Perhaps not surprisingly, florals and romanticism emerged as the dominant themes of the couture spring '13 collections, which closed yesterday. The Paris catwalks all but bloomed, but not everything was sun-kissed and Holly-Golightly. Darker moments crept in, such as Giambattista Valli's burnt-looking croc treatments and Valentino's diaphanous black ballgowns. Here, a recap of the shows, from Ulyana Sergeenko's southern belles and saloon gals, by way of St. Petersburg, to Karl Lagerfeld's Bavarian wood-nymphs at Chanel.

There was a sheen of tentativeness wrapped around Raf Simons mostly clean and airy aesthetic at Dior for his sophomore couture collection at the fabled house. Where the label's dynamic-yet-disgraced previous designer John Galliano was a flame-thrower, Simons is more like a Gerhard Richter candle — beautiful, but flickering and transparent. However, the missteps in this collection, small though they may be, weren’t big enough to damage it. Lime-green tights under a jet coat, with pink wildflowers embroidered on the nude lapel, and a full-bodied mauve skirt ribbed in free-form piping and wrapped in pink pansy appliqués felt just the slightest bit under-conceived, despite the major-league stage. Yet where Simons had a surer hand, the results were exceptional — achingly romantic reminders of springtime meadows so very far away from New York’s current deep freeze, such as with tangerine baby’s breath sewn like stardust across an otherwise crisp white dress and jacket combo. Simons is growing on us, and there’s a ways to go, but he will get there.

Giambattista Valli's spring ‘13 couture collection was an exercise in true, and more importantly, original beauty. The show started with a marked black-and-white scheme, ranging from a snow leopard-motif coat dress (snow leopard is having a moment, no?) to a racy evening number, cut and flared at the waist and croc-scaled down the middle. The show then progressed into familiar Valli territory, at least in terms of hue, with rich dusty pinks and lavenders aplenty. A major highlight here was the designer’s bronze-colored bows, belts and floral necklaces — evoking something Grecian, in addition to the Italianate grandiosity and overall modernity of the collection.

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Picciolo have, by now, firmly established themselves as worthy and innovative successors at Valentino. Spring radiated from the catwalk as the duo sent forth ornate, diaphanous, and flower-embroidered gowns, in tandem with slick minimal sheaths in cloud white and house red. Rolled crepe formed a cage around a majority of the frocks (and even shoes, in some instances), evoking first-thaw vines sprouting from the ground, as well as wrought-iron gates guarding some baroque church garden. That piping took five hundred combined man-hours to roll. Yet it wasn’t all bright and breezy — Chiuri and Picciolo interspersed the love story with darker options, including a sheer-sleeved black and vermillion dress with red notches along its mini-V collar. So even though this collection captured the season’s cues, the otherwise overdone inspiration felt new, and it felt like magic — a secret garden Parisienne.

Karl Lagerfeld often overproduces, and he clearly enjoys indulging in Chanel's seemingly limitless budget. For spring ‘13 couture, Herr Karl brought us deep into a German forest, by way of Paris’ Grand Palais. Essentially, Lagerfeld was channeling nature, both spatially (with each tree and shrub individually placed — a curated thicket, if you will) and sartorially (a veritable garden of graphic floral prints and embroideries). It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Lagerfeld a god of sorts, creating this micro-world with such astute thought and process. In his Bavarian Eden, there were pieces that surely held as much temptation as Eve’s fateful fruit, such as a sequined funnel-shouldered evening coat twinkling with embroideries of stringy petals, like amoebic birds-of-paradise, over a taffeta and black-crystal-trimmed skirt. Lagerfeld closed the show with two hand-holding brides (he traditionally finishes couture with a wedding gown), reportedly as a comment on France’s same-sex marriage controversy. 

For Ulyana Sergeenko’s second collection, the Russian street-style darling-turned-rookie couturier shifted her narrative from the baroque heights of the Russian Empire to the Wild West, recasting her haute babushka heroine with a crinoline-clad Gibson girl. Her histrionic vision of the American West — complete with exaggerated ballroom skirts, bustles, breathless corsetry, and enough fringe to deck the halls of a boarder-town bordello — walks the line between fashion, costume, and farce. Sergeenko’s pageantry isn’t for fashion purists — and, at times she is vulnerable to accusations of undiscerning and unserious showmanship  — but she nevertheless realizes the full extent of the full-blown, unchained fantasy that fashion offers.

Also a Couture Week sophmore, Maison Martin Margiela's Artisanal Collection, Margiela's special line of one-off pieces created from upcycled vintage clothing, injected a dose of Eco-consciousness into the indulgent confectionery of Couture week, balancing exquisite clothes and conceptual play in equal measure. The refreshing anonymity of the designer(s) allowed the collection — a breviloquent and tightly-edited sequence of 19 looks painstakingly cobbled together from found materials — to speak for themselves. Also incognito were the models, whose faces (as per the house's tradition) were shrouded behind intricately patterned balaclava emblazoned with deco beading. In an alchemical coup, the collection's remixed tuxedo dresses, bedizened Poiret-like frocks, and Félix González-Torres inspired candy wrapper dresses managed to recycle the past without succumbing to nostalgia.

Jean Paul Gaultier's woman for spring ‘13 couture is, apparently, the sort of client who favors the conscious celebration of bad taste — think western fringed jackets, bra-revealing bombers, and gilded snakeskin trenches. Where Gaultier has so often taken the louche and the decadent and spun them with elegant, eccentric, only-in-Paris effect, this time his effort fell flat — its joie de vivre eviscerated by its aimlessness. Gaultier invoked a bit of Arabia, with richly hued headscarves, and mixed in a bit of India, with the subcontinent’s sartorial maximization of color and adornment. But there was little coherence, making the collection feel choppy, as if the designer were distracted. Look no further than an obsidian-black coat, fringed in chocolate-brown leather along the lapel, its skirt tiered in fabric swaths in colors resembling badly-dyed easter eggs — a disaster, for all intents and purposes. The show’s closing look, a wide-hooped dress patch-worked in matte gold bits with a harness across its chiffon-sleeved midriff top, sealed the sloppiness — especially when the model lifted it to reveal four small Indian children underneath.

Lastly, Georgio Armani showed a loosely Middle Eastern-inspired collection for his Armani Prive line — complete with (slightly odd) baton-like elements knotted and woven into silk tops and skinny-blazer lapels. Alexis Mabille and Elie Saab stuck to their guns, with red-carpet friendly gowns in colors pink and glacial, via materials translucent and sparkly — and frankly, both read a little boring, despite the hyper-femininity and of-a-certain-bracket appeal of the designs. In an adjacent neighborhood of tasteful yet dull, Bouchra Jarrar stuck to a chic diet of tapered pants and luxurious outerwear. Turned out in a  sumptuous palette of royal blue and burnt sienna, Jarrar's clothes make for reliable and timeless investment pieces, but the overall presentation lacked the wow quotient demanded by couture. And Versace was well... Versace. Donatella toed the line with pinstripe suits tricked out with 24-carat gold, shiny blazers worn without pants, and sheer minidresses in various shades of neon — all of it heavy on glitz and questionable in taste.

The room was dimly lit. Men in suits circled around us, quietly greeting the 20 or so visitors patiently sitting in chairs. Wine was served, and we were repeatedly told, in hushed tones, to relax. A television screen flashed in front of us and a phrase kept repeating itself: “Energy. Impact. Change.” A man with a camera conspicuously hid in the corner, snapping pictures. “Nice group of people,” a man behind me whispered. I was taking notes, and I’m pretty sure the man was trying to peer over my shoulder to see what I was writing. When I noticed, he quickly turned away.

What had I gotten myself into?

Even though the event was advertised as a performance, and I was aware that actors surrounded me, paranoia still crept in. “The Lost Children,” a transmedia project by Mark Harris held Tuesday evening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, puts the audience through a series of exercises stemming from a fake group called URLIFE (Universal Radical Life Improvement for Everyone), a fictional self-help organization that promises to aid “travelers and seekers” in finding their “true potential.” URLIFE’s doctrine is an amalgamation of ideas ranging from L. Ron Hubbard to Carl Sagan, combining psychotherapy with crackpot space theories. The idea of the performance was to break the audience down and push the limits of what was real and what was fantasy – the more time you spent in a small room with the group, the more you agreed to participate in their exercises, the more that line became blurred.

The first scenario was a recruitment seminar kicked of by Chance Sturges, the self-appointed leader of URLIFE. A middle-aged bald man with a soul patch, he glided around the room commenting on the beauty of the universe with an occasional dramatic pause for effect. He then led us in a chant that became a familiar one throughout the night: “We are one,” repeated over and over again.

In the next room, a faculty member of Columbia University’s Astronomy Outreach program was giving a lecture about comets, meant to provide a contradictory position to what the members of URLIFE were preaching. Tellingly, when I peaked in the lecture hall, there were only two or three people sitting down. Everyone was more interested in the seminar, the wine, and “reaching their potential,” I suppose.

Next up was Kate, a struggling writer who told the group her story of waiting tables, being poor, and struggling with writer’s block. She invited people up to participate in breathing exercises, complementing them through the process. Kate would eventually pull me aside and invite me to experience the next level of the URLIFE experience. That was how I got roped into to something called “advanced study.”

Kate walked me outside the conference room and sat me down on a bench nearby. Completely ignoring the boundaries of personal space typically observed by strangers (but “we aren’t strangers,” would have been the argument if I’d raised the point, because “we are one”), Kate and I got very close – basically face to face – while she made me rub a pendant that was around her neck. It was uncomfortable. This exercise was supposed to align our psychic energies, or something to that effect, while Kate tapped into what she claimed to be the things inside me that were blocking me from reaching my full potential. I was smart, she said (thanks Kate!), but not happy and wanted more with my life. She told me I was a charismatic leader in a past life, but I was looking for some guidance in this life. Wait, I thought this was all fake?

Significantly freaked out, I was not invited for further advanced testing, which, based on the recollection of another audience member I spoke to, involved drinking a mysterious juice (shades of Heaven’s Gate) and getting a Tarot-like card reading.

Next, participants were ushered into a theater for a screening of a film called “Lost Children,” about a woman named Evelyn Hamilton, a member of URLIFE who disappeared under unusual circumstances, and a “cult deprogrammer” named Jared Allen Tyler. The film, at different points, asked the audience members if they believed what they were just shown and then proceeded down different paths, choose-your-own-adventure style, depending on the answers. Presented as a documentary, it offered a brief and disturbing history of Chance Sturges, the man we met earlier in the night, and focused on the Tyler’s crusade to find Hamilton and rid her of the brainwashing she incurred at the hands of URLIFE. The film forced the audience to question our own acceptance of what we had participated in during the first part of the seminar.  

Then the lights came up and, in a way, the curtain was raised. Harris, the creator of the entire project, came out on stage and answered questions as all the actors sat in the audience around us. He said he was interested in the immersive qualities of the project, and how, when forced to enter an environment instead of just watching a film as a distanced observer, people become more wrapped up in the questions he sought to raise about faith and reason, fantasy and reality. But I left with only one question, ultimately: what was the point?

If it was to cause me to continuously look over my shoulder for the rest of the night, then they succeeded. 

EMERGING is a regular column where ARTINFO spotlights an up-and-coming artist.

A recent graduate of Columbia University’s prestigious MFA program, painter Matthew Watson is staking his place in the art world in his first solo show at Joe Sheftel Galleryon the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His new series of Renaissance-styled portraits highlight prominent art world figures from his ever-growing social and professional network.

The artist garnered attention and early representation with Upper East Side space Davidson Contemporary on the strength of the intimate portraits of Brooklyn-based, Polish immigrants he displayed in his thesis exhibition last year. Their visible traces of addiction were captured with photographic expertise in oil on copper.

After shows at Work Gallery in Brooklyn, and the Pulse Art Fair in Miami, Watson’s newest paintings in “Commission|Barter|For Sale” continue to showcase his exceptional skills with paint, and his fascination with the aristocratic tradition of oil portraiture. However, the new works focus more on the hierarchical structure of commissioned court paintings – with an art world insider’s bent. Instead of dukes and ladies posed in regalia amidst domestic scenery, his subjects are dealers and fellow artists positioned alongside their personal collections of art. Relationships between artist and subject are subtly defined through his brushwork, as seen in the large smile of the sitter in “B.R.D., A.H., J.C. and A.C.,” (2013), or the relaxed slump in “J.S. and A.D.C.,” (2013) – the latter depicts his own dealer Joe Sheftel.

He told ARTINFO, “An artwork can serve as a positioning tool for its owner, and for me the paintings reflect that. The show is a presentation of my community, but it is also a microcosm that reflects the larger field it participates in.”

Watson negotiates the terms of his commissions before beginning each work, and fluidly collaborates with his subjects to position them within their homes and offices next to their favorite artworks – in a way, mimicking the nature of his own personal relationships with them. “The work always begins with an exchange. This is the continuity between this exhibition and previous works. I have always worked on commissioned portraits, and it is here that the exchange seems most transparent.”

Names like Jutta Koether, Dan Graham, and Alex da Corte appear Watson’s paintings, but it is up to the viewer to distinguish between the seated subject and the author of the artwork they are posed with. “Using someone’s full name as a title would locate them in one step,” he explained, “whereas if I withheld it but provided clues it would challenge the viewer to locate them, and hopefully in the process locate themselves as spectators into the field.”

To see paintings from Matthew Watson’s current exhibition click on the slide show here.  

Where Werner Herzog’s 1993 “Bells from the Deep” was a stylized and semi-fabricated examination of mysticism bordering on superstition in Siberia, his new documentary about Siberian lives lived in extremis is a strictly secular study of endurance and subsistence in the wilderness.

Although Herzog and Dmitry Vasyukov are credited as the co-directors of “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” (opening at IFC Center in New York on Friday), Herzog didn’t take the mandatory helicopter or boat to the isolated village of Bakhta (population 300) on the River Yenisei, which divides east Siberia from west. The four hours of digital footage shot there by Vasyukov was discovered by the prolific German auteur in a friend’s house in Los Angeles and, with the former’s permission, was shaped by him into a coherent spring-to-winter anthropological documentary.

Via the terse rhetoric of Herzog’s voiceover narration, “Happy People” celebrates the self-reliance of the flak-jacketed Russian trappers and fishermen and their families who have settled in Bakhta. The age-old chores carried out by the film’s 55-ish main protagonist Gennady Soloviev include splitting trees for timber, making skis and canoes to specific designs, and, once out on the 1,500 square kilometer range consigned him to when he trapped for the state, setting snares for the lucrative trade – sable and ermine – and fishing for pike.

Herzog extols the trappers’ fall-time ventures into the wild, where they live off the land, free from technology, government, bureaucracy, and laws, dependent only on their “individual values and standards of conduct.” But Westernization hasn’t entirely neglected Soloviev and his fellows, who include Mikhail Tarkovsky, from the same family as the great Soviet director Andrei. Though they have no phones or electric lights, they avail themselves of snowmobiles, buzzsaws, rifles – Tarkovsky shoots the fish he pulls from the water – and plastic, which keeps at bay the mice seeking the trappers’ winter provisions.

A single father to the teenage son he’s training, Soloviev matter-of-factly remarks that his partner couldn’t cope with the lifestyle. His hunting dogs are his companions. He doesn’t mollycoddle them, but briefly becomes sentimental describing the death of a beloved dog that was ripped open fighting a bear. He shot the beast, but doesn't say if he killed it.

Where Herzog’s earlier found footage documentaries “The Wild Blue Yonder” and “Grizzly Man” (both 2005) augment in different ways his reputation as a self-mythologizing visionary, “Happy People” is more akin to Flahertian and Griersonian ethnographic work films. The title and Soloviev’s avowals of eco-friendliness suggests it wouldn’t be out of place on the National Geographic Channel. Militating against that, though, is a troubling scene featuring alcoholic Kets, the rapidly dwindling native people who survive performing menial tasks such as driftwood-gathering for the hardier Russians. There’s another movie to be made about their tragedy: a contemporary “Nanook of the North.”

Not so long ago it looked like Damascus was in line to once again become a global center for art, given its own burgeoning gallery scene and the growing international interest in works by Syrian artists. Today, the glossy images from openings of years past stand in stark contrast to the bloody bodies and bombed-out buildings that fill the headlines. World heritage sites throughout Syria are being destroyed, while refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey swell with those escaping the violence. Still, Syrian artists are continuing to make work, building new homes abroad, and bringing their art with them. Perhaps their perseverance is a sign that Syrian art will continue to flourish, despite a revolution that has already claimed 60,000 lives.

Until recently, most of the violence was in rural areas and smaller towns, while the cities remained rather safe. Indeed, art spaces in Damascus became places of refuge for artists and others forced to flee their homes. Hisham Samawi, an owner of Ayyam Gallery, one of the first and most respected contemporary galleries in Damascus, explained the situation to ARTINFO recently:

Initially we tried to get our artists out of the outskirts where the violence was starting and bring them to Damascus. We stopped having shows and turned our gallery into artist studios. A lot of our artists who were in the outskirts couldn’t work anymore because their studios were in dangerous areas. We brought them all to Damascus because for the last year and half, it was more stable and safer, and we wanted the artists to be able to continue working.

Eventually though, as the country has become further entrenched in the violence, Ayyam has shifted its focus to getting its artists and staff out of Syria altogether.

Those still unable to leave Syria are now living inside the gallery, which has moved its headquarters to Dubai. According to Samawi, they’ve also moved a few thousand paintings to Dubai. “The problem with Damascus is that even if the artists are there working, they might do a body of work and try to get it to Beirut, but the truck might not make it and then they’ve lost six months of work,” he said.

Similarly, AllArtNow, an alternative space offering residencies, workshops, and exhibitions for emerging artists in Damascus, has transformed into a refuge for artists escaping rural violence. Over email, the founder of AllArtNow, Abir Boukhari, explained:

Now, I have stopped all my work because in August 2012 we offered the AllArtNow space to refugee families. We believe that part of our work is to help society and maybe right now, the best thing is to open the space for some people who really need it.  

Meanwhile, just as art spaces have been transformed, so too has the work Syrian artists are making. Many have made political works they never would have risked under the regime. Jaber Al Azmeh, a Syrian photographer and professor now living in Doha, created two series of photographs documenting the revolution. Fearing the regime, he only published a few of the images before leaving Syria. One series, “A Small Group of Syrians,” consists of images of artists and activists holding up the Ba’ath newspaper (the newspaper of the regime), only with anti-Assad messages written over the print. He explained:

I hated politics in my life, I think it’s a really corrupt part of humanity and I never went into it too much. But, being a part of the revolution wasn’t about being political. It’s our life now, it’s a matter of survival, it’s our country, our people and everyone was participating.

For other artists, changes in their work have been subtler. Samawi described ways in which the work of another painter, Mohannad Orabi, has evolved since the revolution:

If you look at some of his older works, they have these figures with big dark eyes that are kind of sunken in, almost like innocent children are being portrayed. In his work since the revolution, all of his characters are a bit older, a bit more mature looking. The eyes are open and they almost have this sad, reflective look.

The gallerist explains the change in the work as a parallel to the change in the Syrian outlook:

Before we were living in blindness and now our eyes are open to the world for the first time and it’s almost like [the characters] don’t like the world that they’ve realized they are living in.

For now, Al Azmeh will remain in Doha, Samawi in Dubai, and Boukhari in Beirut, dispersed among the much larger diaspora of Syrians. As Syrians await Assad’s fall and seek safety abroad, the art that has defined their culture for thousands of years continues it’s evolution in cities throughout the Middle East. As Samawi noted:

A lot of Syrian artists are doing shows abroad, and it’s something that’s growing, so I guess something good to come out of all of this is new awareness of Syrian art.

Fern Mallis is among fashion's most acclaimed figures, having almost singlehandedly raised the profile of New York Fashion Week—and, by extension, the Council of Fashion Designers of America—to an international level. No small feat, this involved the formation of the Bryant Park tents, before their recent migration north to Lincoln Center, where, in February, the city's most celebrated designers will once again dazzle with their latest collections.

Mallis has also been vital in the creation of Fashion Weeks worldwide, from Berlin to India, where she now spends much of her time. She also hosts a series of intimate talks at the 92nd Street Y, guests of which have included Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein and, most recently, the effervescent Betsey Johnson. In addition, she's broadcast on Sirius XM radio and runs her own consulting agency.

Above all, perhaps, Mallis is a keeper of moments in fashion, a guardian of its memories, and she isn't afraid to play raconteur. She watched, for example, chunks of ceiling fall onto models at a Michael Kors show in the early nineties, as she recalls here, exclusively on ARTINFO:

Not all winged things are exactly alike, but George Barris’s original “Batmobile” has a lot in common with Clark Gable’s 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe.

Both classic cars come from the same era. Like Gable’s purdy-bird Benz, Barris’s tricked-out Lincoln Futura concept car, famously driven to points of absurdity by caped crusader Adam West in the campy ’60s TV series, carries the same model year: 1955.

Both cars come loaded with star-power: one is made exclusively for Hollywood, the other is made exclusively of Hollywood.

And last week both sold for millions of dollars during the massive Barrett-Jackson collector car auction in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Here’s how the two glitzy gas-guzzlers stacked up:

Gable’s Gullwing, a six-cylinder, four-speed silver fox with cherry lipstick interiors, which the big-screen stud picked up for several thousand dollars more than a half century ago, fetched an appropriately cool $2.035 million.

Meanwhile, Barris’s Batmobile, an eight-cylinder, three-speed funky black factory concept, which the celebrated car customizer bought for just a buck and later spent $15,000 to equip with made-for-TV gadgets and gimmicks, rang up at more than twice the price of its off-screen contemporary — a whopping $4.62 million. (Note: both figures include hefty buyer’s commissions above and beyond the sum when the hammer sounded.)

What put the Batmobile over the top? A bonus offer of outerwear, it turned out.

When the pace of bids began to slow after the $2 million mark, the Bat car’s creator and longtime owner grabbed the auctioneer’s microphone. “Whoever gets the Batmobile, I want to give my Batman coat, off my chest, off my body — here!” Barris shouted, stripping off his shiny personalized track jacket emblazoned with the TV show logo.

The promise of additional memorabilia seemed to pay off. The final sales price even surpassed the sky-high $4.1 million figure paid at a London auction for the original Aston Martin DB5 from the James Bond film “Goldfinger.”

The winning bidder on the Batmobile, an Arizona native who identified himself during the live cable TV broadcast as (no joke) Rick Champagne, invoked childhood nostalgia as justification for his extravagant purchase.

Asked if he planned to keep the Batmobile in his garage, the man with the bubbly name replied, “Actually, I might put in it my living room.”

Ideally, it would go right beside the TV.

Among the 19 movies screening in Film Society of Lincoln Center’s excellent “The Last New Wave: Celebrating the Australian Film Revival” (today through January 31) are several seldom revived locally: “Petersen” (1974), “Backroads” (1977), “The FJ Holden” (1977), “Money Movers” (1978), and “The Odd Angry Shot” (1979). Perhaps for that reason, some of the usual suspects have been omitted, including “The Cars That Ate Paris” (1974), “Caddie” (1976), and two late entries, “The Club” and “Breaker Morant” (both 1980).

Even more familiar, Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout” (1971) and Peter Weir’s “The Last Wave” (1977) have also been omitted, and that means one of the New Wave’s most iconic faces is absent – that of David Gulpilil. In the list of "40 Best Australian Actors/Actresses" posted on IMDB a year ago today, the foremost Aboriginal indigenous Australian actor was disgracefully ranked 40th, just below “The Hunger Games”’s Liam Hemsworth. Right from the start, Gulpilil was a natural who knew how to captivate the camera by ignoring it.

“Walkabout” opened in the US on July 1, 1971, his eighteenth birthday. He was haunting as the youth who guides the white teenage schoolgirl (Jenny Agutter) and her younger brother from the bush, where they have been stranded, to the edge of civilization. Gulpilil is a famous tribal dancer, and the mating dance he performs for the girl near the end of the film has a primal sensuality. That she can’t respond leaves him no escape.

It’s arguable that “Walkabout,” financed by Americans and directed by an Englishman, wasn’t a New Wave film. However, it helped to energize the emergent movement, and its themes  – the irresolvable conflict between the wilderness and civilization, the spiritual aridity of modern urban life – amounted to a trenchant cultural critique. The tragedy of British imperialism in Australia are represented in the FSLC’s choice of Phillip Noyce’s “Backroads” and Fred Schepisi’s “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith” (1978); the Aboriginal stars of these films are the activist Gary Foley and Tommy Lewis, respectively.

In “The Last Wave” Gulpilil played Chris Lee, one of five Aboriginal clients of Richard Chamberlain’s lawyer, who’s defending them on a charge of ritualized murder. Freak weather conditions in Sydney coincide with the lawyer experiencing ominous nightmares. As he attempts to understand his clients’ spiritual life, Chris becomes his guide and teaches him about the meaning of dreams. Gulpilil was never more present or beautiful, his voice never more velvety and compelling. The movie’s climactic apocalypse may occur in a parallel consciousness, but it hasn’t been outdated by “Melancholia” (2011) or “The Turin Horse” (2012).

Gulpilil also appeared alongside Dennis Hopper in the bushranger movie “Mad Dog Morgan” (1976) – more “Ozploitation” than New Wave. His alcoholism may have limited his appearances over the years, but he has graced such movies as “The Right Stuff” (1983), “Crocodile Dundee” (1986), “Until the End of the World” (1991), “Rabbit-Proof Fence” and “The Tracker” (both 2002), “The Proposition” (2005), and “Ten Canoes” (2006). The latter starred his son James.

Now in recovery, Gulpilil, approaching 60, most recently acted in Catriona McKenzie’s “Satellite Boy,” which will play at the Berlinale next month. He plays a white-bearded tracker-hunter who tries to pass on his skills to the grandson with whom he lives in an abandoned Outback movie theater – and which is threatened with demolition by a mining company. It’s as if the youth in “Walkabout” had survived and grown old, still to be bedeviled by white greed.

Criterion has published the DVDs of "Walkabout" and "The Last Wave." Among the extras on the “Walkabout” disc is the one-hour biographical documentary “Gulpilil – One Red Blood.”

Below: Trailer for "Satellite Boy"

In this week's "Gallery Night" video series, ARTINFO checked out photographer Andy Freeberg's new show, "Guardians," at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in Chelsea. The artist documents the plain-clothed female guards from four different Russian museums, who passionately protect the precious works of art inside. Watch:

On January 28th and 29th, the fifth edition of New York’s premiere fragrance tradeshow, Elements Showcase (founded by industry veterans Ulrich Lang of Ulrich Lang New York; Jeffrey Lawson, founder of the Untitled art fair, and Frederick Bouchardy of Joya Studio), will take place at New York’s Skylight West. Over 80 brands from around the world, including Red Flower, Nest Fragrances, and Lalique, will show their new wares, attracting the crème de la crème of retailers. In the past, buyers from Barneys New York, Opening Ceremony, Fred Segal, and Odin have paid a visit, in search of innovative fragrances, beauty, grooming products, and accessories to bring to their customers. Here's a look at this year's highlights.

Click on the slideshow to see highlights from the Elements Showcase, January 28 and 29, Skylight West.

This week in New York, Christie’s is putting the focus on Old Masters with five separate sales as well as a weeklong series of exhibitions and special events. The auction house will be holding its three annual sales of Old Master Paintings and Old Master Drawings, as well as a Renaissance auction featuring a number of rare European Renaissance paintings by Botticelli, Bronzino, Fra Bartolommeo and Carracci, and a special sale dedicated to the print works of Albrecht Dürer. Organizers estimate the auction could bring in more than $75 million. Ann Guite, head of Old Masters Paintings at Christie's, spoke with ARTINFO about some of the highlights from the upcoming auction, and explained why this will be a major week. Watch:

In an effort to start the new year with a note of promise, ARTINFO Canada presents a roundup of those Canadians, 30 years or younger, who we consider to be showing great industry and promise in the art world. Far from definitive, and in no particular order, here are a few of the ingénue stars we’re tracking. Look for our forthcoming “top lists” in the categories of fashion, film, architecture, and design, in the months to come.

To see portraits and bios of the candidates for "BLOUIN ARTINFO Canada's Top 30 Under 30," click on the slideshow.

Gabrielle Moser, 29, is a Toronto-based writer and independent curator. She regularly contributes to Artforum.com and in the past year her writing has appeared in venues including Canadian Art, esse, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, and the catalogue for the CCA Wattis exhibition, “On Apology.” Last June, Moser curated the group exhibition, “Always Working,” for Vancouver’s Access Gallery, and is currently programming a series of events about exhibiting difficult photographs as curator-in-residence at Gallery TPW R&D. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the art history and visual culture program at York University, where she also teaches.

Ben Schumacher, 27, lives in New York and has recently shown at the Sculpture Center (New York City), Tomorrow Gallery (Toronto), and Croy Nielsen (Berlin). He works in aluminum and glass, as informed by his previous work in commercial curtain-wall installation. Schumacher has been organizing a billiards tournament that occurs simultaneously in ten cities across Europe and North America. He is currently working with the architecture firm DS+R on the duplication of their archive of architectural models for a show at Bortolami Gallery (New York). He will soon be installing a three-dimensional scan of a commercial elevator shaft with the artist Carlos Reyes for Tomorrow in Toronto.  

Petra Collins, 20, is a Toronto-born photographer, artist, and curator. She is the founder and curator of The Ardorous, an online art collective showcasing works of emerging women artists. Collins has been practising photography since the age of 15 (exclusively shooting on film). Her photographs are provocative, raw portraits that deal with female sexuality. She is a staff photographer for Rookie Mag, a casting director for Richard Kern, and her work has been featured in publications like VICE, Oyster, Vogue Italia, GARAGE, Jacques, and others. She has a short film coming out later this month on Purple TV. Collins is in her second year at OCAD Universty studying criticism and curatorial practices. 

Jesse McKee, 28, is curator of the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre. Since joining the gallery in late 2011, he has produced exhibitions with Mark Leckey, Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater, and performances and events with Karl Holmqvist and Mai Abu ElDahab, among others. Previously McKee was the exhibitions curator at Western Front, Vancouver. In 2011 he curated “Well Formed Data” at Gallery 101, Ottawa. He was a participant and presenter in the events program “Fiction, Rhetoric and Facts,” Tranzit.ro, in Romania, 2012. He is part of the curatorial team developing “The Floating Admiral” at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2013.

Nicolas Ceccaldi, 27, is a Montreal-born artist. After graduating from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), in 2006, and from the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, in 2010, he went on to show his work in over 30 exhibitions worldwide. In his most recent solo show at Real Fine Arts, New York, he presented a series of costume-wings laid out on the gallery floor, under the collective title “Wearables.” This February his work will be included in “Version Control” at the Arnolfini in Bristol. Ceccaldi occasionally writes articles for the French periodical, MAY, as well as catalogue texts and reviews.

Walter Scott, 27, graduated with a BFA from Concordia University in 2009. Scott has exhibited across North America, including the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Scott’s most recent project, the “Wendy” comic, has been garnering attention in contemporary art circles, “with its resounding reception being: ‘Oh my god, this is about my life’.” An ongoing self-published comic-book series, it chronicles the adventures of Wendy, a fashionable 20-something art girl whose dreams of contemporary art stardom are perpetually derailed by the temptations of punk music, drugs, alcohol, parties, and boys. “Wendy” has been featured on the back page of Modern Painters magazine.

Faye Mullen, 25, is an artist whose work is informed by a sculptural practice and often combined with performance, video, and installation. Mullen studied at l’École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris; at the Ontario College of Art & Design, and the University of Toronto, where she received her masters. Mullen has exhibited internationally in solo and curated group exhibitions in Australia, Canada, France, South Korea, and the US, and has participated in international artist residencies in Alma, Berlin, Buffalo, Marnay-sur-Seine, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Wongil, and on the Toronto islands.   

Evan Tyler is a visual artist, writer, curator, and gallery director. He works in video, drawing, text, performance, and photography and often employs monologues to tell stories of “the human condition in all of its mundane brilliance.” Tyler currently resides in Toronto, where he is the owner and the director of programming at Gallerywest, a contemporary art gallery located on Queen Street West. Since the fall of 2010, the gallery has exhibited 28 shows in multiple media by local, national, and international artists, with an emphasis on emerging prairie artists.

Tara Downs, 27, is the co-founder of Tomorrow Gallery, which showcases young international artists, and has been earning the gallerist and her co-founders, Aleksander Hardashnakov and Hugh Scott-Douglas, international attention. Downs recently became the associate director of the Berlin-based Tanya Leighton Gallery.

Simon Cooper Cole, 30, is a gallerist, curator, and collector. He founded his first gallery in 2008, and is now the director of the Toronto-based Cooper Cole Gallery. With a focus on exhibiting a roster of emerging and mid-career international and Canadian artists, as well as participating in numerous international art fairs, Cooper Cole is quickly gaining a broad reputation for being one of Canada’s top destinations for cutting-edge contemporary art. Additionally, Cole is co-director and curator of Spectrum Art Projects, a non-profit organization promotion public art through murals and art initiatives in an initiative to reshape the urban landscape; and co-founder of the Ministry of Artistic Affairs, a membership-based event series.

Hugh Scott-Douglas, 24, recently opened his first L.A. exhibition, at the Blum and Poe gallery. Scott-Douglas's newest work topped ARTINFO's "Must-See L.A. Exhibitions Opening in January," and has been touted in several publications. He has developed a largely abstract painting practice into media like cyanotypes (or blueprints), laser cuts, road cases, and slide projections, and is currently concerned with responding to architectural footprints. Now based in New York City, Scott-Douglas has been featured in solo shows in New York, San Francisco, London, Milan, and Berlin. He is a co-founder of Tomorrow Gallery, and can be seen in an upcoming group show at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.

Megan Bradley, 29, is the director of exhibitions and artist liaison at Parisian Laundry in Montreal. At 25, Bradley founded Galerie PUSH, where she presented critical solo shows of such artists as Jessica Eaton, Wil Murray, and Patrick Lundeen; it quickly became regarded as one of Canada’s top emerging contemporary art galleries. Bradley in currently working on anticipated solo projects involving David Armstrong Six, Alexandre David, and Valerie Blass. Bradley’s master’s research at Concordia University is focused on contemporary Canadian artists negotiating the global terrain of the art world.

Rui Amaral, 24, is the art coordinator for Scrap Metal Gallery, a privately owned exhibition space in Toronto, and the gallery assistant at Daniel Faria Gallery. In 2011, Amaral produced a fashion photography photography exhibition in collaboration with The Room. This past year, he curated n exhibition, “New Meditations,” featuring work by both Canadian and international artists. Amaral co-chaired the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery’s 25th anniversary fundraiser, Power Ball: Quarter-Life Crisis, and Youth Line Art Auction. In 2013 he’ll be co-chairing the 10th anniversary of the Reel Artist’s Film Festival, and working towards two curatorial projects for Scrap Metal.

Lili Huston-Herterich, 24, is an artist and curator living in Toronto. In addition to an active studio practice, she has been the co-director and O’Born Contemporary since 2010, as well as founder and director of the project space, Butcher Gallery (2009). This year she will be working in her studio full-time, and is launching Butcher’s new nomadic programming. Her work was most recently exhibited in the group show, “De-Accessioned,” at Cooper Cole.

Georgia Dickie, 23, is an artist. She received her BFA from OCAD and has exhibited at Nudashank Gallery in Baltimore, MD; Toronto’s MKG127, Erin Stump Projects; the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Oakville Galleries. In February 2013, Dickie will be participating in the Soi Fischer Thematic Residency Program with the artist, Artie Vierkant. She is currently represented by Cooper Cole and will exhibit her first solo show with the gallery in April.

Rose Bouthillier, 28, is the assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. Previously she was the assistant curator at Oakville Galleries, where she organized the group show, “Sublimination” (2011). She has held curatorial projects including a solo exhibition by Josh Thorpe, “The House” (2011) at Campbell House Museum, and “To Be Real” (2010) at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art. Upcoming projects include a group exhibition exploring contemporary art in Cleveland and its surrounding region, co-curated with Megan Lykins at MOCA Cleveland. Bouthillier holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from OCAD University, and her writing has been published in Frieze, C Magazine, and esse.

Aleksander Hardashnakov (b. 1982) is an artist and the founder, along with Hugh Scott-Douglas and Tara Downs, of Tomorrow Gallery. Hardashnakov had his first solo, "I'd Rather Be The Weather Than The Weatherman", with Clint Roenisch Gallery in 2011. All of the paintings in the exhibition were acquired by the National Bank of Canada. In 2012, Hardashnakov was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition. He was also included in the group show, "trans/Form," at MOCCA and had his first solo in New York, "Bring Me The You From You," at Martos Gallery in Chelsea. He will have his second solo at Clint Roenisch in April 2013.

Bad Day Magazine

— Eva Michon, 27, is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Bad Day. She is also a filmmaker, and is currently completing a feature documentary in Los Angeles while working on various other video and photo projects. Michon is Polish, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in the suburbs of Toronto. 

— Colin Bergh, 28, is the creative director and co-founder of Bad Day, as well as an accomplished graphic designer, having worked for Jeremy Laing, Toronto Life, Owen Pallett, and many others. He is also a DJ and musician, performing in the one-man band Wyrd Visions, and he hosts a popular weekly karaoke night in Toronto. 

— Jackie Linton, 28, is the publisher of “Bad Day,” and a recent NYU masters graduate from the publishing program. She's spent the last two years in New York, and has worked for Hearst Magazines, Conde Nast publications including the New Yorker, Phaidon Press, and Partners and Spade while contributing her writing to magazines such as Vice and Interview.

Xenia Benivolski, 29 is a Moscow-born artist and curator living and working in Toronto. She is the founder of the Whitehouse studio and project space; “Rearviews,” a project in criticism; and the curatorial production and commissioning model, JANUS. Most recent projects include shows at Red Deer College, Alberta; Museo de ciudad, Mexico; WWTWO, Montreal, and “The Legend is Black,” at the Butcher Gallery. “Rearviews” is available at Art Metropole, Formats, and Printed Matter.

Lauren Wetmore, 27, is the curatorial assistant for the 2013 Carnegie International (opening at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 5, 2013). She previously worked as program coordinator for Visual Arts Creative Residencies at the Banff center, Alberta, and as exhibition assistant for the Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK. She was an editorial resident at RE/Search Publications, San Francisco, and participated in Raimundas Malasauskas’s “Repetition Island” at the Centre George Pompidou. She holds an MFA in Criticism & Curatorial Practices from OCAD University, where her dissertation focused on J.G. Ballard’s 1969 novel, “The Atrocity Exhibition.”

Nicholas Brown, 30, is a Canadian curator based in New Haven, Connecticut. In the summer of 2011 he was curator-in-residence at Montreal’s the Darling Foundry. He is currently working at Yale University as a curatorial consultant. In the fall of 2012 he contributed the the multi-site exhibition, “Shaping Community,” whose artists included Sophie Calle and Shirin Neshat, along with curator Margaret Olin and Robert Storr, dean of Yale School of Art. In late 2012, Brown contributed to “One for you and one for me,” an anthology of artist multiples edited by Dave Dyment and Gregory Elgstrand. He is currently developing curatorial and publishing projects at Yale, and in New York and Toronto.

JP King & Kirsten McCrea

— JP King, 27, lives and works in Toronto, running Paper Pusher, a micro-publishing company specializing in Risograph printing. His relational newspaper publishing exhibit “Free Paper” (Whippersnapper Gallery, 2011), had King collaborating with over fifty artists and authors, and running the “Nomadesk,” a mobile writer’s residency. He was recently an artist-in-residence at the Klondike Institute of Arts & Culture, where he worked on “Manhole,” a hybrid graphic novel which utilizes text and photographs in their oft-historic exploration to examine themes of garbage, masculinity, and contemporary mythology. His writing and collages have been published and exhibited locally and internationally.

— Kirsten McCrea’s practice explores issues of cultural memory and value, examining pop versus underground culture, the media, and contemporary mythology. She recently completed the second phase of the ambitious 80-part painting series “Hot Topic,” which investigates the role of artist-as-memory-keeper through the creation of an alternate canon of feminist portraits. She is a frequent collaborator with the Montreal-based collective, En Masse, recently featured in the “Big Bang” installation at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal, QC. Her project, Papirmasse, an affordable art subscription founded in 2008, explores alternative methods of art distribution and has to date sent nearly 10,000 prints to people around the world. She is 29 and recently moved to Toronto.

Vanessa Maltese, 24, holds a BFA from OCAD University, and received the 2010 Drawing and Painting Medal in her graduating year. Most notably, she was awarded National Winner in the 2012 RBC Canadian Painting Competition in late 2012, winning $25,000 and an immediate national spotlight. In February she will be participating in the Soi Fischer Thematic Residency Program with the artist, Artie Vierkant, at Artscape Gibraltar Point. She is currently represented in Toronto by Erin Stump Projects, having executed two solo exhibitions with the gallery to date. Maltese lives and works in Toronto.

Alex McLeod, 28, was born in Scarborough and graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design in 2007 from the drawing and painting faculty, and “hasn’t touched a brush since.” Through digital prints, video, and installation, McLeod presents visuals that appear as if “they could exist in real life,” but are only composites of 1’s and 0’s birthed through a homemade render farm and some YouTube tutorials. Since his first exhibit in Toronto, in 2009, McLeod work has been presented internationally, from New York to New Zealand. Recently McLeod opened an exhibit at the Surrey Art Gallery with artist Brendan Tang. The exhibition involved a live feed of the gallery, real time composited video, and sculpture. In April, McLeod’s seventh exhibition at Angell Gallery will open, titled “out worlds.”

Robyn McCallum, 26, is the art coordinator at TD Bank Group, where she provides ongoing management for the bank’s corporate art collection of approximately 8,000 pieces, assists with new acquisitions to the collection, and manages all other aspects to do with artwork at TD. Additionally, McCallum plays a role in any TD arts-related sponsorships, including MASS MoCA’s recent exhibition, “Oh, Canada.” McCallum is a member of the Board of Directors of Images Festival, the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture. As well, through Xxi Collective, which she co-founded, McCallum has put together exhibitions including “The Boreal Collective,” a 2011 CONTACT Festival feature exhibition, and most recently, “The Athanor and the Stone,” a feature project for Nuit Blanche 2011. She is a graduate of Ryerson University’s Image Arts program.

Alexander Josephson co-Founded PARTISANS, the architecture and design firm, in 2010 after leaving post-graduate studies at the AA in London to build projects in Toronto. He studied sculpture and architecture at the University of Waterloo and the University of Rome. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and publications including a New York Prize Fellowship, awarded by the Van Alen Institute for Architecture; Azure Magazine; and 20+Change.

Matthew Ryan Smith, 29, is a writer, educator, and independent curator based in Toronto. Smith recently received his Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Western University. His writings have been featured in several Canadian and international publications including C Magazine, ArtUs, FUSE, ARTINFO Canada, and Magenta, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues (including Israeli artist Itamar Jobani’s). During the past summer he curated a group exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery in London, ON, entitled “Some Things Last a Long Time,” which investigated the viewer’s relationship to autobiographical artwork. He has forthcoming publications in the Canadian Journal of Native Studies and TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

Matthew Hyland, 30, has been the director of Oakville Galleries since 2009. His recent curatorial projects for that institution include Tricia Middleton's sprawling site-specific installation, “Form Is the Destroyer of Force, Without Severity There Can Be No Mercy,” and the commission of Young & Giroux's newest film project, “Infrastructure Canada.” He is also working on a series of exhibitions that address key themes in contemporary feminist art practices, the second of which — “After My Own Heart,” focusing on feminist engagement with utopia — opens at Oakville Galleries this spring. In 2009, he was short-listed for the Lorenzo Bonaldi Award for Art, an international prize for curators under 30.

Katie Addleman, 29, is a writer, curator, and graduate student based in Toronto. She began writing about the visual arts as deputy editor of Barcelona Metropolitan magazine in 2007; her articles and reviews now appear regularly in publications including Canadian Art, Border Crossings, ELLE Canada, and artslant.com. In 2012 she was a curatorial intern at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and her first exhibition, featuring contemporary painting, will open at Toronto’s Angell Gallery in March. Addleman will complete her MA in photographic studies at Ryerson University later this year. 

Danielle St. Amour, 29, is an artist and curator living and working in Montreal. Her practice is concerned with “complications of language and methods of collaboration within editorial/curatorial media.” In 2008, St. Amour founded Palimpsest Magazine, a collective multimedia publication in tandem with Willie Brisco, Tess Edmonson, Arianne DiNardo, Craig Fahner, and Jacqueline Lachance. She has initiated several publishing projects, most recently including “BEGINNING NO END//REARVIEWS,” with Xenia Benivolski, and “WHAT DO WE DO NOW NOW WE WAIT,” with members of Palimpsest. Danielle has exhibited and curated exhibitions in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Frankfurt, and North Adams, Massachusetts. Currently she is the co-directer of WWTWO, a project space and gallery in Montreal.  

BONUS COLLECTIVE ENTRY:

VSVSVS is an eight-person collective and artist-run center based out of a warehouse in the Portlands of Toronto. Formed in 2010, its activities encompass collective art making, a residency program, a formal exhibition space, and individual studio practices. Current members are James Gardner, Wallis Cheung, Miles Stemp, Laura Simon, Stephen McLeod, Anthony Cooper, Ryan Clayton, and Jemma Egan. Its collective work focuses on the collaborative production of multiples, drawings, video works, sculpture, installations, and performance. VSVSVS recently exhibited at Art Metropole, released a new line of multiples, and produced a collective project event for Mercer Union.

BONUS OVER-THIRTY ENTRY:

Erin Stump, 31, is the director of Erin Stump Projects, also known as ESP. She received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2004, and before that, attended l’École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. She co-directed the NSCAD Student Art Store, a Halifax-based commercial gallery now called Seeds Gallery. In 2007 she worked as a gallery assistant at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, and then co-launched Board of Directors with Mulherin in 2008, a collaborative curatorial project, where Stump began presenting exhibitions. Stump opened her solo gallery, ESP, in April 2011. A commercial gallery on Queen Street, ESP focuses on exhibiting emerging contemporary Canadian artists. Stump currently sits on the boards of Art with Heart and Canadian Art Gallery Hop curatorial committees.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards, one of the least formal of the award ceremonies leading up to Hollywood's big Oscar finish in March, is an evening for actors to honor their own. With less pressure, last night's red-carpet choices yielded both standouts and mere stand-ins — such as January Jones in a striking black-and-white Prabal Gurung halter gown and, less impressively, Nicole Kidman in a beaded navy Vivienne Westwood frock. Here, ARTINFO charts the best, worst, and in between. 

The Great:

Rust and Bone nominee Marion Cotillard handily walked away with our very unofficial best-dressed prize, thanks to her strapless Dior couture dress, blocked in ivory at its bust with cascades of teal silk draping from its waist. A monochrome knotted belt cinched the bodice, creating a slimming, not-too-dramatic shape, especially when paired with simple black pumps and minimal diamonds. 

The Good:

Eat your heart out, Elle Fanning. Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka looked every bit her 13 years in an unfussy blush-colored Oscar de la Renta dress with silver and white diamante beading. The chic bateau neck and A-line silhouette harked back to the innocence of the 1960s, and the tea-length hem, clocking in at mid-calf, lends a sense of propriety. Mommy Draper would be so proud.

The OK:

Anne Hathaway had an off-night in her black-and-sheer Giambattista Valli gown. We've come to expect a certain high-caliber fit and taste from the unarguably talented designer, yet the dress looked a bit wide and less-than-flattering on the Les Mis star. And while the sheer-across-the-shoulders element was rather elegant, the diaphanous fabric over the leg sold the look short, undercutting what could have been a very pretty design otherwise. 

The Bad:

Sadly, Jessica Chastain's flame-red satin bustier gown from Alexander McQueen was less on fire than it was alarming.  The strapless semi-fishtail looked like a gazillion formal-occasion dresses we've seen before. Also, we hate to say it, but the dress is a half-size too small. The iridescent satin fabric (never, ever a girl's best friend, despite its current trendiness) seems to pucker against her every curve.