This year, Cologne’s Galerie Karsten Greve has set a record for the largest booth at Art Cologne, with a whopping 220 square meters of exhibition space. Quality hasn’t suffered for size, with the booth featuring a gallery-scale exhibition of Robert Polidori on its exterior and Louise Bourgeois’s 1962 bronze “Inner Ear” inside, in addition to works by several other notable figures. A three-by-seven meter Jannis Kounellis wall sculpture from 2004 is also likely to garner interest, as are “Bloodydrivetrain” by John Chamberlain, 2007, and Pierre Soulages’s “Peinture 157 x 157 cm, 22 Janvier 2012.”

At the gallery itself (Drususgasse 1-5), an expansive overview of the Italian sculptor Fausto Melotti’s oeuvre is on display through June 22. The works range from Melotti’s famous sculptures and terracotta teatrini (small theaters) to lesser-known works on paper and terracotta bassorilievi (sculpted wall objects).  Melotti (1901-1986) was 27 before he set foot in Milan’s Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera as a student. Born to a family of musicians, he was a classically trained pianist, particularly drawn to the exacting nature of Bach’s music. This affinity for precision carried over to his academic work, which focused on physics, mathematics and architecture. In turning to art, Melotti directed the same attention to detail to a practice of rigorous abstraction, which he felt might spark a second renaissance in his home country in the years before World War II.

“His works are strongly related to his passion for music, theater and opera,” said Karsten Greve, the gallery’s owner. Greve organized the show, which puts particular emphasis on the ’50s and ’60s, a time when the artist was breaking onto the international stage after his early work had been snapped up by Italian collectors. Often compared to his classmate Lucio Fontana, who was a close personal friend, Melotti sought to create a purity of form in each of his sculptures.

“He had his own ways of exploring this concept,” Greve said, referring to the delicate “spatial transparency” of brass sculptures like “Margherita e i gioielli,” 1979 and “La Camicia di Archimede,” 1983. Such pieces often seem as if they’ve been reduced down to schematics of their initial forms.

The inclusion of many works on paper and terracotta bassorilievi, meanwhile, allows for a still deeper appreciation of Melotti’s process of simplification.  The forceful lines of his sculptural diagrams are apparent in both the two-dimensional abstractions and the relief work, virtually popping out of their surfaces.

Rush fans can relax. The band is now officially in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Canadian rockers were welcomed into the musical fraternity at Thursday's 28th annual induction ceremony by the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins. At the beginning of the Nokia Theatre event, the audience was already administering a standing ovation to the group.

"We've been saying for a long time that this wasn't a big deal," drummer-lyricist Neil Peart told the crowd, most of whom came out to specifically support the band. "It turns out, it kind of is."

Rush gained entry following its first appearance on the ballot after repeatedly being left off the list since gaining eligibility in 1998, to the great consternation of the legion of Rush fans who cried bias against progressive rock. The long wait didn't seem to matter at Thursday's star-studded concert event, which ran over five hours. Peart, lead singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson made up for lost time by launching into a rambunctious rendition of "Tom Sawyer" in front of the more than 7,000 attendees.

Rush was among this year's eight eclectic inductees, which also included fellow classic rockers Heart, singer-songwriter Randy Newman, rap group Public Enemy, disco queen Donna Summer, bluesman Albert King, and producers Quincy Jones and Lou Adler.

For Heart, entering the hall of fame isn't just about music.

"Our long and winding road has always been about the magical power of love and the enduring strength of family," said Nancy Wilson. "We came from an era when women normally did not rock and women were not expected to be leaders."

Wilson, her sister, Nancy, and their band mates celebrated their induction with lively performances of "Crazy for You," ''Dreamboat Annie" and "Barracuda."

Adler was inducted by comedy duo Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong before being serenaded by Carole King with "So Far Away." Jack Nicholson was among Adler's fans in the audience who lavished the producer-mogul a standing ovation.

With his guitar around his neck, John Mayer inducted the late King before joining Gary Clark Jr. for King-tinged jam session.

"Albert King is why guitar-face was invented," joked Mayer.

Newman — joined by Jackson Browne, John Fogerty and Tom Petty — kicked off the Los Angeles ceremony with a performance of his classic "I Love L.A." It was an appropriate song choice given the fact this year's event marks the first time since 1993 that the Cleveland institution has held its induction ceremony on the West Coast. Backstage, Newman was matter-of-fact about his inclusion.

"I didn't think it would happen until I died or something," he said.

Oprah Winfrey was on hand to welcome Jones into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Usher lauded the producer-mogul with a rendition of the Michael Jackson tune "Rock with You."

Jennifer Hudson paid tribute to Summer with a medley of her hits, much to the delight of Flava Flav. The Public Enemy rapper, clad in an all-white tux, was the only person in the crowd who remained on his feet throughout her performance. He later commanded the microphone for a long-winded acceptance speech when Public Enemy was recognized. His colleague, Chuck D, was more succinct in his remarks.

"Let us all not forget, we all come from the damn blues," he told detractors.

Thursday's event concluded with all-star jam session featuring Rush, Heart, Chuck D, Grohl, Chris Cornell, Tom Morello and others riffing together on stage.

The induction ceremony will be broadcast May 18 on HBO.

When it comes to sales at Art Cologne, the time honored refrain has been “wait for the weekend.” That might still be the case at the top end of the classical modern spectrum, with dealers like Zurich’s Salis + Vertes noting strong interest and reserves on German Expressionist masterworks by artists like Max Ernst and Emil Nolde, but no completed sales. For the most part, however, in blue chip and emerging booths, sales were stronger than any of the gallerists consulted could remember compared to previous years.

Hauser + Wirth started strong, with nine pieces from their special presentation of text-based works by the Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg selling within the first hours of the fair for prices ranging from €3,800 to €50,000. (The artist created one of the sold works by spelling out the word “home” in his own blood.) Director Florian Berktold says he was particularly pleased “to see the amount of interest for Christoph Schlingensief’s captivating film, “Say Goodbye to the Story (ATT 1/11).” It has been a while since his work has been seen in Germany and our ‘Kino 3,000’” — a theater the gallery created within their booth to show the film — “is really popular.” One edition of the Schlingensief is on hold for an undisclosed German museum, he says.

David Zwirner sold two works by Thomas Ruff from the artist’s newest series, currently on view at the gallery’s 19th Street location in New York, “PHG 01” and “PHG 02,” both from 2012. By Friday, the gallery had already swapped the works for a third Ruff in expectation that it would sell with similar ease. Yayoi Kusama’s “Cosmic Space” from 2008 also sold during the preview. Collages by Marcel Dzama, an artist new to the gallery, piqued intense interest, with one sold and five others reserved by Friday afternoon. The gallery also reported a strong reserve on what is arguably the booth’s centerpiece, Neo Rauch’s “Fang” (1998).

Katharina Hinsberg’s popular installation, “mitten” (2012) — a room-filling series of balls made of red molding clay hung along strands and priced at €90,000 — attracted serious interest from two German museums, according to the artist’s gallery, Edith Walandt. Meanwhile, six of Hinsberg’s works on paper sold for €1,000-€2,000 each.

Helsinki’s Galerie Forsblom sold an imposing steel sculpture by the French conceptual sculptor Bernar Venet, “Interminate Line,” 1987, for €180,000, and a new oil by young Spanish artist, Secundino Hernandez, for €13,000. At the same time, at Galerie Buchholz, Isa Genzken’s sculpture “Orang-Utan,” 2008, created from a stuffed animal, toy horse, and other materials, went for an undisclosed sum.

London’s Annely Juda sold Anthony Caro’s small sculpture “Writing Piece ‘One’” (1979) to a German collection for €39,000. Four of the gallery’s wooden sculptures by Roger Ackling also sold to a European collector, for €2,000-€4,600 a piece. The Cologne-based dealer Gisela Capitan had strong preview sales as well, with works by Günther Foerg and John Stezacker going early on. Several photographs by Eifie Semotan went to a new client, as did a handful of pastel-colored Karla Black paper sculptures.

First-time Cologne participant Ingleby Gallery sold six works from its New Positions project by emerging artist Kevin Harman. For “1 Pixel Portrait Studio,” Harman developed a special camera and an iPad app with a professor at Edinburgh University that averages out the tones present in anyone photographed into a single color. The resulting Lamba prints, which are drymounted to aluminum, are available in three sizes, for £500, £1,000, and £2,000, or as a full set for £3,000. “I would have been thrilled if even one person was curious enough to commission a portrait, but already in the first day the interest in the project and engagement with what I’m doing has been overwhelming,” says Harman.

New Contemporaries galleries continued to report strong sales. Heike Tosun of Berlin’s Soy Capitan says that she was pleasantly surprised by her first appearance at the fair, having already sold two works. “The number of new clients coming by has been really encouraging,” she says. “Especially as a young gallery, there is always the risk that you might not sell at all, but enthusiasm and engagement with the works has been high.” The works sold included her booth’s centerpiece, “Malerwinkel,” 2013 — a series of eight found paintings of the Königsee, the most painted (and copied) vista in Germany, with four of the canvases. The work went to a German-Dutch collector couple for €8,500, while Eli Cortiñas’s “Game Control II (Oh Marcel, Marcel!),” 2011, sold for €1800 to a German collector. 

Once again, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff into the streets of New York City, charged with reviewing the art they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow, click here.)

Matthew Chambers, at Untitled, 30 Orchard Street, through April 21

Open a door painted with a question mark at Untitled and you’ll be immersed in the brilliant frenetic bazaar of hotly colored, coolly felt, elongated canvases of Matthew Chambers — depicting a series of seemingly unrelated images, including a painting of a tiger with a bloody arm in its mouth, a still-life of corn-on-the-cob with melting butter, and a snapshot-like painting of a woman dancing, all commingled with textural pieces made from strips of dyed canvas (his “strip paintings”) — whose presentation, mixed and matched in tightly packed rows, seemingly simulates the Internet-trolling habits of a quick and observant mind under the influence of the synthetic drug of choice. — Rozalia Jovanovic

“Wilder Mann,” Charles Freger at Yossi Milo, 245 10th Ave, through May 18

Captured void from context to enhance their surreality, prints of the artist's 18-month, 12-country quest (primarily in Eastern Europe and the Netherlands) to capture pagan traditions of dressing up as bears, goats, demigods, and other beasts in order to celebrate seasons, honor rituals, and terrify small children, are if nothing else a pleasant reminder that the time-honored subculture-hunting investigative photography road trip is still far from hitting the wall of repetition.  — Lori Fredrickson

Judy Glantzman, at Betty Cunningham Gallery, 541 West 25th Street, through May 11

Making her own spins on Goya's "Los Desastres de la Guerra" series and Picasso's "Guernica" in one show like it's no big deal, Judy Glantzman knocks the latter out of the park with a room of intricately creepy large-scale collages that augments the Cubist's canonical scene of devastation with incredibly unsettling doll-like masks frozen in pained grimaces, sketches of video game-like guns, and torn sheets of paper layered, bent, and hanging in sculptural formations, leaving the adjacent groups of Goya-esque sketches looking like something of a side dish. — Benjamin Sutton

Farideh Lashai, “Thus in Silence in Dreams’ Projections,” at Leila Heller Gallery, 568 West 25th Street, through May 2

Lashai’s “Alice in Wonderland”-inspired paintings feature projections across their surface of ghostly, animated rabbits jumping in and out of landscapes of Cheshire cats and partying Majlis, complimented by a backdrop of haunting and abstract poetric sound works that balance the artist's identity with Iran’s complicated history of changing ideologies throughout the 20th-century. — Alanna Martinez

Amanda Ross-Ho, “Gone Tomorrow” at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, 534 West 26th Street, through May 18

Ross-Ho's giant black sweatshirts, riddled with rough cut-outs, hang like last year's Halloween costumes: no longer imbued with pre-festivity expectations of anonymous debauchery, their 1980s pop culture aesthetic makes them sad vestiges of a more hopeful — and more reckless — time. — Sara Roffino

At Tiffany and Company's Blue Book Ball in New York, Gwyneth Paltrow, Carey Mulligan, Kate Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker and Alice Eve reveal whether they think size matters when it comes to jewelry.  Tiffany's Blue Book Collection is inspired by the New York Jazz Age in partnership with the film "The Great Gatsby," directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan.

For its second Cologne outing, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) has whittled its selection down from 33 participating galleries in 2012 to 24 this year. The main fair also reduced its number of exhibitors in the “New Contemporaries” category, dedicated to young galleries. “We felt that if we made both fairs a little bit smaller, we would get more sales and exposure for the galleries,” explains Katie Loughlin, the Assistant Director of NADA.

The decisions may have had to do with the slow sales reported last year. A few notable galleries — including the New Yorkers Lisa Cooley and Nicelle Beauchene— haven’t come back. But the less-is-more strategy seems to be paying off. “We spoke to more people yesterday than we did last year during the entire fair,” says Shane Campbell, from Chicago’s Shane Campbell Gallery. The dealer has chosen to present the artists he showed at the inaugural NADA Cologne again, hoping this will help buyers recognize the gallery more easily. And the plan has worked out pretty well, it seems. A color pencil on paper by Mark Grotjahn, “Untitled (Orange and Green Butterfly) 45.02,” sold for a handsome sum, Campbell says, while two paintings by Jonas Wood (“Small Bird Painting,” 2013, and “Yellow Orchid with Cup and Book,” 2013) each sold for between $10,000 and $20,000.

“People are extremely serious about art in the Rhineland,” says Blanket’s Natalia Hug. The Canadian dealer, who recently relocated her gallery from Vancouver to Cologne (she is married to Art Cologne director Daniel Hug), has shown several times at NADA Miami. She specializes in abstract art, and by yesterday morning had sold nine works on paper by the emerging artist Johannes Bendzulla priced at around €1,000 each.

The reduced number of booths makes for a satisfying compactness, in the view of many fairgoers, and many exhibitors have used Art Cologne’s general atmosphere of concentration to their advantage. Manchester’s International 3 has a thoughtfully curated booth that juxtaposes eerie C-Type prints by Pat Flynn with graphic sculptures by Andrew McDonald. London’s Josh Lilley is presenting a Christof Mascher solo show, featuring a selection of delicate semi-figurative paintings, rendered ceramic-like by a layer of epoxy resin, that are priced between €3,500 and €4,000.

Sales are not brisk everywhere, but as NADA’s Loughlin points out, “the buying culture is very different here.” Continental collectors tend to visit the booths discreetly in the first few days and come back later (sometimes months down the line) with a check book. The main problem for NADA so far has been a lack of brand recognition. “People don't really know what NADA is,” says a dealer who prefers to remain anonymous. “Maybe there's some marketing to do to improve the way it is integrated [into the main fair].”

It will take time, dealers agree, but things seem to be moving in the right direction. The decision to display sculptures outside NADA’s fair-within-the-fair enclave helps break down the divisions among the fair’s different players. Collectors tend to be creatures of habit, but NADA seems to be slowly but surely gaining their trust. 

— Julia Halperin visisted the Dallas Art Museum, which hopes to attract new visitors with free admission, interactive scanning cards, and a free-wheeling new ethos. 

— Rozalia Jovanovic previewed the supersized offerings to be shown in Art Basel’s Unlimited Sector, the section of the fair devoted to monumental artworks. 

— Juddy Tully investigated the provenance of Leonard Lauder’s billion dollar collection of Cubist art, which was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum last week. 

— Playwright Howard Brenton spoke to Samantha Tse about his new play on the arrest and detention of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. 

— It's gala season, and ARTINFO surveyed the swanky scenes at the Whitney American Art Awards and the Art Production Fund Gala. 

—  Teamsters gathered at City Hall to protest Frieze New York's use of non-union carpenters and art-handlers. The fair is slated to return to New York in May.

— William Hamilton spotted a trend for 20th-century Italian design. 

—Second-tier auction houses are capitalizing on the hot market for gems. Ettagale Blauer investigated how upsurge of jewelry offerings is transforming jewelry auctions.  

—At the recent Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, Janelle Zaraspoke to Elena Baturina, the billionaire founder Be Open, a design-oriented think tank that seeks to unlock the sixth sense through interdisciplinary research. 

Although terminally bedeviled by limited financing, Scottish cinema – or, at least, the representation of Scotland on film – is enjoying a period of cultural renewal and international attention. It received a fillip yesterday when Paul Wright’s “For Those in Peril” was selected for Critics Week at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. In February, Matt Hulse’s “Dummy Jim,” which ARTINFO reported on here, played at the Rotterdam Festival.

“For Those in Peril,” the first feature directed by Wright, is the 10th and final work in the “Warp X” slate set up by the British independent production company Warp, which backs the work of innovative new talent. It has been responsible for such critically acclaimed films as Paddy Considine’s “Tyrannosaur,” Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List,” and Peter Strickland’s “Berberian Sound Studio” (which opens in the U.S. in June).

According to Warp’s website, “For Those in Peril” tells the story of Aaron (played by George MacKay), “a young misfit in a remote Scottish community” who “is the lone survivor of a strange fishing incident that claimed the lines of five men, including his older brother. Spurred on by sea-going folklore and local superstition, the village blames him for this tragedy, making him an outcast amongst his own people. Steadfastly refusing to believe that his brother is dead, and possessed by grief, madness, and magic, Aaron steps out to recover him.”

Wright previously dealt with emotional disturbance and isolation in his impressionistic award-winning shorts. “Hikikomori” (2007) is about a boy who takes sanctuary in his bedroom and refuses to leave. “Believe” (2008) follows the Highlands journey of a man unable to get over the death of his wife. The protagonist of “Until the River Runs Red” (2010) is the self-proclaimed “only daughter of God,” a 16-year-old waif whose roamings with her parents have a horrific backdrop.

Adapted from a 2007 short, Scott Graham’s “Shell,” which opened in the UK in March, is another film that parallels geographical remoteness in Scotland with emotional distance. The title character (played by Chloe Pirrie) is a restless 17-year-old who runs a garage in the Highlands with her epileptic father, Pete (Joseph Meade), her mother having deserted them when Shell was small. She is forlornly pursued not only by a divorced man and a youth but kissed erotically by Pete, culminating in a tragedy that sets her free. (If these films have an icon, it’s Kate Dickie, who played the grieving Glasgow widow bent on revenge in Andrea Arnold’s “Red Road,” appeared in Morag McKinnon’s semi-sequel “Donkeys,” and acted in “Shell,”  “Believe,” and “For Those in Peril.”)

Notwithstanding Wright’s interest in folklore and unearthliness, there’s an existential element in this New Scottish Cinema that separates it not only from the faux romanticism that infuses such Hollywood films as “Braveheart,” “Rob Roy,” and “Brave,” but also from the scabrous urban vision of Irvine Welsh (“Trainspotting,” “The Acid House,” “Filth”). It remains to be seen if Brian Ward’s Highlands drama “Indian Summer,” starring Ashley Jensen, Kevin McKidd, and Chaske Spencer, will be like-minded. It is an apparently bittersweet love-triangle set in Sutherland in 1967’s “summer of love.” 

The nation’s rapacious drug and alcohol culture (Welsh’s milieu) and the social and political failure of uncaring authorities determines the misery endured by the protagonists in some of the Scottish films written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach, notably “My Name Is Joe” and “Sweet Sixteen,” but also their recent gentle heist comedy “The Angels’ Share.” As I noted here, Loach and Laverty mock the capitalizing of Scottish heritage culture. Anyone tempted to rent or buy such traditionalist fantasies as the Alexander Korda-produced “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and Vincente Minnelli’s “Brigadoon” will find as much truth in “Loch Ness” and “Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep.”

Ransack the Tribeca Film Festival and ye shall find, in this case, three relatively unheralded items that are well worth seeing.

Phil Morrison got a friendly reception back in 2005 for “Junebug,” an offbeat character-driven indie set the writer-director’s native North Carolina; eight years later, he’s back with another offbeat character-driven indie, with a regional tang. Unpromisingly called “Almost Christmas,” the movie is not exactly Capracorn — at once less essentially bleak and a lot less sentimental than “It’s a Wonderful Life” — but it is nonetheless a seasonal fable.

Basically a Great Recession comedy shuttling between snowy Quebec and seedy Greenpoint, “Almost Christmas” concerns a smalltime thief (Paul Giamatti) who’s released from prison to find himself unwelcome at home and then, in an attempt to go straight, selling Christmas trees with his old partner (Paul Rudd) on a derelict stretch of Nassau Avenue. Anti-buddy antics and atmosphere of droll ineptitude give the movie the feel of a Mario Monicelli farce. The mise-en-scene is further enlivened by the grotesque, partially inflated Christmas elf that the feuding partners use to mark their enterprise and the presence of human elf Sally Hawkins as a voluble, heavily accented Russian immigrant employed by a vacationing dentist. Hawkins (and her wardrobe) can be hilarious and Rudd, as usual, is a consummate straight man; still the movie belongs to Giamatti’s depressed, volatile protagonist, permanently put-upon and entertainingly light-fingered. You might think you can see where “Almost Christmas” is heading but it never quite loses its acerbic edge or goes emotionally blooey. Indeed, thanks to Giamatti the inevitable ending is actually less saccharine than Chaplinesque. (It’s screening once more Wednesday night.)

More outer borough regionalism, Sam Fleischner’s “Stand Clear of the Closing Doors” (showing in competition) updates the New Yawk New Wave favorite “Little Fugitive” to the days of Superstorm Sandy. Ricky, an autistic teenager from an immigrant family scraping by in Far Rockaway, takes off to ride the subway for several days even as the hurricane bears down on the defenseless city. Meanwhile, his distraught, overburdened mother is the personification of parallel action, hopelessly searching for him.

Basically a long ride through a subway system filled with cryptic messages, “Stand Clear” has intimations of allegory — or, alternately, one of the videogames that Ricky likes to play. (Fleischner juggles the chronology a bit to incorporate Halloween night and fill the A train with costumed monsters.) The sub working-class, Latino milieu shades more exotic than authentic, but the cast is terrific, the movie is extremely well-shot up close and personal and, however filled with emotional hooks, Fleischner’s formalist approach is admirably uningratiating.

Packing a tremendous wallop, Jason Osder’s documentary “Let the Fire Burn” recounts the tale of the Philadelphia political sect called MOVE — or at least its destruction. Founded in 1972, the Black nationalist, back to nature, provocatively obnoxious MOVE commune engaged in a 12-year-long war of nerves with Philadelphia authorities that culminated in an astounding attack on their fortified house. Performing on live TV, the police fired 10,000 rounds of ammo and were ultimately so desperate they dropped a bomb on MOVE’s roof, effectively incinerating an entire neighborhood to finally destroy the organization.

The movie, named for an order issued by Mayor Wilson Goode, has a few explanatory inter-titles but no voiceover. It’s completely drawn from documents, notably the public inquiry held in the aftermath of the attack, and the media coverage that the events received. The violent clash between constitutional freedoms and social society, not to mention the racial conflict, make for a very American story. In fact, intentionally or not, the movie’s first screening was scheduled for the 20th anniversary of the day the Waco siege ended with a government assault on another unpopular and troublesome sect.

“Let the Fire Burn” is part of the documentary competition; it screens again Wednesday afternoon and Thursday night.

Read more J. Hoberman at Movie Journal.

Venice is a city always haunted by the specter of rising tides. But when the Venice Biennale returns this summer, it'll be impossible to escape the issue, courtesy two island nations who are using the art festival to make a point about the looming threat posed to their existence by climate change. Tuvalu, which is halfway between Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific Ocean, and the Maldives, located about 250 miles southwest of India in the Indian Ocean, could both be wiped out by rising sea levels, and their Venice pavilions are specifically designed to be a call to action and awareness about global warming.

The Maldives pavilion, “Portable Nation: Disappearance as a Work in Progress – Approaches to Ecological Romanticism,” will be hosted at the Gervasuti Foundation and curated by Khaled Ramadan, Aida Eltorie, and Alfredo Cramerotti of the collective Chamber of Public Secrets. The roster of international artists includes DJ Spooky, who will perform “Maldives Adagio,” a piece based on data sonification of the tides and currents around the Maldives archipelago, on the opening night.

Ramadan will show a film he is making about the current socio-political problems facing the people of the Maldives, which he told ARTINFO via email include not just global warming, but “the corrupt tourism industry” and the struggle “to balance their life between modernity and traditions.” There will also be two Maldivian artists in the group, Moomin Fouad and Mohamed Ali, who will present their film “Happy Birthday.”

In another Maldives pavilion project, “The Ice Monolith” by Italian artist Stefano Cagol, a tower of ice will be placed on the crowded Riva degli Schiavoni where it will melt before the eyes of passersby. Patrizio Travagli’s work “Pantheistic-Polifacetic” is also a tower, but this one will be made of over 500 mirrors. Visitors will be asked to photograph a reflection that they seek to capture as their own memory and email it to the artist. In addition, the art collective Wooloo will release Maldivian coconuts into the canals of Venice. The coconut palm is the national tree of the Maldives and is part of the country’s official emblem. Adrift on the water, the coconuts will represent “the resilience and fragility of nature,” according to the artists’ statement.

For its pavilion, Tuvalu has taken the opposite approach and will show the work of a single artist. “Destiny Intertwined,” curated by An-Yi Pan, Szu Hsien-Li, and Shu Ping Shih, will present the work of Vincent J.F. Huang, an eco-artist who works in London and Taipei and has previously drawn attention to Tuvalu’s plight with artwork presented at the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in 2009. In his artist’s statement, Huang points out that although Tuvalu has one of the lowest levels of carbon emissions in the world, it is on track to be one of the first countries disastrously affected by global warming.

Tuvalu's pavilion will be divided over two venues, with small sculptures and paintings being shown at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia and large installations at Forte Marghera. Forte Marghera will house “In the Name of Civilization,” a large installation depicting an oil well that is simultaneously decapitating a sea turtle and suspending a chained bull by the feet.

Huang will also bring some of his “animal victims” to Venice — sculptures depicting what he described in an email as “the first victims suffering from human impact in the age of climate change.” These works include penguins dressed as terra cotta warriors of Imperial China and, most shockingly, a polar bear holding the decapitated head of Barack Obama in its jaws.

Also on view will be the artist’s “Modern Atlantis Project,” an aquarium with live coral growing on reproductions of iconic sculptures and landmarks of Western civilization, including Michelangelo’s “David,” the Statue of Liberty, the winged lion in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, the Eiffel Tower, and Big Ben.

Amidst all the hubbub and pageantry of the Biennale, will these pavilions be able to focus international attention on the dire effects of global warming? Maldives pavilion curator Ramadan said that the curators’ approach “is mainly to address the issue of climate change in a theoretical manner,” since “to inspire concrete political action about global warming is probably too ambitious.”

On the other hand, the Tuvalu curators are hoping “not only to call for political attention, but to ask individual audiences to evaluate how their behaviors would impact the environment,” pavilion organizer Faye Y. Chen told ARTINFO via email. “Will mankind’s seeking unnatural paths and demand for resources to fulfill human ‘progress’ bring us towards a brave new world or a disastrous end?

To see work from the Maldives and Tuvalu pavilions, click on the slideshow. 

On July 16, 2012, a painting by a little-known artist sold at Christie’s for $74,500, nearly ten times its high estimate of $8,000. The work that yielded this unexpected result — an acrylic teal-hued painting of a rocky coast called “Nob Hill” — was not the work of a 20-something artist finishing up his MFA. It was a painting created in 1965, and the artist, Llyn Foulkes, is 77 years old and has been working in relative obscurity in Los Angeles for the past 50 years. In March, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles mounted a retrospective of his work, which will travel to the New Museum in June, marking the first time Foulkes will have had a retrospective at a New York museum.

What’s surprising about this turn of events is not just that it happened but that it’s part of a new pattern, one that defies what everyone thinks they know about today’s art collectors: that they like their artists either very established or — increasingly — young and ultra-trendy. “You have these young hot artists and you have the blue chip work,” said Mitchell Algus of Algus Greenspon, summing things up. “Why would someone buy a Jacob Kassay painting and not a Donald Judd drawing — assuming they’re of equal value? The Judd drawing is great, but it doesn’t carry the social clout that the Kassay painting would carry.”

Such a bias towards mercurial emerging artists has certainly been the rule. But things seem to be changing. Foulkes is among many mid-career artists who are over the age of 60 experiencing the kind of long-overdue career breakthrough in the art world that eluded them in their youth. Mary Corse, De Wain Valentine, Sturtevant, and Judith Bernstein are a few others who are beneficiaries of recent and seemingly growing attention to artists who were active decades ago and who have found their concerns and aesthetics taken up once more by interested dealers, critics, and collectors.

This rising interest in comeback artists might at first seem to dovetail with the recent wave of historical shows that have been mounted at important galleries both large and small, from Algus Greenspon and Marianne Boesky to Gagosian and David Zwirner (the last of which just opened a new wing primarily for historical exhibitions). Last year, Pace and Boesky — two seeming competitors — even came together to present a joint show of work by then 69-year-old Arte Povera artist Pier Paolo Calzolari, marking the artist’s first show in New York in 20 years.

Rediscovered artists often find their early work being reconsidered. Judith Bernstein’s show at the New Museum last year presented both historical drawings and paintings from the start of her career — like her menacing black-and-white drawings of phallic screws  — alongside new work, including bright and splashy paintings like “Birth of the Universe #4” which depicts two comic, vaginal-looking creatures with sharp teeth.

Still, the new interest in older artists isn’t just about scholarly rediscovery. The interest has less to do with the necessity of unearthing historical material to understand an artist’s career arc and more to do with feeding an insatiable market. “Unlike the past model where most galleries hosted one new exhibition every four to six weeks, many galleries now have two or more new exhibitions every turn-over," said Todd Levin, and art advisor and director of Levin Art Group. “There's a increasing need to fill the constantly expanding number of exhibition opportunities.”

Today, there are some 300 to 400 galleries in New York compared with the roughly 70 galleries in New York in 1970. As for the number of shows galleries mount each year, that has likewise increased: Gagosian mounted 63 last year at its galleries worldwide, David Zwirner had 14 shows at its spaces in New York and London, and Pace had 36 across its three galleries in New York, Beijing, and London. In response to their hydra-headed growth, these galleries have started departing from their original focus. “It's like mining for gold,” said Levin. “The main veins of ore eventually become depleted, so one starts digging further afield to keep feeding demand.” 

Judith Bernstein’s rediscovery is an illuminating story on how that consensus is formed. She was still relatively unknown when she showed at Mitchell Algus Gallery in 2008. It was artist Paul McCarthy’s interest in Bernstein’s work that was the catalyst for her recent revival. When McCarthy saw her show at Algus, he remembered her screw drawings from the ‘60s. He called up his daughter Mara, the owner of The Box, who met with Bernstein, loved her work and gave her a solo show at her L.A. gallery. At that show, mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth scooped up some of Bernstein’s original paintings and drawings. While her drawings can now be picked up for $14,000 to $40,000 a pop — depending on whether you opt for a historical or contemporary work — that may change soon, as there’s speculation that Bernstein may be next in line for joining the blue chip gallery.

Rediscovered artists offer collectors a new pool of work to fuel sales, and one that’s less risky than the still-untested corpus of a younger artist with less material and experience under his belt. “Collecting mid-career and established artists over emerging is not so much a ‘dis’ to the younger generation,” said art advisor Liz Parks via email. According to Parks, recently there has been a sense, conscious or unconscious, of not wanting to participate in the mania over very young and untested artists. “I think collectors want to see the proof in the pudding first.”  

Wanting “proof in the pudding” may be a result of the dramatic market shake-up of 2008-9, when artists were madly switching galleries and many galleries were cutting artists, mostly younger ones. “For many young artists, the more ferocious the initial market frenzy for their work, the harder the inevitable crash after early speculative buyers get their fill,” said Levin. And while younger artists are more likely to crash and burn, “the market for rediscovered and re-appreciated mid/late-career artists is usually established in a more gradual and experienced manner, and is less likely to viciously retract.” 

No one can deny that the mania for youthful work persists, given the thrill of discovering an unknown artist, investing in him or her, and watching the artist’s market soar overnight. This is well in evidence in the recent case of the 28-year-old artist Jacob Kassay, whose silver deposit and acrylic on canvas works saw a ten-fold leap in their market value at one heady auction in 2010 and then continued to rise over the course of several auctions in rapid succession, turning heads all over town.

Indeed, some collectors still want only that kind of thrill. “We had a collector come in and ask about an artist we were showing,” said one art dealer who asked to remain anonymous. When the dealer told him the artist was close to 40, and had taken some time off before getting her MFA, the collector lost interest. “He thought she couldn’t be a true artist if she was starting so late in life.”

But increasingly, in seems, rediscovered artists do offer collectors the kind of thrill — and opportunity — usually associated with the emerging. Not having had their breakout moment, they are fertile territory for something akin to discovery. On the eve of Llyn Foulkes’s show at Andrea Rosen in 2011, collector Adam Lindemann Tweeted out: “Foulkes Me Twice: Andrea Rosen Gallery and Kent Fine Art Throw Up Shows of Relatively Unknown 76 Year-Old Surrealist Llyn Foulkes.”

For older artists making their comeback today, the challenges of stardom remain, though they have their own dynamics. “One has to make a decision whether one wants to be a comet or a star,” said Levin. “A comet blazes brightly as it quickly flies across the heavens — but it then burns out and disappears. A star's light is softer than that of the comet, but it twinkles forever. It’s extremely rare for an older artist's market and career to behave like a comet. The question is — can they solidify into a star?"

For Foulkes, Bernstein, and many others, it seems like it might be their time to sparkle.

Last week’s episode of This American Life (“Picture Show”) set the art world abuzz with a tale of an unusual — and apparently fairly widespread — scheme that contemporary artists have been roped into.

The focus of the story is Schandra Singh, who recounts how a mysterious man in London sent her a letter telling her how fond of her work his son was — his son is autistic, he said, and also an artist. Touched by this connection to her work, she communicated with “Benjamin,” and received several drawings in the mail by his son “Anthony” (“Totally insane looking,” “Sort of stick figures of this man with his face with his mouth open”), as well as a note saying that he would love to own one of her works. “I’m thinking,” she explained on TAL, “why don’t I just do a trade with him?”

She ended up sending a drawing to London worth $1,000 to $2,000. That was roughly two years ago. A few months ago, when the incident came up with former Yale grad school colleague Baker Overstreet, they realized that he had received an almost identical letter, had received some of Anthony's drawings, and had been considering making an identical trade. (“Did you get a box of chocolates?” she asked Overstreet, adding, “He just stared at me with this funny face.”) Like Singh, Overstreet’s art had been acquired by Charles Saatchi, and been featured on the Saatchi website.

What was behind the strange coincidence? A writer and producer from TAL hopped on a plane to London where they hunted down the Benjamin from the letter. During an interview at his house, it becomes clear that he has accumulated a large collection through trades with artists on behalf of his son, though he remains evasive about just how many artists have swapped works. Was he conning artists with a hard luck tale, attempting to amass a valuable art collection? Did his son actually have a personal connection with the works of all the painters who were sent what amounts to a form letter?

Benjamin explains to the reporters that he considers the practice of swapping work a common practice among artists. “We’re not doing anything different from what they’re doing amongst themselves,” he explained on TAL. “But probably, we’re breaking into their circle in an unconventional manner.” After some dodging, Benjamin is able to verify that he really does have a son named Anthony, who is apparently really an artist and really does suffer from some form of autism.

The final twist is that, presented with the balance of the evidence, Singh and the other artists in the story seem at peace with the transaction. So, is it or isn’t it a scam?

“I sort of felt like they were ganging up on him,” Overstreet told ARTINFO over the phone yesterday on his reaction to the show. “I thought the story was well done, but it was never my intention to go after [Benjamin]. I was a little iffy about it. I didn’t feel there was enough evidence, really.”

When ARTINFO talked to him, he had in fact just stopped in to Fredericks & Freiser to talk to his art dealer Andrew Freiser and “fill him in on [the This American Life story].” As for what he plans on sending to Benjamin in the future, Overstreet was undecided. “I haven’t really thought about it,” he said.

Unlike Overstreet, however, who had never received anything like this letter before, his dealer was familiar with the ploy. “One of our other artists had gotten this letter,” Freiser told ARTINFO. “The last one was about a year ago.” Though he couldn’t recall which artist it was sent to, five of his artists are in Saatchi’s collection. (Zak Smith told ARTINFO that the request sounded like something he'd gotten, though he couldn't remember exactly — but then, he gets a lot of strange mail.)

“I’m not averse to passing it on even though it always hits me as a scam,” Freiser said. “We get a lot of emails.” In fact, he says, over the years, he's also gotten requests for artists’ shoes for a “shoe museum,” and requests for index cards bearing artists’ signatures for an “index card museum.” “You can see why we don’t pay a lot of attention to these."

– Emin to Exhibit Her Cat: Among the many new works filling Tracey Emin's studio in Spitalfields, London — she's currently preparing a solo show at New York's Lehmann Maupin gallery — are two sculptures of her beloved feline companion Docket coiled up in the shape of a comma. "I was really missing him when I made them," Emin said. "I feel they look like him, but then I took hundreds and hundreds of photos. He’s a good little soul to have around. He stops me from feeling alone. I’m actually really happy about being on my own, I really feel good about it. I feel like I’ve achieved something, just a little bit." [Daily Mail]

– Portland Art Museum Sponsors Naked Cyclists: This spring the Portland Art Museum (PAM) will host that city's edition of the annual World Naked Bike Ride, welcoming nude cyclists to the blocks surrounding its building on SW Park. The timing is perfect for PAM, which opens its new exhibition "Cyclepedia: Iconic Bicycle Design" on the same day, June 8. Portland's Naked Bike Ride, now in its tenth year, is one of the largest in the world, and typically draws between 4,000-5,000 bicyclists in birthday suits. Whether or not PAM will welcome naked visitors into its galleries, as the Leopold Museum did recently during its recent "Nude Men" show, remains to be seen. [Bike Portland]

– Middleton Honors Art Therapists: Tonight the Duchess of Cambridge hosts a charity gala at the U.K.'s National Portrait Gallery honoring one of her preferred charities, The Art Room, which provides art therapy for young people through painting and drawing classes. Kate Middleton will not only meet with the art therapy professionals who operate dedicated art rooms at schools in Oxford, but also the children who have been empowered and helped by their art classes. [Mirror Online]

– Manet's "Olympia" Meets Titian Original: For the first time ever, as part of the exhibition "Manet. Return to Venice" at Doge's Palace, Edouard Manet's controversial "Olympia" (1863) is being shown directly next to the work that helped inspire it, Titian's "Venus of Urbino" (1538), an art historical showdown decades and thousands of undergrad essays in the making. The former is on loan from Paris's Musée d'Orsay, and the latter from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which rarely lets it leave the building. "It took the help of the president of the Council Mario Monti, the French minister of foreign affairs Laurent Fabius, and his Italian counterpart, the Italian minister of culture, and the mayor of Venice to secure that loan from the Uffizi," said Gabriella Belli, director of Venice's museums. [AFP]

– Culture Secretary Making Economic Case for Arts: Faced with the possibility of further funding cuts for the U.K.'s already-reeling arts sector, culture secretary Maria Miller wants to emphasize the fiscal benefits of public funding for the arts. "When times are tough and money is tight, our focus must be on culture's economic impact," Miller said during a keynote speech to arts leaders at the British Museum. "I need you all to accept this fundamental premise, and work with me to develop the argument." [BBC]

– Brooklyn Brings China Art Karaoke: The Brooklyn-based gallery Cleopatra's and local artist Chris Rice are bringing artist-made karaoke videos to the Shanghai Biennale, while hometown fans can see the series, "CKTV," currently on view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Contributions include Boru O'Brien O'Connell's mashup of Phil Collins's "Against All Odds" with Tom Cruise's performance as a sex and dating guru in the film "Magnolia," and "uh duh yeah," a very challenging karaoke number by BFFA3AE made up of non-word lyrics from songs by Mariah Carey, Hanson, Eurythmics, and more. [Art F City]

– Lost Warhol Photos Go on View: Snapshots of Andy Warhol that were shot in 1981 by Daily Express photographer Steve Wood, but never published, were rediscovered last year and are slated to go on public view for the first time in an exhibition at 345meatpacking in New York next month, May 2-12. "The shoot was easy, it was very instinctive," Wood said. "Andy was very straightforward to work with. He trusted me to direct him as I wanted — to show him at his best. There was a great chemistry between us." [BBC]

– Rubells to Showcase Chinese Artists During ABMB: Prominent American collectors Don and MeraRubell are looking to China’s artists as the focus for their 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition. "Year of the Artist" will include well-known artists Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan, along with 25 lesser-known artists. "It’s going to be the culmination of the Chinese art we’ve been buying since 2001," Mera Rubell said. [Bloomberg] Watch ARTINFO video series with the Rubells here.

– France's Berlin Art Hub Shuttered, Will be Sold: The French Institute, the official French cultural hub in Berlin that, since 1950, has occupied the historic building Maison de France on the Kurfürstendamm, has closed, with its longtime home to be sold off within the next two years. Revenue from the sale will go toward funding upgrades at the French embassy, where the Institute will relocate its activities — though the fate of the Cinema Paris, also housed in the building, remains unknown. "No to the closing of this house, symbol of Franco-German friendship and emblem of French culture in Berlin," read a letter released by the Institute's staff, underlining the risks of "closing this beautiful establishment so firmly integrated into the cultural landscape." [Libération]

– Aldrich Museum Hires Amy Smith-Stewart: Independent curator and former gallerist Amy Smith-Stewart, who currently is a member of the faculty at both the Sotheby's Institute of Art and the School of Visual Arts, will be the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum's new curator, a job she'll begin on May 14. Smith-Stewart , who has also worked at MoMA PS1, Mary Boone Gallery, and the Peter Norton Collection, replaces Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, who left the Connecticut institution last year. [AiA]

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Cast members and the creator of "Mad Men" discussed the hit show at The Paley Center for Media in New York Tuesday night. Matthew Weiner talked about pleasing the fans, while Jon Hamm and Jessica Pare reflected on the evolution of their characters in the currrent season.

Read ARTINFO's weekly Mad Men recaps here.

BRUSSELS  — The 31st edition of Art Brussels just wrapped up under the new leadership of Anne Lafère on the business side and Katerina Gregos, curator and artistic director.  Here's a look at 60 Works in 60 Seconds from Art Brussels 2013.

See other ARTINFO coverage from Art Brussels here.

Watch previous segments in ARTINFO's "60 in 60" series here.