solved. “He was supposed to arrive from India and he missed the flight,” the artist’s wife and muse, Alba Clemente, told ARTINFO in her thick Italian accent at the dinner, where festive table centerpieces by Confettisystem, emulating Clement’s work, were displayed. The artist may have missed his own party but Alba and the couple’s twin sons, Pietro and Andrea, accepted the honor on his behalf.

And what was Alba’s favorite nude of herself by Francesco? A 1979 pastel the artist made while the couple lived in Madras, India. “It’s me on a bed, my legs kind of half spread, so you see lots of it,” she told ARTINFO, laughing. “It was very hot, so I didn’t have much clothes on to start. It’s very beautiful.”

Despite the guest of honor’s absence, Take Home a Nude still proved to be a success: the entire auction sold out.

Click on the slideshow to see guests at the New York Academy of Art’s 21st Annual Take Home a Nude Benefit Art Auction and Dinner honoring Francesco Clemente.

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