NEW ORLEANS — Around midnight, as Saturday turned to Sunday in New Orleans, Dee Dee Bridgewater removed the feathered wig she’d been wearing to reveal a shaved head. By then, she was well into an 18-minute version of “God Bless the Child.” She sang soft and forlorn at first, gave way briefly to a solo by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, then built her vocal little by little into a sermon about empowerment and faith, filled with growls and shouts and improvised lyrics, which begat a scat-sung section in which she herself sounded like a horn. Finally, she landed back at the blues. For a moment, before a rush of applause, the crowd packed into the sleek jazz club Mayfield runs within Bourbon Street’s Royal Sonesta Hotel fell silent.

Bridgewater showed up about 24 hours later, unannounced, to end a Sunday late set at Snug Harbor on Frenchmen Street led by Terence Blanchard, another New Orleans trumpeter. Blanchard’s sextet had just played a program rich with textural innovation and free of formal convention; Blanchard is a star, yet still seeking out new musical territory. But when Bridgewater called off a blues in G, the group snapped precisely into groove. She was off again, this time wearing a woven cowboy hat, alternately fierce and playful, ripping it up.

And, oh yeah, there was a jazz festival.

Bridgewater was there, too, in between these cameos, singing with Mayfield’s New Orleans Jazz Orchestra on Sunday, for the final set of the final day at the jazz tent, one of 12 stages at the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, Jazz Fest is immense, a gated community drawing upon yet removed from the musical ferment in the streets and clubs of the city; it is impeccably crafted and indelibly tied to its home. Some 500 bands perform at the Fair Grounds, the horseracing track that becomes a music stadium once a year. An infield is filled with local cuisine and crafts, through which regularly dance Social Aid & Pleasure Club second-line paraders wearing Sunday finery and Mardi Gras Indians in feathered-and-beaded suits, accompanied by hand drums.

Jazz Fest serves as a mighty anchor to the amped-up musical offerings that start up after the Fair Grounds gates close and last well into each night. Bridgewater was one of many musicians who could be seen and heard in multiple settings. Another was the brilliant New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley, who one night moved from second-line parade rhythms to modern-jazz swing while leading a group at Snug Harbor (where he likes to sometimes strike a plumbing pipe as if it’s part of his drum kit), and the next, at the Blue Nile, just down the street, served as engine and traffic cop for the swirl of groove conjured by organist Dr. Lonnie Smith.

For the past two weeks in New Orleans, people have greeted each other with “Happy Jazz Fest,” and mostly receive the event’s offerings as if presents under a tree. When it rains, as it did mightily for part of the fest’s seven days stretched across two weekends, the Fair Grounds turns to muddy mess. Yet even this soggy fact can’t deter the faithful, thousands of them, who don rain boots or kick off footwear, mud be damned or even embraced.

Jazz Fest has always been different things to different people. One can set up shop in front of the Fais Do-Do stage all day and focus on Cajun, zydeco, and, increasingly, alternative pop rooted in those styles. Some couples still pair dance in the Economy Hall tent, where the traditional jazz you hear little of outside New Orleans rules, as played by those with authority and bloodlines in that game. One night, past and present members of the Treme Brass Band honored “Uncle” Lionel Batiste, the group’s bass drummer who died last year at age 81, and who symbolized the cultural traditions and familial warmth of its namesake neighborhood. Playing “Amazing Grace” set to a dirge, and then segueing into an up-tempo song, the musicians performed a New Orleans jazz-funeral ritual rich with both historical significance and in-the-moment appeal. When trumpeter Gregg Stafford performed at that tent, he led a band that “came correct,” wearing black five-pointed hats, white shirts, and ties, and playing three-part trumpet harmonies on the hymn “Just a Closer Walk With Thee.”

After two initial jazz festivals in New Orleans, in 1968 and ’69, the event was handed over to impresario George Wein’s Festival Productions (and is now co-produced with pop-concert powerhouse AEG Live). For the 1970 festival, the only out-of-town act was Duke Ellington’s orchestra. Last year’s seven-day event attracted more than 450,000 people, generating an economic impact to the city estimated at $320 million; now pop and rock stars are regularly imported. This year’s crop includes those with legitimate influence on New Orleans musicians (B.B. King; Earth, Wind & Fire) and without (John Mayer closed Acura Stage on opening night; Fleetwood Mac performed on Sunday). Such a shift in programming has not gone unnoticed.

And yet there are constants. There was gospel music at that 1970 festival, and Mahalia Jackson showed up. And there is still a gospel tent going strong through all seven days, which I stop in to begin each visit. New Orleans writer Alex Rawls, who did excellent fest coverage at his website, MySpiltMilk, pointed to another through-line:

The festival is one of the last places where traditional notions of talent rule. If you sing well and play well, there’s a stage and an audience for you. Whether by design or what it’s come to represent for its patrons, Jazz Fest is often a musical safe haven from the heathens on the charts with their Auto-Tunes and computers and so on.

At Jazz Fest, some things happen much like they’ve always happened, as when 101-year-old trumpeter Lionel Ferbos led his Palm Court band, and sang, “I may be late/ but I’ll be up to date if I could shimmy like my sister Kate.” Ferbos would play two sets later that night at the Palm Court club (talk about staying power). New things get tried out too, as when Big Chief David Montana fronted a Mardi Gras Indian Orchestra that included cellist Helen Gillet. Unlike at most festivals, this one bears some surprises. My first came when Allen Toussaint showed up unbilled, playing piano for a few tunes during Guitar Slim Jr.’s opening-day blues tent gig. My next came during Billy Joel’s Acura Stage performance: During 1977’s “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” when Joel reached the line about dropping a dime in a jukebox and playing “a song about New Orleans,” out came members of the Preservation Hall Band. A lyric’s detail became a hometown cameo and underscored the city’s primacy across genres.

At this year’s Jazz Fest, some of the most tradition-bound playing came from young performers. The most adventurous sounds came from saxophonists Kidd Jordan, who is 77, and Wayne Shorter, 79. (For more on Jordan’s set, go here.) Shorter’s quartet, with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, now more than a decade running, has scripted a new and stunning chapter in Shorter’s career, and suggests one for modern music overall. Shorter mostly issued succinct figures — sometimes gentle, others urgent — that set off activity or change course. No one musician actually leads; all instigate and respond. The music formed an extended suite, its ebbs and flows irregular but wholly organic. There were wild swings of tempo and dynamics. Along the way, a melody or bass line or a piece of the bridge from one of Shorter’s classic compositions or his newer ones took shape. But these were like objects bobbing into view on the crest of a wave then just as quickly swallowed by a turbulent sea of sound, only to pop up again displaced in space and time. This is music that deals in timbre and motion and dynamics and mood — it has no concern for style or credo. Which made me think of something Shorter told me early in this group’s tenure: “You know, Miles Davis used to say that he didn’t like guys who played what he called ‘duty.’ Our music is duty-free. It’s important to play this music with an appreciation but not in a submissive way, not paying homage through idolization. Because that idolization turns in to a credo, then a prescription, then an order, then a mandate.”

Taj Mahal suggested a similar imperative at the Alison Miner Music Heritage Stage, where musicians engage in public interviews. “Obliterate category,” he told interviewer Gwen Thompkins. “Some people call me a singer, and some people call me a guitarist,” he continued. “But I consider myself a composer.” His performance, which closed the blues tent on the final Sunday, was the most fully realized and gorgeous-sounding performance at this year’s festival. He led a band in which the four horn players each doubled on tuba, rekindling the concept behind his classic 1971 album, “The Real Thing” (and including at least two players from that live recording, electric pianist John Simon and tuba player Howard Johnson). His voice soared and his guitar moaned as tubas created a dense but buoyant bottom end to tunes including “Ain’t Gwine to Whistle Dixie (Any Mo’)” and “You’re Going to Need Somebody on Your Bond.” When he got to “Way Back Home,” five musicians (including Phil Frazier of the Rebirth Brass Band) joined in on sousaphones (the tuba’s younger cousin, as modified by composer John Philip Sousa for marching, and a ubiquitous presence in New Orleans streets). With sousaphones playing the bass line and tubas sounding melodies and harmonies, the music achieved stunning density and richness, a beauty I couldn’t have imagined on my own.

There were many moments during Jazz Fest that characterized how well New Orleans, a city that has scripted much of what we know as American musical styles, can also wipe the lines delineate such styles. One great example was the Fleur Debris Superband, led by pianist David Torkanowsky, which was a fest highlight for me. It included trumpeter Nicholas Payton, a homegrown player who has set off controversies surrounding the word “jazz” and its meaning through his Internet posts; here, his search beyond category took purely musical voice. And driving it all with force and nuance were bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, who, on other stages, displayed customary supremacy over funk grooves and here channeled that same exalted mastery for a more slippery and refined sense of swing.

In terms of sheer joy and wonder, nothing could top the jazz tent set by pianist Eddie Palmieri’s Salsa Orchestra. In force, elegance, scope, and ability to convey both personalized feelings and a broad sense of cultural history, I’d place this group alongside Ellington’s. At the jazz tent, where ushers are usually strict about keeping aisles clear and sightlines intact, eventually they just gave up; the call to dance was too strong to counter. This music is Afro Latin dance music — “salsa,” if you must — but to consider it solely that misses a lot, for instance the interaction between Palmieri and bassist Luques Curtis, which is as complex, idiosyncratic, and free-flowing as anything in modern jazz.

Family lineage is one thread that runs through Jazz Fest: One could hear Jason Marsalis ably supporting the quartet led by his father, pianist Ellis, or hear him stretch out on vibes, leading his own group. Separately, trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis led his Uptown Jazz Orchestra. At Jazz Fest the real working-class heroes, the guys who’ve done the heaviest lifting in a city where culture-bearers carry great weight, often have the surname Andrews. Trumpeter James Andrews hammed it up as he always does while leading his Crescent City All-Stars at the blues tent, cocking one hand behind an ear to gain more audience response, and wiggling his hips. He turned “Little Liza Jane,” a standard owned by New Orleans musicians as much as anyone, into a modern-blues romp, blowing loud and pure.

James’s cousin, trombonist Glen David Andrews, who is one of the most naturally gifted musicians in town, had played that same stage two days earlier. He’s got a new band that’s tight in its focus and sharp in attack. Having endured some personal challenges, he’s got a new attitude, best conveyed through original songs that focus on newfound faith. These lyrics would have worked just fine in the gospel tent, and his trombone solos might have satisfied in the jazz tent. He’s another hometown player on the rise, soaking in and letting out more than one tradition.

Troy Andrews, younger brother to James and better known as “Trombone Shorty” (despite the facts that he’s sort of tall and plays trumpet, too) closed the Acura Stage on Jazz Fest’s final evening. It’s an honor usually reserved for the Neville Brothers. But Aaron Neville was performing solo this year, in support of his new Blue Note CD, “My True Story,” and his brothers were performing separately. Even if by default, the honor of such billing wasn’t lost on Shorty. Backstage at the jazz tent the previous day, he reflected a bit on the meaning of such a slot, and the arc that led him there. Even in a city full of precocious young talents, Shorty is unusual. By age 7, he was touring in James’s band; by 9, he led his own group. His Jazz Fest debut came at age 4, in impromptu fashion, when the crowd literally passed him up to the stage during a set by Bo Diddley. “I just blew a few notes, tried not to mess up,” he said. He recalled how his brother James mentored him; how the Nevilles had taken him along on summer tours when he was much younger; and how he and Omari Neville, Cyrille’s son, used to dream about closing Jazz Fest as he was about to do.

“I’m humbled and honored,” he said, “because no accomplishments mean as much as the ones here in my hometown. And what this really shows is that hard work pays off.” Musically, that hard work means the continual refinement of a band that has more or less been together for a third of Andrews’s life (he’s 27).

Onstage, his eyes concealed behind stylish sunglasses, his sinewy frame leaning forward, his feet planted like a boxer’s, his trombone pointed straight ahead, Shorty played crisply articulated lines and, when singing, was as smoothly declarative as any R&B singer. When he switched to trumpet, the notes came brightly, often high and sweet, much like those of a Cuban player today or an early New Orleans jazzman. The big, dense sound of his Orleans Avenue band contains the heft of arena rock, the crunch of heavy metal, the scruffy textures of alternative rock, and the bottom-heavy throb of hip-hop. Running through it all, suggested more by horns than drums, is the insistent, rolling groove of a New Orleans parade. At precise moments during “Hurricane,” a track from his Grammy-nominated 2010 CD “Backatown,” Andrews enticed the crowd to shout “Hey!” For most dancing in the audience, this must seem a typical hands-in-air dance-club impulse. But when I spoke to Andrews about the construction of the song and about that “Hey!” he said he was thinking of that moment — anyone who attends Sunday second-line parades in New Orleans knows it — when the Rebirth Brass Band issues its call and the second-liners respond.

To conclude his set, Shorty waded into a sea of supportive arms, crowd-surfing as he often likes to do. Twenty-three years after that first Jazz Fest experience, he was passed from the stage, not to it, no longer a boy prodigy but a man on the cusp of stardom.

NEW YORK — Rumors of a fading Impressionist and Modern market evaporated Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s season opener that pulled in a solid and reassuring $230-million tally, nicking the $235.1-million high estimate. 

Thirty-seven of the 60 lots that sold made over one million dollars and of those, four made over $15 million. Just eleven of the 71 lots offered failed to find buyers for a respectable 15.5 percent buy-in rate by lot and just percent by value. (Though brisk, the sale lagged behind last May's $330.5-million result, super-charged by Edvard Munch's “The Scream,” which sold for $119.9 million.)

Two artist records were set, including Georges Braque’s stunning, color-saturated Fauve-period landscape, “Paysage a la Ciotat” (1907), which sold to New York dealer Emmanuel DiDonna of Blain DiDonna for $15,845,000 (est. $10-15 million). The work last sold at auction at Sotheby’s New York in November 2000 for $3,085,750, and tonight was one of just two works that carried so-called third-party guarantees, assuring a sale, no matter what the outcome.

“The Impressionist and Modern market is alive and thriving,” said Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s department head, immediately following the marathon two-and-a-quarter-hour sale, also noting with a pinch of dry humor that “the buyers haven’t all moved over to contemporary art yet.”

The engine that drove the evening was a fresh-to-market group of 20 works from the estate of New York collectors Alex andElisabeth Lewyt, whose time capsule trove of paintings primarily acquired in the 1950s made $88.6 million of the overall total, compared to pre-sale expectations of $58.9-84.7 million. (Estimates do not include the chunky buyer’s premium that is added to the so-called hammer price, after the auctioneer knocks down the lot.)

The Lewyts’ exceptional and rare cover lot, Paul Cezanne’s gravity defying and perfectly composed still life, “Les Pommes” (1889-90), sold to an otherwise anonymous telephone bidder for $41,605,000 (est. $25-35 million) and the couple’s early Amedeo Modigliani masterwork, “L’Amazone” (1909), featuring a confident woman dressed in an orange riding jacket and black gloves, made $25,925,000, selling to another telephone bidder (est. $20-30 million).

It wasn’t just paintings that made huge prices but works on paper and sculpture as well, including the Lewyts’ dreamy and iconic Marc Chagall, “Anmal Dans Les Fleurs,” a gouache, watercolor, pastel, and oil on paper from 1952-59 which sold to another telephone for a rousing $4,757,000 (est. $1-1.5 million).

Later in the evening, Honore Daumier’s brilliant cariacature, “Les Avocats-Let Parquet des Avocats,” another work on paper from the early 1860s — offered by the storied John T. Dorrance, Jr. family collection — hit a record $2,629,000 (est. $600-800,000). Miami Marlins’s baseball franchise owner and well-known dealer/collector Jeffrey Loria was the underbidder. He threw up his hands in frustration after a final victorious bid from a telephone competitor, then swiftly exited the salesroom.

In the sculpture arena, a profusely documented, lifetime bronze cast of Auguste Rodin’s “Le Penseur, Taille de la Porte dit Moyen modele” (1906), originally from the collection of newspaper baron Ralph Pulitzer, sold to Oslo dealer Ben Frija of Galleri K after a long bidding duel for $15,285,000 (est. $10-15 million). “It’s a fabulous cast,” said Frija as he exited the salesroom, “and I am so excited for my client who was on the phone with me.” Coincidentally, Frija disclosed that he was also the buyer of the same Rodin back in 1995 on behalf of tonight’s unidentified seller.

In contrast to the heavy bronze, a lithe and unique 27½-inch-high painted metal Pablo Picasso sculpture, “Sylvette” (1954), sold to New York collector Donald Bryant for $13,605,000 (est. $12-18 million). “I was kind of wishing it didn’t get to $12 million (before the premium),” said Bryant as he turned in his plastic bidding paddle just outside the salesroom, “and that was my last call.”

Reveling in his new acquisition, Bryant, who also owns a 1932 Picasso painting, naughtily added, “The fun part of this is when your wife has a heart attack about the price.”

Another strong Picasso contender was the late and lively oil-on-canvas “Buste d’homme,” painted on September 27, 1969. It sold for $9,685,000 (est. $5-7 million). It appeared possible that rap master LL Cool J (short for Ladies Love Cool James), of late the co-creator of the controversial single “Accidental Racist,” was the buyer. Unmistakable in his grey hoody and wool cap, and semi-hidden in a private skybox above the salesroom, the rapper belted out bids to a Sotheby’s executive manning a phone in the salesroom. Four other bidders competed for the Picasso.

Also in the celebrity mix, Madonna’s charitable offering, the crisply executed Fernand Leger, “Trois femmes a la table rouge” (1921), which was being sold by the star to benefit the Ray of Light Foundation in support of girls’ education, sold for $7,165,000 (est. $5-7 million). Madonna acquired the painting at Sotheby’s New York in May 1990 for $3.4 million.

No matter where you looked, prices seemed relatively strong, as noted by London dealer Jonathan Green of Richard Green Gallery, who snapped up Henri-Edmond Cross’s Divisionist composition, “Printemps Rose” (1908-09) for $1,205,000 (est. $800,000-1.2 million). “Top paintings make top prices,” said Green, moments after the auction. “There are no cracks in the market. It’s not mad but it’s good and strong. I don’t see a problem.”

Green also underbid Claude Monet’s “Automne a Jeufosse” (1884) that sold for $4,869,000 (est. $2-3 million). “Even mediocre Monets are selling for a lot of money,” opined Nanne Dekking, vice-president of Wildenstein & Company.

The Impressionist Modern action resumes Wednesday evening at Christie’s.

– NYC Mayoral Candidate Flip-Flops on Anti-Art Record: When Joe Lhota was Rudy Giuliani's deputy mayor he led a public crusade against the Brooklyn Museum for exhibiting "The Holy Virgin Mary," a Chris Ofili painting whose materials include elephant dung and collage elements from pornographic magazines, as part of its 1999 exhibition "Sensation," a conflict that later resulted in a lawsuit between Giuliani and the museum. But the Republican candidate for mayor now regrets that dispute — despite maintaining that he did not regret it just over a month ago. "Do I regret doing it? Yeah, I regret doing it. And I regret how embarrassing it was at the time," he said at a forum for mayoral candidates yesterday. "I still in my heart of hearts, I hate that people's religions are desecrated." [Daily News]

– Dealers Embroiled in Could-Be Caravaggio Feud: After the Upper East Side gallerist Jack Tanzer died in 1983, his friend and fellow art dealer Warren Adelson carried on his two-decade quest to prove that a painting he'd bought on the cheap was in fact a long-lost Caravaggio, but eight years and $500,000 later Tanzer's son Edward Tanzer says the authentication quest has got to stop. "The efforts and finances expended by Adelson to authenticate the painting have not been reasonable and have caused the continuing postponement of the distribution of the estate," Tanzer wrote in a court filing. "[Adelson] believes that achieving such attribution of ownership will produce such a substantial benefit to all persons interested that the expense will be more than justified." [DNAinfo]

– Restoration of Freud's Couch Crowd-Funded: The Freud Museum in London apparently can't afford the £5,000 it needs to restore the therapy couch of legendary psychoanalyst — and Surrealist muse — Sigmund Freud, which was given to him by one of his patients, Mrs. Benvenisti, around 1890 in Vienna, so it has launched a public campaign to raise funds for the repairs. The couch, which hosted many of his most famous patients — including Isa Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, and Sergueï Pankejeff— "is probably the best-known piece of furniture in the world," according to Freud Museum director Dawn Kemp. [Le Figaro]

– Dutch Dismiss Nazi Loot Claim: The Netherlands' Dutch Restitutions Committee, which processes requests pertaining to the repatriation of artworks with dubious provenance, has turned down the claims filed by the grandchildren of a close friend of Jewish industrialist Richard Semmel on a pair of Old Master paintings they say were sold under duress in 1933 after the Berlin-based businessman fled the Nazis. The committee said the claimants' attachment to the works "carries less weight" than that of the museums where they now hang. "These grandchildren are not related to Richard Semmel, never knew him and have no recollections of the paintings," the committee said in a statement. [Bloomberg]

– Munich Museum Opens Norman Foster Pavilion: The Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich reopened today after being closed since 2009, when it began a $77.7-million renovation of its Tuscan villa-style home, which was formerly the residence of artist Franz von Lenbach. The renovation's major addition, a new entrance pavilion designed by Norman Foster, will greet the institution's near half-million annual visitors, who come to see the Lenbachhaus's prized collection of works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and fellow members of the pioneering Expressionist faction known as the Blue Rider group. [Bloomberg]

– Collector Unveils Major Museum Plan in the Rockies: The Canadian collector Michael Audain has revealed architectural plans for a museum to exhibit his holdings in Whistler — Canada's Aspen — a 55,000-square-foot, low, L-shaped, $30-million building designed by John Patkau that both the patron and designer promise will blend into its majestic natural surroundings, despite having nearly doubled in size since the initial proposal was approved. "Our architect showed us where he would eventually build or design an addition for us and I thought, well, it probably makes sense to build the addition right away because it would be so expensive to do it later, so we may as well do it now," Audain said. "I think it’s still a pretty nice building that fits right into the lovely spruce forest." [Globe and Mail]

– Sotheby's Selling Artists' Letters: Today Sotheby's New York will auction off a set of blue-chip artists' less well-known works: their letters, whose margins, backs, and paragraphs are dotted with drawings, ranging from a trio of prunes Edouard Manet drew on a postcard in 1880 to a grim sketch of a black cat from a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo four days before he committed suicide. In a piece of Paul Gauguin's correspondence from 1984 included in the sale, which was addressed to one of his patrons, the artist apologizes for his compulsive doodling: "Excuse the barbarism of this little picture. Certain dispositions of my spirit are probably the cause." [Telegraph]

– Katarina Burin Takes Boston ICA's Prize: The conceptual artist and Harvard faculty member Katarina Burin has won the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston's 2013 James and Audrey Foster Prize, a $25,000 biennial award given to a local artist. Burin's winning installation features architectural sketches, models, and furniture designs by a fictional Czech architect. "Her ambition was incredible, to create this atmosphere of these fictitious characters," said MIT List Visual Arts Center director and Foster Prize jury member Paul Ha. "And just as an exhibition, it really shined. I think there is that moment where the viewer discovers, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a fictional character’ and you go beyond that and end up looking at the objects just like any other exhibition." [Boston Globe]

– Will Field Museum Be Put Out to Pasture?: Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, regarded by many as one of the foremost research museums in the country, is facing millions of dollars in bond debt after issuing bonds in 2002 to help fund an underground expansion and renovation and then seeing its endowment shrink dramatically during the financial crisis. "If you think you've got to cross the street to get to the restaurant on the other side, and you get run over by a car you think — why did I ever want to go to that restaurant?" said Field Museum CEO Richard Lariviere. "And we've been hit by a car like every other institution… At the time that those bonds were issued, all the smart people were doing that and no one could have anticipated what would happen in 2002 and then again in 2008." [NPR]

– China's First Climate Change Art Show: Cape Farewell, an arts organization with an eye towards raising awareness about climate change through art by sending artists on expeditions to at-risk regions, is making its debut in China with "U-n-f-o-l-d," a show of works by 25 artists who participated in excursions to the High Arctic and the Andes. The exhibition, including works by Francesca Galeazzi, Nathan Gallagher, Clare Twoney, Adriane Colburn, and more, will be on view at Beijing's CAFA Art Museum and then at Nanjing University of the Arts. [Press Release]

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For breaking news throughout the day, check our blog IN THE AIR.

Call them the Malevolent Seven: the little band of skeletons armed with sword, spears, and shields, who, born from Hydra’s teeth scattered on the ground by Aeëtes, the villainous king of Colchis, rise from the earth in “Jason and the Argonauts,” to attack the appalled Greek hero (Todd Armstrong) and two of his men. Stills and excerpts from the terrifying sequence are all over the Internet today — there is no more fitting tribute to the memory of its creator, Ray Harryhausen, who has died at the age of 92 in London.

I was an infant when – unattended! – I saw “Jason and the Argonauts,” on its first British run, at the Ritz, an art-deco cinema in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, in 1963. The English Channel, a few hundred yards away, never gleamed as bluely as the Mediterranean on which Jason’s Argo sailed, but the small, grey coastal town inevitably became entwined with my memories of Harryhausen’s nightmarish fantasy. The Ritz has long since been demolished, but the evil mythological platoon still haunts the spot.

It wasn’t just the skeletons’ grins (or grimaces) that left their mark, but the way they moved in synchronized formation, their rhythmic jerkiness contributing to their menace. Harryhausen noted in his autobiography that, in the Jason legend, “rotting corpses” assailed Jason and his comrades, but it was decided to replace them with skeletons in case the film was awarded a certificate preventing children from seeing it. (Officially, they were made up of Spartoí, sown men, whom Aeëtes forced Jason to plant.)

One of Harryhausen’s skeleton swordsman had been seen before, attacking the hero of “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1957), and he must have felt the workout was successful. He took four-and-a-half months to animate the “Sinbad” survivor and his six colleagues for “Jason.”

“Each of the model skeletons was about eight to 10 inches high, and six of the seven were made for the sequence,” the animator recorded in “Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life” (2003, Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton). “The remaining one was a veteran from ‘The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,’ slightly repainted to match the new members of the family. When all the skeletons have manifested themselves to Jason and his men, they are commanded by Aeëtes to ‘Kill, kill, kill them all,’ and we hear an unearthly scream.

“What follows is a sequence of which I am very proud. I had three men fighting seven skeletons, and each skeleton had five appendages to move in each separate frame of film. This meant at least 35 animation movements, each synchronized to the actors’ movements. Some days I was producing less than one second of screen time.”

It wasn’t just the skeletons that made “Jason and the Argonauts” so frightening. When the Argonauts Hercules and Hylas rob the Cretan treasure chamber of the Gods, they disturb the giant bronze statue, Talos, its guardian, who crouches on a plinth above the vault. It’s the way he slowly swivels his head to look at these human ants that puts him in the same league of horror as the Golem, Nosferatu, and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster. It was how Harryhausen moved his creations as much as the creations themselves that makes them trouble the small hours of the night.

Watch the skeleton fight from “Jason and the Argonauts”: 

When Matthew Sharp and Amanda Slotover founded Frieze magazine in 1991, it quickly became the dominant voice in the British contemporary art world. In 2003 they debuted Frieze London, the international contemporary art fair that’s now an art world staple. The inaugural version of Frieze New York, in 2012, was by all accounts a success, praised by the press and visitors alike. The fair’s directors recently sat down with Ashton Cooper to talk about their much-anticipated return to Randall’s Island, the inevitable comparisons to the Armory Show, and everyone’s favorite topic — food.

What’s new at Frieze New York this year?

AMANDA SHARP: It sounds simple, but galleries bring new art each time. You don’t know what’s going to be there until you get there — it’s always unexpected. There’s something rather lovely that’s happened this year, which is that it feels as if New York has taken us even closer to its heart.  We have more New York galleries in our second year than we did in our first, which makes me, as a New Yorker, very proud.

MATTHEW SLOTOVER: And some major new ones as well, right?

A.S.: Absolutely. Marian Goodman, Luhring Augustine, and also at the other end, really critically, people like Real Fine Arts. You’ve got to have the emerging voices and the established voices to get the balance of the fair where you would like it to be.

How have you gone about differentiating Frieze from other fairs?

A.S.: I think we did something pretty significant putting it on Randall’s Island. We’ve gone to an area that is intrinsically part of New York, and actually part of Manhattan, and yet it’s unfamiliar to many Manhattanites. We’ve made a bit of an adventure.

M.S.: It was a huge risk, and I think people thought we were absolutely crazy and they’d never heard of it. I had taxi drivers who’d lived in the city 75 years and said, “I’ve never been here before.” It was an amazing reaction when people actually showed up. People said it was the best art fair experience that they’d ever had — people who’d been going to art fairs for 20 years.

How do you think Frieze has impacted the Armory Show?

M.S.: When we started the fair, there were only about 40 galleries that overlapped. For a lot of the galleries that came, it was the first time they’d ever shown in New York, including some big galleries, actually. If you really analyze it, it’s quite different.

You managed to tap into New York foodie culture in a big way.  How did you pick the vendors?

M.S.: We know our people love food, but we didn’t quite realize how much until we did this fair. It got such a huge amount of attention. I don’t live in New York, but I think one of the interesting things was that we sort of had uptown, downtown, and Brooklyn. All those places in one place. I know I had friends of friends who were not in the art world who thought, “Who are these Brits coming over doing this fair?” And then when they saw the restaurants, they said, “Okay, they really understand the city.”

What events are you looking forward to this year?

M.S.: Several of the galleries are doing special solo projects in the fair. Marian Goodman is going to have a Tino Sehgal performance work. Greengrassi and Andrew Kreps are joining together and doing a Pae White and Roe Ethridge stand, which I’m really excited about. The best galleries, making the most effort, with the best artists — that is the key thing. So anything we can do to provide the right context for that, that’s really our job.

Watch ARTINFO video on commissioned works at Frieze New York:

Depeche Mode kicked off their world tour in Israel marking the release of their 13th studio album.  The British synthpop pioneers - singer Dave Gahan, guitarist-keyboardist Martin Gore and keyboardist Andy Fletcher - are marking their fourth decade in the music industry after debuting as part of Britain's New Wave scene in the 1980s.

It was like being sent back in a time machine. Denizens of New York’s once-vibrant downtown scene gathered on the Bowery last night to celebrate the life and work of musician/artist Brian Eno, honored by the Kitchen as part of its annual spring gala. At $500 a ticket, the event had its fair share of upper-crust guests, evident by the parade of drivers lined up the block, waiting patiently, smoking cigarettes. As the guest of honor arrived and was quickly ushered into an area for awkward photos, a few attendees chatted about the basketball game happening uptown, while another wondered aloud if Lou Reed was going to show up. Michael Stipe stayed closely huddled with a small group, looking standoffish. The room was too crowded to have anything resembling a normal conversation, but we managed to spot David Byrne’s electroshocked white coiffure bouncing up and down as he made his way from one side of the room to the other.

Eno, or his work, is not immediately synonymous with New York in the way that many of the other guests — Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass— are. But few realize that Eno spent a number of years in the late 1970s living and working here, and “No New York,” the compilation he produced in 1978, is the defining document of the post-punk music scene. He’s been all over New York in the past few weeks, giving lectures as part of the Red Bull Music Academy and premiering “77 Million Paintings,” a multimedia installation at the former location of Cafe Rouge.

We missed the dinner, but when we arrived to the after party the dance floor was almost completely empty. Many of the guests elected to stay in their seats or head for the exit as soon as the meal was over, ignoring Chances With Wolves, the DJ duo for the evening, entirely, even though they were playing a doo-wop influenced set in a nod to Eno’s admitted love of the genre. Speaking of doo-wop, when we ran into filmmaker Sam Green, who recently performed at the Kitchen, he told us the Persuasions, the a cappella group that Eno has cited as a tremendous influence, took the stage during dinner, and even convinced Eno to come up and sing a song with them, just like your uncle does at weddings to embarrass the whole family.

The calm affair didn’t so much end as slowly wilt; more people were waiting to get a cup of coffee than a last drink at the bar by the end of the night. We walked out into the neighborhood where many of the artists present once lived — a formerly-gritty area that some of the people in the room helped popularize — now lit up in the night by the glow of cocktail lounges and luxury apartment complexes. 

NEW YORK — After last night's robust Sotheby's sale, the Impressionist and Modern market continued to swing at Christie’s Wednesday evening, though at a slightly lower volume, totaling $158,505,000 for the 44 lots that sold. The performance fell midway between pre-sale expectations of $131.4-$190.5 million, while only three of the 47 lots offered failed to sell, making for an impressive buy-in rate of just six percent by lot and ten percent by value.

Thirty-six lots sold for over one million dollars, and of those, four hurdled the ten million dollar mark. An artist record was set by the cover lot, Chaim Soutine’s charming “Le petit Patissier,” showing a pink-cheeked figure clad all in white from circa 1927, which sold on a single bid to an anonymous telephone bidder for $18,043,750 (est. $16-20 million).

This particular Soutine, certainly the first to merit being an auction house cover lot, carried a third-party guarantee, meaning that Christie’s guaranteed the work but found an outside financial backer to take on the risk and assure the painting would sell. It last sold at Sotheby's New York in October 1977 for $180,000.

Overall, the sale was 35 percent higher than last May’s tally of $117 million but lagged far behind its arch rival Sotheby’s Tuesday evening sale, which made $230 million. Of course, Sotheby’s had a big leg up thanks to choice estate property from the collection of Alex and Elisabeth Lewyt, which pumped $88.6 million into the tally. No such luck here, with just a smattering of estate property, such as Pablo Picasso’s Surrealist, index-card-sized “Composition (Figure feminine sur une plage)” (1927), which sold from the Andy Williams collection for $1,443,750 (est. $800,000-1.2 million).

Still, bidders were game for big prices, such as for a sleeper Amedeo Modigliani, the early and fetching “La Juive” (1907-08), featuring the mysterious American sitter Maud Abrantes— most likely the artist’s lover — which soared to $6,843,750 (est. $2-3 million).

The buyer, seated on the aisle towards the back of the salesroom, recorded the bidding battle with his iPhone, holding it in one hand while bidding with his other, even taking a self-portrait shot after his winning hammer bid of $6 million. Later on, he declined to give his name though he admitted he was French, living in Switzerland, and the proud owner of other Modiglianis.

The incident reminded this observer of certain Japanese bidders during the late 1980s art boom who brought film crews to document their buying sprees at auction. The technology is better now.

Relatively early works by great artists seemed in high demand as the decidedly somber and frankly depressing Egon Schiele painting, “Selbstbildnis mit Modell (Fragment)” (1913), consigned by the Neue Galerie in New York, sold for $11,323,750 (est. $6-9 million). Marc Chagall’s joyous and limber “Les trios acrobats” (1926) fetched $13,003,750 (est. $6-9 million). Stephane Connery of Connery Pissarro Seydoux was the underbidder.

Impressionist-era pictures — often disdained these days by a market that seemingly prefers 20th-century kit — performed exceedingly well, as illustrated by Claude Monet’s verdant landscape, “Chemin” (1885), which sold to San Francisco art advisor Steven Platzman of Addison Fine Arts for $5,163,750 (est. $2-3 million). The picture last sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 1991 for $770,000. As the bids blasted past expectations, a chorus of hallelujah-type shouts emanated from a skybox above the salesroom, no doubt coming from the seller’s entourage.

Platzman also outbid the room and telephones for Alfred Sisley’s atmospheric “Pommiers en fleurs-Louvecinnes” (1873) for $2,363,750, and took Berthe Morisot’s evocative interior scene, “Dans la sale a manger” (ca. 1895) for $483,750 (est. $500-700,000). London dealer Thomas Gibson was the underbidder on the Sisley.

“I work as an art advisor for people out West,” said Platzman as he headed out of the salesroom, tailed by a number of dealers desperate to give him their business cards, “and I help them make decisions about what they buy.” He said each of his purchases were for different clients.

Another Monet, the tranquil plein air scene “Argenteuil, fin d’apres-mid” (1872), sold for $6,059,750 (est. $5-7 million). It barely outdistanced its previous result at auction, which was in February 2011 at Sotheby’s London, where it made £3.4 million ($5.47 million).

Back on the Modern front, Picasso’s large and authoritative still life, “Madnoline et portee de musique,” in oil and sand on canvas from 1923, sold to London dealer Libby Howie for $9,195,750 (est. 8-12 million). Howie said she bought it on behalf of a European client who had been looking for a Picasso from this period. “I thought I was incredibly lucky to get it,” said Howie as she turned in her bidding paddle outside the salesroom. “It was the perfect balance of a still life, and it’s such a sober, austere, and grand picture.”

Another modern entry, Joan Miro’s dark and ominous abstraction, “Peinture” (1933), painted in Barcelona before the advent of the Spanish Civil War and part of an important series of 18 related works, sold to a telephone bidder for $10,987,750 (est. $10-15 million).

Christie’s suffered one major casualty with its beautiful but overestimated Fauve-period Andre Derain, “Madame Matisse au komono,” painted in the summer of 1905. It died with a phantom chandelier bid of $13 million (est. $15-20 million).

At any rate, the auction house appeared pleased with its performance with department head Brooke Lampley noting, “This is a really educated and intelligent marketplace.”  

The evening action resumes Tuesday with contemporary art at Sotheby’s.

Delmer Daves (1904-77), one of Hollywood’s most accomplished directors of Westerns, is seldom mentioned in the same breath as such tough-guy auteurs as John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Henry Hathaway, and William Wellman, or the more urbane Howard Hawks. More appreciated in France than here, Daves more readily fits in a group with Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher, as well as the underrated Gordon Douglas.

Daves did his finest work as a maker of a psychological Westerns that, like Mann’s in particular, harnessed dramatic scenery to reflect inner states of mind. Much has been made of Ford’s evolving attitude to Native Americans, from racist to sympathetic. However, Daves’s humane depiction of the Apaches in “Broken Arrow” (1950) and of Comanche ways, espoused by Richard Widmark’s renegade in “The Last Wagon” (1956), was far more progressive. The Irish-American grandson of pioneers, Daves had lived among the Navajo and Hopi as a teen.

It’s a good moment for Daves. The Criterion Collection’s release next Tuesday of “Jubal” (1956) and “3:10 to Yuma” (1957) coincides with the screening at New York’s Anthology Film Archives of “Pride of the Marines” (1945), “The Red House” (1947), “Broken Arrow,” “The Last Wagon,” and “Cowboy” (1958). These five films were curated by the critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold for the mini-retrospective “Overdue: Delmer Daves” (May 10-16), an excellent primer of the director’s work.

It could have easily been expanded to include the Bogart-and-Bacall film noir “Dark Passage” (1947); “Demetrius and the Gladiators” (1954), Daves’s perverse sequel to Henry Koster’s “The Robe” (1953); the Modoc War Western “Drum Beat” (1954); and “The Hanging Tree” (1959), Daves’s spatially complex last Western, which shares an Oedipal theme with André Gide’s “La Symphonie Pastorale” (and Jean Delannoy’s 1946 adaptation).

Daves was an impeccable metteur-en-scène. His use of high crane shots that looked down on men swarming across hostile terrains, or isolated individuals in threatened space, was exemplary. There’s a troubling poetry in his work that has been neglected because, unlike Ford, he focused on everyday struggles and dangers, eschewing the mythic. The controlled luridness in his work — especially in “The Hanging Tree” — radiates emotional turmoil, and he was an expressive user of color. Check out his dangerous sunsets.

Mann’s most frequent Western star was James Stewart; Boetticher’s was Randolph Scott. Daves directed Stewart as a pro-Indian pacifist in the groundbreaking “Broken Arrow” but found his masculine archetype in Glenn Ford, who starred in “Jubal,” “3:10 to Yuma,” and “Cowboy.” The latter, extrapolated from Frank Harris’s memoirs (and suitably bowdlerized), grippingly depicts the exchange of values between a ruthless cattleman (played by Ford) and a civilized hotel clerk (Jack Lemmon as Harris) who joins him on a drive.

There’s a frank eroticism in Daves’s movies that John Ford approached only in “The Quiet Man” (1952). In “The Red House,” Edward G. Robinson’s farmer has unconsciously transferred his thwarted desire for his dead love to her daughter, his ward; the rustic film noir unfolds in a labyrinthine haunted wood, a symbol for Robinson’s psyche, that turns it into a demented fairy tale.

In “Pride of the Marine,” the palpable unspoken physical attraction between the brusque welder John Garfield and the ladylike Eleanor Parker grows into a love that enables them to transcend his emasculating self-pity when he returns blind from combat in Guadalcanal (the tense foxhole scenes in the movie are as good as anything filmed by Samuel Fuller).

Whereas Glenn Ford’s characters had been manipulated by Rita Hayworth’s in “Gilda” and Gloria Grahame’s in “Human Desire,” Daves made the stolid-looking actor the object of desire for Valerie French in “Jubal” and Felicia Farr in “3:10 to Yuma”; his outlaw’s seduction of Farr’s saloon girl-turned-bartender and their post-coital idyll was uncommonly adult for a 1950s Western. (Ford’s son and biographer Peter Ford talks about his father in an interview on Criterion’s “3:10” disc.)

Farr’s pioneer similarly gives herself to Widmark’s virile Comanche Todd in “The Last Wagon,” in which the younger folk’s dialogue is laced with boldly humorous sexual metaphors. Far from lewd, the candor was refreshing, an admission of desires and the need to fulfill them that, beyond Howard Hughes and Hawks’s “The Outlaw” (1943) and King Vidor’s “Duel in the Sun” (1946), few Westerns had allowed. Daves made adult movies that were robust, sexy, politically engaged, and didn’t flinch from exploring neuroses. 

About an hour into “Iron Man 3,” my excitement over my assignment to see all of this summer’s blockbusters and write about the experience had dimmed considerably. That couldn’t have been further from the case early last week, when I pored through the summer movie schedule, circling what looked dumb and fun or at least like it would make for a pleasant distraction on a sweltering summer afternoon. But as Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark traded friendly jabs with his newest partner, a precocious, wisecracking middle-schooler named Harley, I remembered why I only saw two of last year’s tent pole features in theaters (“Avengers” and “Dark Knight Rises,” if you were wondering). The sudden friendship made no sense, like pretty much everything else in the Shane Black-directed movie.

It’s not that all blockbuster movies are bad — just look at this for proof — but they tend to be focus-grouped-to-death productions lacking in personality or inspiration, instead consisting solely of beautiful actors inhabiting slick sets while things around them explode. That’s why a cute kid gets squeezed into the third entry in the “Iron Man” franchise, when really, you’d think Stark would call on Captain America or Thor to aid him in defeating the Osama bin Laden-like Mandarin (played wonderfully by Ben Kingsley). It’s a blatant, and completely unnecessary, grab for younger audiences, and something that makes it next to impossible to engage with what’s occurring onscreen. (And yes, I realize I am complaining about the lack of logic in a superhero film. That’s not lost on me.)

Therein lies the problem with “Iron Man 3.” There’s an overarching plot, but stare at it for too long and it crumbles. That’s not surprising when it comes to summer movie fare, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating — especially given the talent involved in the film. In addition to Downey Jr. and Kingsley, there’s Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and the much less annoying than you’d expect Gwenyth Paltrow. It’s an impressive cast, but the actors don’t have much to work with.

Which is a shame, because I thought “Iron Man 3” would be able to rise above its cape-wearing brethren due to the presence of director and co-writer Black. Once one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters, Black helped create the blueprint for the modern action film with 1987’s “Lethal Weapon.” There were some high-profile flops after that, but his directorial debut, 2005’s “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” which also starred Downey Jr., was one of last decade’s overlooked gems. No, it wasn’t a perfect movie, and there’s probably more misogyny and homophobia than you’d expect from such a fondly remembered film, but the exceedingly clever neo-noir has become a cult favorite for a reason. I’d hoped that Black would inject the “Iron Man” franchise with some much needed wit and energy. But aside from some quippy exchanges, there’s nothing about the film that feels remotely fresh. There are some new Iron Man armors flying around, but that’s it.

It’s here that I should point out that despite its numerous flaws, “Iron Man 3” isn’t a complete failure. There are some visceral thrills, a requirement of any blockbuster, and the audience around me was fully checked-in from beginning to end (there were audible gasps during what I thought was one of the movie’s more predictable scenes). There’s also a wonderful scene with Kingsley that I don’t want to ruin, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in any superhero movie. For five minutes it feels as if Black is going to turn his film into something gleefully wicked, but then nothing’s done with it. Despite that scene, and a complete willingness to tap into the emotions connected to terrorism — the villain starts things off by utilizing human bombs — the movie never tries be anything more than crowd-pleasing fluff. Summer blockbusters don’t need to say something intelligent about the times we live in, but the fact that “Iron Man 3” exploits serious issues in this context feels gross and manipulative.

Regardless, I suspect that Marvel and Disney are thrilled with the resulting film, especially since it grossed $175.3 million last weekend and has already amassed more than a $700 million in global ticket sales. Audiences want to watch pretty people doing cool things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. These movies are supposed to be entertaining, but that doesn’t make the experience any more satisfying. Which is a feeling I’m guessing I’m going to have to get used to this summer.

“Iron Man 3”

Director: Shane Black

Writers: Drew Pearce and Shane Black

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kinglsey

Opening Weekend Gross: $175.3 million

As opposed to their Armory Week “curator-driven fair” Spring/Break, Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori have tempered debauchery with themes of nostalgia and financial gloom in their latest presentation at Soho’s Old School, Wish Meme. “We opened it up to people who aren’t independent curators,” Kelly said, “and a lot of the artists from Spring/Break wanted to curate. So it’s a lot of the same people, but it’s different.”

On the top floor of the former Catholic school, Gori has curated a selection of Kelly’s drawings of art world denizens’ business cards and prints of invitations summoning power players to a dance in her honor. “It’s about monetizing those relationships,” Kelly said. The works are all priced at $150 (or four for $500).

Also on the top floor, Spring/Break alum Myla DalBesio curated the classroom-sized show “Magic Kingdom.” “I’d been thinking a lot about how childhood gets commodified,” DalBesio said, “and how our memories end up being tied to these objects.” In addition to drawings by six-year-old Yung Lenox, the exhibition includes a Mike Tyson quilt by Weston Ulfig priced at $8,500 and a Matt Jones sculpture inspired by the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering ($5,500). Not all the presentations are so playful, though.

“This is the third show I’ve done with Ambre and Andrew,” said David Andrew Flinn, “and it definitely feels like the most mature.” The classroom he curated contributed to the somewhat sober atmosphere, with its walls painted a shade of gray actually called “Ominous,” and stand-out works like a haunting photo triptych by Adam Ianniello ($4,000) and Gerald Collings’s fleshy and formally fantastic painting Ruby, 2011, $8,900).

Fall On Your Sword, the Brooklyn-based new media trio, engaged Wish Meme’s mix of gloom, nostalgia, and sensory delirium with aplomb. Their interactive installation, Blaze of Thunder, put visitors at the helm of a projection in which a toy car tears around a cluttered apartment, each push of a glowing red button triggering a clip of a car crash from a film by the recently-deceased blockbuster filmmaker Tony Scott.

Meanwhile a set of three large abstract canvases by Samuel T. Adams, each priced at $7,000, was the standout in the classroom curated by Adam Mignanelli. Created through a process closer to printmaking, the compositions at first evoked hyperrealist renderings of crinkled aluminum foil, their abstract shininess echoing the show’s themes of nostalgia and financial duress.

The architect duo of Brandt Graves and Carrie McKnelly, who go by thefuturefuture, prototyped an appropriately futuristic currency, Media of Exchange. Consisting of ten pairs of automated drawings and 3-D printed sculptures — available as a full set for $1,999, or piecemeal for $300 each — their project imagines an abstract, open-source kind of cash executed with a palette of children’s markers that makes for a playful but conceptually rigorous synthesis of Wish Meme’s nostalgia-tinged utopianism.

To see images, click on the slideshow.

Cutlog, the edgy French import devoted to emerging artists, is a breath of fresh air on New York’s fair circuit. Three floors of au courant, accessibly priced artwork from nearly 50 local and international galleries fill the gritty Clemente Soto Vélez Center, a former public school turned multipurpose cultural center sitting in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge on the Lower East Side.

“We have a tremendous respect for the bigger fairs,” says architect and Guy Reziciner, who joins the fair’s founder Bruno Hadjadj as the co-director of Cutlog’s inaugural New York edition. “But I do think we are unique by being a discovery fair, by bringing many galleries that have never shown in New York, and by offering a platform that lets artists connect with the public and collectors in a new way.”

One work of international note at Cutlog is at New York mainstay White Box, a portrait of two policemen kissing by Russian art provocateurs the Blue Noses Group. The image made headlines when it was part of a show that was banned by Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s government in 2007. Here, it is available for $25,000. Another highlight from White Box is Hans Breder’s haunting nude photograph of Ana Mendieta in her pre-Carl Andre days, priced at $15,000, on reserve at $10,000.

Another work bound to get people talking: controversial performance artist Marni Kotek peddles away on an elliptical exercise machine, recording her postpartum weight loss. Kotek notoriously gave birth last year in Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery as a work of art. Microscope also brought two interactive new media works by artist duo DataSpaceTime, priced in the $3,000 range. Live parrots are on view at the booth of New York’s Fragmental Museum, alongside artist Jordan Doner’s collages of eviscerated fashion magazines, contemporary art catalogs, and old nudie rags. Doner uses his pet birds like paper shredders, tearing up the magazines into confetti-like detritus. “They’re making nests for a mating that’s not going to happen,” he said. “Aspirational luxury is just like that, it’s for realities that don’t ever materialize.”

Many dealers have foregone the conventional booth format, opting to make use of the Clemente’s eccentric architecture. Dealer Hélène Larcharmoise of Paris’s Galerie Dix9 transformed a black-box dressing room into a “cabinet of curiosities,” featuring Catalin Petrisor’s unnerving paintings of Soviet block architecture, Marion Tampon-Lajariette’s eerie infrared video and video stills, and a claw-foot bathtub installation by Sophia Pompéry. London’s House of Noblemen Gallery fills a classroom with a salon-style exhibition of works on paper by nearly 30 artists. Miami’s Spinello Projects dedicates space to a performance installation by Naama Tsabar featuring wailing amps and felt instruments. In another performance work titled “Visceral Transcendence,” Phoebe Rathmell arranged thousands of toothpicks to build an ephemeral floor sculpture, courtesy of New York’s Garis & Hahn gallery.

On opening night, the raucous festivities spilled into the parking lot, where Brooklyn-based performance art rabble-rousers the Fantastic Nobodies gave out free carwashes while dressed as the Village People. Nearby, London’s The July 16 Gallery presented Russian street artist Timofei Radya’s “Stability,” a colossal pyramid made from police anti-riot shields. With affordable artworks, a hefty performance program, and young, experimental energy, Cutlog is without a doubt the new cool kid on the block. It remains to be seen whether collectors will join the party. 

To see images, click on the slideshow.