WHAT: Song Dong: “Doing Nothing”

WHEN: January 18 — February 23, 2013

WHERE: Pace Gallery, 510 & 534 West 25th Street, New York

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: Bringing together almost 20 years of work by Song Dong, “Doing Nothing” offers a glimpse at the complexity and recent evolution of one of China’s foremost Conceptual artists. The exhibition spreads throughout two of Pace’s Chelsea galleries, with one location focused on installations, photography, and performances created between 1994 and 2012, and the other dedicated to Song’s more recent works exhibited at dOCUMENTA 13 and the Kiev Biennial. “Doing Nothing” is the artist’s first New York exhibition since his 2009 solo show in the Marron Atrium at MoMA.

The exhibition at Pace’s 534 West 25th Street location is a small-scale retrospective of sorts, with videos and photographs documenting site-specific installations and performances, ranging from “Breathing,” for which Song used only his breath to create a patch of ice on Tiananmen Square, to “Facing the Wall,” a performance in which Song travelled to India and imitated the life of a Zen monk, sitting still and facing a wall for 10 days. Four of Song’s food landscapes are projected onto the walls of a dark, back room in the gallery, offering a lighthearted counter to the heavier works in the show, one also more reflective of Song’s levity and humor.

The 510 West 25th Street location contains two large sculptural works that Song created entirely from the refuse of China’s building boom, which, composed of white walls, small window frames, and occasional drains, appear both precarious and balanced, ambitious and desperate. Depending on one’s perspective they might be either symbolic of the resourcefulness of poverty, or a commentary on excess, waste, and disparity within China.

Song’s more recent pieces embrace ambiguity, perhaps even striving for it as a means to force his audience to acknowledge and confront their potential biases in interpreting his work. One wall of the space at 510 West 25th Street is lined with over a dozen translations of a short text on the virtues of doing nothing. Like much of Song’s work, the translations — which were compiled into a book for dOCUMENTA — evoke deep layers beneath their seemingly straightforward presentation. 

Where are Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich when you need them? An upcoming British movie, “The Lady Who Went Too Far,” sounds like it would have been a perfect vehicle for the actress and director who followed their German masterpiece “The Blue Angel” with the six classics of romantic exotica they made at Paramount in the 1930s.

Based on Kirsten Ellis’s 2008 biography “Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope,” the film will tell the story of the fearless socialite, camel-mounted desert traveler, and archaeological treasure-seeker who in 1815 conducted the first modern excavation in Palestine.

Guided by a medieval Italian medieval manuscript, she hoped to find three million gold coins buried under the ruins of a mosque in Ashkelon, eight miles north of Gaza. Her diggers instead turned up a headless, seven-foot marble stature, which she ordered to be smashed into smithereens and thrown into the Mediterranean.

A woman with messianic pretensions, she also dabbled in espionage, apparently helping to thwart Napoleon’s ambition of conquering India, as he had done Egypt. When traveling in the East, she wore Turkish man-drag. Dietrich and von Sternberg would have had a ball with that – and Lady Hester’s uninhibited attitude towards sex.

Realistically, the film (originally announced in 2010) is more likely to have the sweeping romance of “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) or “The English Patient” (1996), despite a comparatively limited budget of $18 million. It is being made by producer Gareth Unwin of Bedlam Productions and screenwriter David Seidler, who worked together previously on “The King’s Speech.” According to Screen Daily, it has just received development backing from the new British film and TV production company Cascade. A director has not yet been announced, but Tom Hooper, who followed “The King’s Speech” with “Les Misérables,” is an obvious candidate. If the decision is made to cast a British actress in the lead role, Rachel Weisz, Keira Knightley, and Hayley Atwell could be in the frame.

In the early 1800s, Lady Hester kept house and, as a brilliant conversationalist, hostessed for her unmarried uncle, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. She was prompted to leave England after the death of a brother and the cavalier treatment she endured in her relationship with her lover, the womanizing Whig politician and diplomat Granville Leveson Gower. Accompanied by her doctor and maid, she set off for the East in 1810, traveling via Gibraltar, where she met Michael Bruce, an educated charmer 12 years her junior who became her paramour – they mostly enjoyed each other under canvas. Bruce was eventually recalled to London and abandoned her, reneging on his promise to send her a thousand pounds a year.

She lived off a state pension, eventually settling in a disused monastery near Sidon, in modern-day Lebanon. There she gave sanctuary to hundreds of religious (Druze) refugees, earning the enmity of the Lebanese ruler Emir Bashir Shihan II. Cut off by Britain, she died a turbaned recluse, living in squalor, at the age of 63.

Art Los Angeles Contemporary, now in its fourth year, is the International Contemporary Art fair of the West Coast. Matthew Drutt, Executive Director of the Blouin Cultural Advisory Group, takes us on a tour of the fair’s hidden gems among the art at Tracy Williams, David Kordansky, and Kate Werble. Watch: 

LONDON — It’s not every day that a curator ventures an entirely new interpretation of a body of work as central as Bruce Nauman’s. But New York and Buenos Aires-based curator Philip Larratt-Smith has done exactly in his new London show “mindfuck,” which looks at some of the American giant’s key pieces, such as “Carousel” (1988) and “Sex and Death/Double ’69’” (1985), through a psychological lens.

“My point of departure was the mind/body split in Nauman’s work,” Larratt-Smith told ARTINFO UK. “It struck me as very strange that up until now no one has really written about it. Generally speaking, the emphasis has been on the empirical, the conceptual, which really reflects the moment in which Nauman emerged in the 1960s, when there was a turn away from Freudian psychoanalysis and towards behaviourism.”

In the catalogue for the exhibition, which opens tonight at Hauser & Wirth, Larratt-Smith has compares the experience of some of Nauman’s pieces to “a state of trauma.” “[Trauma] produces a state of uncertainty and doubt, which in itself can be a very fertile way of dislocating us from our normal way of looking at the world and can open up new perceptions of reality, but there’s also something dangerous about it,” he explained.

“Nauman’s work has this quality because it deliberately manipulates our perceptions in order to replicate or approximate these states,” he added. “That’s where the title comes from, ‘mindfuck,’ because to some extent Nauman is fucking with our minds in order to enable us to experience things that we normally wouldn’t experience.”

One of the most (literally) disorientating pieces on display is “Untitled (Helman Gallery Parallelogram)” (1971), a free-standing structure one can only access through two green-lit, tightly narrowing corridors. “He treats us like guinea pigs,” says Larratt-Smith. “We are meant to walk through this claustrophobic environment and have a perceptual experience that he’s totally choreographed.”

“Untitled (Helman Gallery Parallelogram)” and “Carousel,” with its animal casts dragged on the floor, crystallize for the curator the “mind/body split” at play in Nauman’s production — the latter piece also exemplifying another “repressed” aspect of the artist’s work, namely its symbolic quality. “There’s a dimension of fear and horror in the contemplation [of “Carousel”] because it has a symbolic relation to the human condition,” says Larratt-Smith. “The carousel is a powerful metaphor for a distressed, degraded, and almost hopeless human condition. We see ourselves in these tragic part-objects that are forced to continue dragging around in a circle.”

As with most of his commercial gallery shows, Nauman himself didn’t get involved with the project, which was devised by Larratt-Smith and Hauser & Wirth, in collaboration with the artist’s New York dealer Sperone Westwater. “I’m not sure how engaged he is with the reception of his work,” muses the curator. “I’d be very curious to know what he thinks of it.”

Thirty-two-year-old French-born Cyprien Gaillard is a rising — or perhaps already risen — star in Europe, having won the Prix Marcel Duchamp at FIAC in 2010 and Berlin’s Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst in 2011. At the Berlin show, the artist also carried the vote of the public by a margin of over 50 percent — the first time in the award’s history that the public and the jury have chosen the same winner. After seeing Gaillard’s show at MoMA PS1 this past weekend, I can understand why.

In “The Crystal World,” his first solo museum exhibition in New York (which runs through March 18), Gaillard creates powerful and mesmerizing portraits of suffering cities, meditations on transformation and decay that are also simply enjoyable to look at. Although the 80 works on view here comprise a variety of media, video art is the centerpiece. The show is anchored by the film “Artefacts” (2011), which has the largest exhibition room to itself. In these images from Baghdad during the U.S. occupation, soldiers in fatigues hold out fragments of ancient tablets and other archaeological finds, men in traditional dress trek across the desert, and, in one intensely enjoyable and intriguing segment, swirling bands of solid color fill up the screen. These bands suggest the mad movements of carnival rides, but we’re told that they’re the spinning skirts of a whirling dervish. The film captivates and draws you in, kind of like a travelogue — over the weekend, there were even some young children sitting on the floor watching it with their parents.

But this is also heavy stuff — occupation, cultural destruction, and loss, evoked obliquely, without violence. Though the images of American soldiers are innocuous enough, their presence brings to mind the massive destruction to Iraqi antiquities that resulted from the U.S. invasion. The music is a continuous loop of a sample from David Gray’s song “Babylon,” which, as the wall text points out, is said to have been used as part of the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib. Here, though, the repetition is haunting without being torturous, and there’s an added layer of meaning; located about 50 miles south of Baghdad, the ancient kingdom of Babylon, with its fabled hanging gardens, is itself a symbol of loss and the passage of time. Technologically the work is also composed of layers — Gaillard filmed the video on his iPhone and then transferred it to 35-millimeter film, which you can hear whirring through the projector while watching the shaky, handheld images. 

The show is rich in connections between works. One small room holds seven huge excavator bucket teeth in seven glass cases, recalling the display of Babylonian antiquities at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum that were viewed in “Artefacts.” I found myself examining them from all angles, as if they were worn antique statues, when of course they signify something very different — their natural erosion occurs from digging into earth to put up new construction.

In his long series of three-by-three grids of Polaroid photos, “Geographical Analogies,” Gaillard also plays with notions of tourism and the past. Each grid is focused on one locale; I recognized Baghdad from seeing  one of the structures that appeared in “Artefacts.” But most of these cities could be anywhere — a certain kind of anywhere, that is. Images of foreclosed houses made me think of Detroit (though they may be in Passaic, New Jersey, one location that Gaillard used), and others look like the outdated, monolithic structures of many third-world cities. Individually, with their slightly orangey hue and their odd angles, these snapshots could be photos that any tourist has taken. The way they’re arranged in grids, though, is somehow very elegant and poignant. Poignant, perhaps, because, as the wall text informs us, Polaroid film is unstable, and in these photos (taken between 2006 and 2011), the colors have already begun to break down.

These works are almost Romantic in the way they find beauty in contemporary ruins. But Gaillard’s landscapes are also landscapes of people, whether soldiers patrolling Baghdad, spring breakers guzzling tequila in Cancún, or rival Russian gangs brutally clashing with each other. The artist seems to remind us that people are a force of randomness and decay as much as time. A few works here seem less complex, such as two frottages of New York sewer lids and a found landscape painting from 1914 on which Gaillard silkscreened the grinning face of the Cleveland Indians’ mascot. But the show is a highly rewarding journey. “The Crystal World” presents a world that may be crystalline in its fragility, but is rough, rocky, and decrepit, populated by random human gestures and the survival of things past.

Having written and directed last year’s film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel “Cosmopolis,” David Cronenberg will now act in a movie based on the author’s novella “The Body Artist.” It will be renamed “Body Art” and directed by Luca Guadagnino, best known outside Italy for his Visconti-esque haute-bourgeois tragedy “I Am Love” (2009).

Although it hasn’t been announced officially, Cronenberg’s role will be that of Rey Robles, a 64-year-old film director who commits suicide, leaving his wife, the performance artist Lauren Hartke (Isabelle Huppert), to grieve over him.

On the verge of losing her mind, Lauren attempts to achieve catharsis by literally shedding her skin and reconstructing herself completely on stage. One suspects that the intimations of “body horror” and Lauren’s desperate exposing of herself to technology, which promises comfort but dehumanizes the user, were major factors in Cronenberg’s decision to re-enter DeLillo’s world.

Also in the cast is Denis Lavant (himself ready to shape-shift again after his multifaceted performance in “Holy Motors”). He plays a ghostly presence whom Lauren finds in an empty room in her house and names “Mr. Tuttle,” after a high-school teacher. He can speak in both Lauren and Rey’s voices, and she concludes that he exists beyond time – he is evidently a metaphor for its mutability. Lauren herself attempts to break time’s tyrannical structuring of life.

Sigourney Weaver will have a more grounded role as a journalist. She told Women’s Wear Daily that she and Huppert will be dressed for the film by Raf Simons, the artistic director of Dior. Simons also created Tilda Swinton’s supremely elegant Jil Sander costumes for “I Am Love,” which helped earn costume designer Antonello Cannarozzi an Oscar nomination.

According to Cineeuropa.org, international rights to “Body Art” will be sold at the European Film Market of the Berlinale, which starts February 7. The production-distribution company behind the project, France’s Alfama Films, also made “Cosmopolis.” Among the other films it’s taking to Berlin are the Casanova opera-piece “The Giacomo Variations,” starring John Malkovich, reported here by ARTINFO, and Fanny Ardant’s marital drama “Cadences obstinées.” It stars Asia Argento, Nuno Lopes, and Ardant’s old friend and Russia’s new star, Gérard Depardieu.

LONDON — The Victoria and Albert Museum has collaborated with the University of Abertay in Dundee to create a new residency for a games designer to develop work inspired by the museum’s collections, with emphasis on Britain in the 1500 – 1900 period. This is the first time the museum, which has currently has three residency studios (two for multi-disciplinary work, and one for ceramics), has opened up its program to a games designer.

“Games design is a growing industry in the UK and Britain is now one of the leaders in the world in this field. It is a highly skilled form of design that requires both creative and scientific skills,” said Ruth Lloyd, V&A Residency Coordinator. “The V&A’s first games design residency is an exciting opportunity for the museum to recognize and support this form of design, and will offer a games designer access to specialist expertise as well as use of the V&A’s extraordinary collections as creative inspiration to produce new work,” Lloyd added.

The new resident will spend six months doing research and taking part in a public engagement program in London before heading off to Dundee for a period of production; a monthly bursary is included along with studio space and a budget for supplies. V&A’s staff, Abertay University, and an unspecified “industry mentor” will also provide support. Though currently only open to UK-based digital games designers, applications are available on V&A’s website through February 8.

Professor Louis Natanson, who leads computer games education at Albertay University, noted that this will provide either beginning or mid-career games designers with the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the arts. “We’re delighted to see the world’s greatest museum of art and design and the V&A at Dundee both embrace the enormous creativity and cultural importance of computer games,” said Natanson.

In May 1951, James Duthie set out on a 3,000-mile solo cycling trip from his corner of northeast Scotland to northern Norway, and back again. On his return, Duthie, who was affectionately known as “Dummy Jim” because he was profoundly deaf, wrote and self-published a book, “I Cycled Into the Arctic Circle.” He sold it door-to-door to finance future trips. He was eventually killed in a road accident in 1965.

Duthie’s exploits and the esteem with which he was held in his community are warmly celebrated in Matt Hulse’s “Dummy Jim,” which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival yesterday and is screening there again today, tomorrow, and Saturday.

The trailer for the film (below), which combines 8mm, 16mm, and HD footage with archival material and animation into a freewheeling collage, suggests it could be a major discovery for audiences who have enjoyed the topographic art films made by such directors as Patrick Keiller, Andrew Kötting, and Grant Gee. It’s also a homespun pre-emptive strike against the upcoming Lance Armstrong biopic.

Hulse is a Scottish filmmaker and performance/installation/audio artist whose previous films include “Follow the Master” (2009), an acclaimed chronicle of a pilgrimage he took in the English South Downs with his girlfriend, Lucy, and dog, Tippy.

He was inspired to make “Dummy Jim” 13 years ago when he was given a copy of Duthie’s book. Initially budgeted at 600,000 euros, it was eventually made for £35,000 – a symbolic contemporary equivalent of the $12 traveling expenses Duthie racked up on his epic journey. Hulse describes here how the film was facilitated by his taking a more modest approach to its financing (and the contributions of family members who shot vacation footage).

Given Duthie’s deafness, “Dummy Jim” is visually driven.

“Because I wanted to know more about being deaf for this project, I went to Wolverhampton, England’s ‘deaf capital’ in 2001,” Hulse told the Rotterdam festival’s Daily Tiger. “It’s called that because, for example, a lot of subjects at its university are taught in sign language. That’s where I met Samuel Dore [who plays Duthie] and other deaf filmmakers.

“‘Deaf films’ are fascinating,” he added, “because they are super visual. For a couple of years, I organized a special festival, the Sign Language Cinema Festival, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Sam and I have worked together before. Communicating is easy as I’ve learnt quite a lot of sign language by now. In fact, sign language is ideal for film sets as you don’t make any unwanted noises.”

A lyrical adjunct to “Dummy Jim” is Duthie’s 16mm home movie footage, recently discovered in an attic in the Scottish fishing village of St. Combs. Hulse presented clips from the footage with excerpts from “Dummy Jim” at Brooklyn’s Union Docs last November.

Watch the trailer for Matt Hulse’s “Dummy Jim”: 

With Sundance just passed, Oscars on the horizon, and a cold New York winter keeping us indoors, ARTINFO HQ has been abuzz with movie talk lately. As is to be expected, there have been more than a few conversations about our favorite art films and documentaries. From our many debates about the best, we've distilled this list of indispensible docs for art lovers. 

Crumb (1994)

Director Terry Zwigoff spent six years following around his friend, legendary underground comic-book artist Robert Crumb, crafting the footage into a multifaceted mosaic of the artist's troubled past and how it illuminates his often troubling work. The film ushered in a second-wave of fans unfamiliar with Crumb's drawings, which have now transitioned from alternative weeklies and damp comic-book shops to galleries and museums.

In the Realms of the Unreal (2004)

Self-taught artist Henry Darger has become legendary for his secretive and prolific life's work; a massive collection of fantastical drawings, paintings, and writings that feature the now-iconic characters "the Vivian Girls," which were not discovered until after his death. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jessica Yu takes viewers on a journey into the very private world of the outsider artist, through hauntingly animated versions of his paintings and accounts of what little is known of his life.  

Ballets Russes (2005)

The road that was paved for such luminaries as Valentino and Paul McCartney to recently design costumes and compose music for the New York City Ballet is attributed to the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev more than a half century ago. "Ballets Russes," the dazzling documentary from 2005, gives a glimpse inside the world-renowned Russian dance troupe, the Ballets Russes. Founded by the artistic director in 1909, the company took the Paris stage by storm with Diaghilev's avant-garde works and collaborations with some of the finest artists of the era in the areas of visual arts, music, and costume. His groundbreaking ballet "Le Train Bleu" during the 1924 season was considered a triumph in art: not only did Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel create the costumes for the dancers from her own “sport” collection, but Pablo Picasso himself designed the staggering stage curtain (almost dwarfing his mural "Guernica"), based on his 1922 painting "Deux Femme Courant Sur La Plage." More than just a visual feast for dance lovers, the film shows how Diaghilev's influence stretched beyond ballet.

Manufactured Landscapes (2006)

Following Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky from the epicenter of Chinese industry to the oil fields of Bangladesh, “Manufactured Landscapes” is a shocking look at environmental devastation through the lens of Burtynsky’s strangely beautiful images. The works are simple statements on the state of the world and depressingly awe-inspiring.

Here is Always Somewhere Else (2007)

In one of the more notable examples of performance art gone horribly awry, in 1975, 33-year-old Dutch-Californian artist Bas Jan Ader set out to cross the Atlantic in a 13-foot cruiser for a piece titled “In Search of the Miraculous” and never returned. In a film that’s part unsolved-mystery, part artist-survey, director Rene Daalder chronicles his friend’s disappearance while also presenting Ader’s conceptual work in performance art, film and photography, which, considering his brief life, was amazingly prolific.

Black White + Gray (2007)

A profile of Sam Wagstaff, an obsessive photography collector and Robert Mapplethorpe’s long-term partner, “Black White + Gray” follows Wagstaff from his aristocratic upbringing, to his visionary curating and collecting among the gay S&M world of 1970s New York to his final years as a collector of American silver.

Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008)

"Guest of Cindy Sherman" captures the unlikely love affair between art world gadfly Paul H-O, the unpretentious host of the public access television show "Gallery Beat" in the 1990s, and legendary conceptual photographer Cindy Sherman. The film's title references the name H-O found on his place card at a fancy dinner the two attended just as their four-year relationship was unraveling. That Sherman isn't formally interviewed makes the film even more intimate — all we see is archival footage of the two flirting and falling in love while H-O struggles to come to terms with her growing fame. (Bonus: ARTINFO junkies can enjoy a cameo by our own Judd Tully.)

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine (2008)

Two years before her death at age 98, this documentary offered a glimpse inside the French-American sculptress’s Chelsea home-studio, revealing an irrepressibly inquisitive mind and a hoarder-sized trove of unseen works. Filmmakers Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach compliment their candid and contemporary portrait with contextualizing biographical information, filling out the life of an exceptional artist who always remained beyond the conventions of the avant-garde of the day.

Picasso and Braque Go to The Movies (2008)

With interviews of Martin Scorsese and Julian Schnabel, “Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies” highlights the close relationship, and intertwined evolution of Cubism and film. The work of Picasso and Braque is placed against the background of the era, presenting a solid context for the development of the ur-movement of 20th-century modernism.

Herb and Dorothy (2008)

No list of art documentaries would be complete without “Herb and Dorothy,” the story of the famed middle-class art collecting couple who amassed thousands of works by 20th-century artists in their one-bedroom apartment. The film offers an indelible how a love of art can be the basis for an enduring.

Basquiat, The Radiant Child (2010)

Footage of a baby-faced (and slightly shy) Jean-Michel Basquiat being casually interviewed by his friend Tamra Davis evinces the tragedy of Basquait’s life as an artist, but more powerfully, it evinces the tragedy of his life as a brilliant young man.

The Woodmans (2010)

Interviews with artist Francesca Woodman’s family and peers are woven together with her videos, photographs, and excerpts from her diary to tell the story of her life, work, and tragic death. The film, like Woodman’s work and like Woodman herself, asks serious and even troubling questions about art, fame, and self-image, but leaves it to the audience to work through the answers.

Waste Land (2010)

A Brazilian slum native who rose to art world stardom in the mid-'90s for his signature images  of artists' portraits re-created, and re-imaged, using materials like sugar, peanut butter or syrup, Vik Muniz more recently embarked on a two-year project working with Gramacho catadores —  trash-pickers — to capture their images via compositions made of scavenged garbage. It’s a compelling look into the oft-overlooked trash scavenging industry as well as the community who works within it, and it's inspiring to watch Muniz use his status within the elite art world to provide acknowledgment (and auction sales) to a subgroup otherwise dismissed by the elite.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

Werner Herzog’s exclusive access to the Chauvet cave — the site of 30,000-year old Paleolithic paintings  — documents some of the oldest artworks known to man. The 3-D film is narrated in Herzog’s lilting German accent and combines footage shot in the cave with high-tech digital renderings.

Eames: The Architect & The Painter (2011)

Charles (the architect) and Ray (the painter) Eames re-defined design in the 20th century, from the furniture in people’s homes to commercials and corporate identities. This film is both a documentary about the exceptionalism of their L.A.-studio, and a love story based on Charles’s magnetism, Ray’s often-overlooked, but indelible creative influence on Charles, and her dedication and love for him.

!Women Art Revolution (2011)

Artist and art historian Lynn Hershman Leeson has been filming the Feminist Art Movement since the 1960s. Her interviews with everyone from artists Nancy Spero, Judy Chicago, and Martha Rosler to New Museum founder Marcia Tucker offer an in-depth look at how feminism helped to reshape the visual arts.

Gerhard Richter Painting (2011)

Director Corinna Belz takes viewers into Gerhard Richter’s studio for a rare glimpse at the 80-year-old painter’s laborious, highly physical process. Talking is largely eschewed in favor of long shots of Richter squeegeeing his monumental abstract canvases.

Ai Weiwei Never Sorry (2012)

A behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the perhaps most unforgettable moment of “Never Sorry” has the invasive Chinese government stalking Ai as he eats dinner in a public restaurant. The film is notable for the way it portrays the determination, humor, and exceptional creativity of a truely inspirational individual in the face of repression.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (2012)

Each of the Brooklyn-based conceptual photographer’s dramatic small-town tableaux is the outcome of a production process roughly the size and complexity of a feature film shoot, and this behind-the-scenes machinery is chronicled in this fascinating film, whose most candid moments are nevertheless Crewdson’s at-the-wheel musings while he cruises around location scouting in his preferred Western Massachusetts rust belt towns.

Beauty is Embarrassing (2012)

Director Neil Berkeley follows artist, comedian, experimental puppeteer, and all-around renaissance man Wayne White on his aesthetic peregrinations, recounting his early years as the creator of some of the most beloved characters on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” his relocation from New York to Los Angeles, and his improbable crossover from outsider artist status to bonafide success story with his paintings of giant letters spelling hilarious messages — e.g. “Donald Judd Was a Son of a Bitch Wrecked His Train in a Whorehouse Ditch,” “I’ll Smash This Painting Over Your Fucking Head,” and so on — on tacky thrift store landscape paintings.

One of New York’s most significant landmarks, Grand Central Terminal, is celebrating its centennial — the first train left its station at 12:01 a.m., February 2, 1913. As Manhattan’s ornate transit hub looks back on 100 years of history, ARTINFO’s Vanessa Yurkevich explored the building’s marvelous art and architecture.

Watch the video below: