NEW YORK — Following a candlelit stairway to the lower level of Chelsea’s Hotel Americano on Friday night, guests encountered a chic, intimate soiree of artists and scenesters celebrating the opening Tobias Rehberger's sculptural art-bar, the Bar Oppenheimer. Man of the week Hans-Ulrich Obrist hosted the party along with Rirkrit Tiravanjia and dealer Pilar Corrias, while Nate Lowman, Matthew Higgs, and Andrew Hale took turns on tables. The Oppenheimer, modeled after Rehberger’s favorite Frankfurt hang-out, will be open for cocktails through July 14.

To see photos of Tobias Rehberger's Bar Oppenheimer, click on the slideshow. 

NEW YORK — Sold to benefit conservation projects for endangered species, the 33 donated art works in the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s “The 11th Hour Auction” at Christie’s realized a whopping $38.5 million Monday evening. It was an excellent portent for both endangered species and the art market, as 13 artist records were set in an almost raucous salesroom, giddy with celebrity life, good will, and a shaved-down buyer’s premium of just five percent. (The event was organized by Christie's international specialist Loic Gouzer.)

The tally crushed pre-sale expectations of $13-18 million, with a spree of wild spending on choice works, ranging from the cover lot, Robert Longo close-up of a tiger’s head, “Untitled (Leo),” which sold to pharmaceutical magnate and philanthropist Stewart Rahr for a record $1,575,000 (est. $250-350,000), to Mark Grotjahn’s richly layered “Untitled (Standard Lotus No. II, Bird of Paradise, Tiger Mouth Face” (2012), which went to Larry Gagosian for a staggering — and record-setting — $6,510,000 ($1.5-2.5 million). All 33 lots sold for a total of $33.3 million, with an unidentified donor kicking in $5 million and other contributors accounting for an additional $500,000.

Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen was having fun at the rostrum, cajoling bids and needling clients, even telling the room “let’s not let him have it” after Gagosian’s leading bid on the Grotjahn. When the price for the Grotjahn easily hurdled Francois Odermatt’s early $2-million bid, Pylkannen politely asked DiCaprio, seated in the front row, “Is that ok?”

But it was serious business, especially for the film star’s 15-year-old foundation. DiCaprio, the star of the new Hollywood film “The Great Gatsby,” addressed the crowd before the sale, urging the congregants to “bid as if the fate of the planet depends on us.”

Rahr certainly took those words to heart, outgunning others in the room for Elizabeth Peyton’s “Leonardo, February 2013,” featuring a portrait of de Caprio, which made a record $1,050,000 (est. $400-500,000). He also snared Rob Pruitt’s “6:20 pm, Late Summer,” a hulking glitter-and-enamel on canvas work that fetched a record $315,000 (est. $100-150,000).

Caught on the stairway exiting the salesroom, a second or so after dealer Gavin Brown thrust his business card in his hand, explaining he represented the artist, Rahr explained his modus operandi. “I’m like this all my life, period,” the billionaire said. “All I do is philanthropy now, ever since I sold my company. Look it up.”

Though the lion’s share of the works offered were donated by the artists who made them, Christie’s owner Francois Pinault contributed the muscular and menacing Zeng Fanzhi“The Tiger” (2011), which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $5,040,000 (est. $1.5-2.5 million). The tiger theme, referencing one of diCaprio’s major wildlife initiatives — he has established sanctuaries established for species preservation in Nepal — featured throughout the evening. Bidders left the auction room aware that only 3,200 of the great cats remain on the planet.

U.S. buyers could take deductions on their purchases for amounts exceeding the so-called market price of the works, or mid-way between the low and high estimates. One candidate could be “Spider-Man” franchise star Toby McGuire, who bought Sergej Jensen’s “Untitled” (2005), a 106-by-79-inch composition comprised of sewn money bags, for $262,500 (est. $70-100,000).

In a statement after the bidding fireworks had ended, Christie’s characterized the results as “the most important wildlife charity auction ever staged,” which sounds convincing.

DiCaprio, who himself purchased the as-yet-unfinished Takashi Murakami acrylic painting, “Mononoke,” for $735,000 (est. $500-700,000), grabbed the microphone after the last lot — Cady Noland’s “Untitled,” which sold to Tony Shafrazi for for $157,500 (est. $20-30,000) — to say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

– Hopper's "Nighthawks" Diner Discovered: In a long-term investigation to figure out once and for all the location that inspired Edward Hopper's most iconic work, "Nighthawks," writer Christopher Bonanos discovered that the glass-walled corner diner is almost certainly a composite of about four different locations, including Crawford Lunch, a restaurant at the corner of 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue — near Hopper's Washington Square home — and the cigar shop formerly located in the wedge-shaped tip of the Flatiron Building. "People want to find the real diner," Whitney Museum curator Carter Foster said, "but Hopper was a synthesizer." [NYMag]

– Vatican's Venice Plans Revealed: For its first-ever presentation at the Venice Biennale, the Vatican is organizing the exhibition "Creation, Un-Creation, Re-Creation," for which the papacy's culture minister Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi has commissioned three (male) artists to respond to the title's tripartite theme, while Italian painter Tano Festa's 20th-century take on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling will greet visitors to the papal pavilion. Milanese collective Studio Azzurro will take up the "Creation" section, followed by photographer Josef Koudelka tackling "Un-Creation," and Australian painter Lawrence Carroll working on "Re-Creation." [AP, ARTINFO]

– China Destroying Ancient Tibetan Capital: Chinese authorities are in the midst of dismantling the most sacred sites in the ancient Tibetan capital Lhasa as part of a project to transform the city into a tourist destination. Sites being demolished include a number of major Buddhist sites, including the holiest one in Tibet, Jokhang Temple, a monastery that was founded in the 7th century and houses a priceless collection of about 800 sculptures and thousands of painted scrolls. [The Tibet Post]

– Dame Dash Exhibits Kids' Art: Entrepreneur Damon Dash, Jay-Z's former business partner and now the director of Lower East Side gallery Poppington, is looking for fresh young talents — as in fifth-, fourth-, and third-grade talents. His latest exhibition features 13 works by students of the Art School in Brooklyn, each priced at $300 — though no collectors have acquired the emerging artists' work, yet. "I do anything for the kids," Dash said. "I just want to hang with cool people. Even if it’s cool little kids." [Daily News]

– Palestinian Museum's Program Unveiled: Late next year the new Palestinian Museum is due to open in Birzeit after the $11-million building's first stones were laid during a ceremony last month. The museum will initially open with a 32,000-square-foot building including galleries and an amphitheater, before expanding to nearly 100,000 square feet within a decade. "The Palestinian Museum is a political symbol only in so far that it celebrates the accomplishments of the Palestinian people in arts and culture, and that it affirms the presence of Palestinians as a people who have agency, who are productive, who shape their own histories," said director Jack Persekian. "[The museum] is political in the sense that it provides spaces and opportunities for Palestinians to shape their own historical narrative and to engage with it." [TAN]

– U.K.'s First Professional Female Artist Gets Tate Debut: As part of its comprehensive rehanging of its painting collection into a chronological display chronicling 500 years of British art, Tate Britain will unveil a pair of portraits by Mary Beale (1633-1699), who is considered to be the first commercially successful female artist in the U.K. The two paintings, which show the artist's son Bartholomew, were discovered by dealer and art historian James Mulraine in a second-hand store in Paris. [Telegraph]

– Collectors Famished for Celebrity Cakes: The market is ravenous for the leftover birthday and wedding cakes from historical events, like the 1981 nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, or the frosted presidential seal from John F. Kennedy's 1962 birthday celebrations — the latter of which fetched $6,572 at a Heritage Auctions sale in Dallas in 2010. "It’s my holy grail," said Barbara Rusch, a Queen Victoria memorabilia collector who has been trying to buy a slice of the fruit cake from the monarch's 1840 wedding for the past 20 years. [NYT]

– London Tower Becomes a Gallery: Yesterday an exhibition of contemporary art opened in one of the U.K.'s most visited historic attractions, London Tower, with works by 19 artists including Marcel Broodthaers, Hiroshi Sugimoto, James Turrell, and, for good measure, Albrecht Dürer. The exhibition — titled "Dark to Light," on view through May 23, and featuring some works for sale while others are on loan — was the brainchild of art advisor Laurence Dreyfus, with some help from British collector Karen Marr, whose father is the tower's on-site doctor. [TAN]

– Venice Biennale's International Jury Named: The jurors who will bestow the three major prizes during this year's Venice Biennale— one for best national presentation, another for the best artist in Massimiliano Gioni's exhibition "The Encyclopedic Palace," and an emerging artist award — will be Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros curator Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Tate Liverpool artistic director Francesco Manacorda, Tate curator Jessica Morgan (who will be the jury president), independent curator Bisi Silva, and Hammer Museum curator Ali Subotnick. [AiA]

– Neighbors Divided Over Chris Brown Murals: A series of monster murals that recording and visual artist Chris Brown has painted on the exterior walls of his Hollywood Hills estate has pitted his neighbors in the exclusive Los Angeles nabe against one another, most feeling nothing but contempt for the crooner's creepy street art, while at least a few locals like them. "My kids think they're really cool," said Melissa Harrington, who has 6-year-old twins. "They're pretty excited about it… Don't just persecute the guy." [LATimes]

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A Sneak Peek at Highlights From Art Basel Hong Kong, From Murakami to Masriadi

VIDEO: ABBA Museum Opens in Stockholm

VIDEO: Brooklyn Historic Cemetery Celebrates 175 Years with Exhibit

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

Forget Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones. As far as director Chen Shi-Zheng is concerned, the greatest adventurer of them all is Tripitaka, a monk who journeys from China to India in search of Buddha’s Great Scriptures. He is accompanied on his picaresque adventures by Pigsy, the Dragon Prince, and, more mischievously, the Monkey King, who keeps getting the group in and out of trouble. Audiences will be able to judge whether or not this is the greatest story ever told when “Monkey: Journey to the West,” Chen’s unique hybrid of opera and circus arts, opens the Lincoln Center Festival on July 6. The 100-minute spectacle, with music by Damon Albarn (lead singer of Blur) and design by Jamie Hewitt, is based on the 16th-century novel by Wu Cheng’en and features a cast of dozens of singers, acrobats, contortionists, dancers, and martial artists.

“I have loved this book since I was a child,” said the Chinese-born director, best known in the United States for having directed the epic, 19-hour “Peony Pavilion” for the Lincoln Center Festival in 1999. (It returned last year in a two-hour version.) “Unlike other stories of heroes on a quest, ‘Monkey’ is a story of enlightenment. This is not about concrete achievement but the ability to articulate one’s soul.”

Despite the spiritual goal of this eccentric band of travelers, the show itself is full of profane, even racy, incident — Pigsy has a lust for food, women, and wine — and there are battles galore, including ones against the Spider Woman and the Skeleton Demon. Chen says that the cartoon elements in the story led to the choice of Albarn and Hewitt, famous for their virtual band Gorillaz, launched in 2001. The pulsing beat of electronica and a kaleidoscopic design that incorporated both the classic dignity of a giant Buddha and elements of Japanese anime seemed right for the production, which premiered in Manchester, England in 2007. The production, performed in Mandarin with English subtitles, has since played the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, Spoleto USA, and the Royal Opera House in London.

“What the show represents is the clash of traditional Asian culture and modernity, what China is now, and that’s what makes the production so interesting,” said Chen. “Curiously, what Damon and Jamie were able to bring to the production is quite close to the original book in spirit. It is both full of nonsense and very serious situations. ”

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of getting breast cancer and says she hopes her story will inspire other women fighting the life-threatening disease.

Jolie wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday the operation had made it easier for her to reassure her six children that she will not die young from cancer, like her own mother did at 56.

"We often speak of 'Mommy's mommy', and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me," wrote Jolie, 37.

"I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene."

The Oscar-winning actress said her doctors had estimated she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

"Once I knew this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy," she said.

Partner and fellow Hollywood star Brad Pitt was by Jolie's side through three months of treatment that ended late in April, she said. The two got engaged last year.

Jolie said that even though she had kept silent about her treatment while it was going on, she hoped her story would now help other women.

"I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested."

Breast cancer alone kills about 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization. It is estimated that one in 300 to one in 500 women carry a BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutation, as Jolie does.

CNN anchor Zoraida Sambolin announced on Tuesday that she had breast cancer and was also getting a double mastectomy.

Sambolin, who anchors CNN's "Early Start" morning show, discussed her condition on the show while talking about Jolie's procedure.

"I struggled for weeks trying to figure out how tell you that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was leaving to have surgery," Sambolin, 47, said on Facebook. "Then ... Angelina Jolie shares her story of a double mastectomy and gives me strength and an opening."

Jolie's decision was also welcomed by breast cancer patients and charities.

Richard Francis, head of research at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity in Britain, said it demonstrated the importance of educating women with the gene fault.

"For women like Angelina it's important that they are made fully aware of all the options that are available, including risk-reducing surgery and extra breast screening," Francis told Reuters.

Breast Cancer Campaign Chief Executive Baroness Delyth Morgan said Jolie's openness in talking about her experience and her decision to have surgery would raise awareness of the disease and its risk.

Jolie won a 1999 best supporting actress Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted".

She lends her star power to a range of humanitarian campaigns, including serving more than 10 years as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

In April, she urged governments to step up efforts to bring wartime sex offenders to justice.

GREENWICH, Connecticut — When it comes to Andy Warhol, it seems there’s very little we haven’t seen. But “Andy Warhol,” an exhibition of over 200 works at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, offers a refreshing personal angle on the artist and a few surprising pieces. To get specific: The library has a selection of Warhol’s drawings and gold-foil works — cats, shoes, and flowers — hung in a cozy salon-style display, along with a pair of painted wooden shoes, and a folding hand-painted screen.

“This is the way Peter shows the work in his home and we really wanted to create that atmosphere,” explained Allison Brant, speaking about her art-collecting father, who knew Warhol well, last Sunday at the Greenwich soiree marking the kickoff of the new show. Her tour of the works began with the first one that Brant acquired (at the age of 21) — a drawing of Campbell’s Soup cans — and ended with a portrait of Murray Brant, Allison’s grandfather, in mauve, blue, and pink. Along the way, we passed “The Last Supper” (Warhol’s last project), a towering portrait of Mao, and one of Warhol’s earliest works, a punchy and somewhat raw painting of the comic strip detective Dick Tracy.

“I grew up with Dick Tracy,” Peter Brant explained later. “I used to tell my kids that he was watching them,” he added, and laughed before turning to lead friend Aby Rosen on a personal tour of the show.

Outside, under an enormous white tent, near a smoking spit of roasting lamb, guests including Owen Wilson, Leonardo DiCaprio, May Andersen, Mary Boone, and Jeffrey Deitch swilled cocktails. Party favors included cookies decorated with an image of Warhol’s “Dick Tracy.” 

To see photos of the kickoff of “Andy Warhol” at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, click on the slideshow.

With summer days nigh, no doubt you’re making plans for (much needed) weekend getaways. Should you find yourself in the mood for some culture and costume, a pentalogy of fashion exhibitions are being staged around the world, from a decade of Azzedine Alaïa designs to a century of dandyism — and, oh yes, a little thing called punk.

Fashion’s biggest and glitziest show of the year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's PUNK: Chaos to Couture, may also be the the year's ballsiest. Punk and pomp are about as harmonious as oil and water, and the Met’s mainstreamed take on the former has drawn a lot of ire, as did its kickoff event - the Met Gala. But, if you'll be in New York, ChaostoCouture is absolutely worth a visit – even if soft-core doesn’t suit your rebellious fancy.
Until August 14

Boys take note: the RISD Museum, a satellite of the Rhode Island School of Design, has a summer-long show titled Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion. Bringing pompadours to Providence, Artist/Rebel/Dandy features an array of works and words regarding the evolution of men’s fashion – including such “romantics and revolutionaries” of today as Rick Owens and Waris Ahluwalia. Fans of nostalgia needn’t worry – there’s also an archival focus on BeauBrummell, an original dandy if you will, and OscarWilde.
Until August 18

Celebrating Chanel’s longstanding links with the art world, Paris’ PalaisdeTokyo just unveiled No. 5 Culture Chanel, a capsule exhibit illustrating the perfume’s iconic, decades-old presence and the avant-garde movements with which it has been associated. Though representations of Chanel No. 5 have indeed been created (paging Andy Warhol), the works on display are not necessarily direct portrayals of the bottle. Rather, the show includes material that fueled Coco Chanel’s singular vision, with pieces from Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Pierre Reverdy, to name but a few.
Until June 5

Dusseldorf’s NRW-FORUM will open Azzedine Alaïa in the 21^st Century, with perhaps the smartest homage to the famed Tunisian designer yet: the show is broken down by material. Azzedine Alaïa is revered, coveted and collected for his use of the highest-grade textiles on the market, from wispy astrakhan to supple alligator to cotton-candy chiffons. Take all that and apply it to ten years worth of design, and what you get is nothing short of delicious.
June 8 - September 8

The SeattleArtMuseum will soon present Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion. The retrospective will highlight everything from IsseyMiyake and KenzoTakada’s rise to fame in the 1970s – moments that galvanized global reverence for the island-nation's design sensibilities – to ReiKawakubo and YohjiYamamoto’s Paris-silencing runway shows of 1983. More recent sartorial phenomena are also included: Harajuku girls, Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton, and all things kawaii. Curated by the Kyoto Costume Institute, Future Beauty ultimately celebrates a counterproposal to Western fashion ideologies.
June 27 - September 8

Follow @BLOUINFashion

NEW YORK — Fueled by a handful of outstanding offerings, the contemporary art market maintained its upwardly momentum on Tuesday at Sotheby’s, racking up $293,587,000. Impressively, 44 of the 53 lots that sold hurdled the million dollar mark. Of those, five exceeded $20 million.

Four artist records were set, including for Barnett Newman’s magisterial, electric blue hued zip painting, “Onement VI” (1953), which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $43,845,000 (est. $30-40 million). It eclipsed the record set in November (2012) at Christie’s New York when “Onement V,” from the same iconic series, made $22.3 million.

This example is freighted with considerable history, including a Coca-Cola spill on the surface that required expert (though now largely invisible) restoration as well as a role in a complex tax evasion case and civil lawsuit in 2003 that involved at least two art world luminaries. The baggage couldn’t deter the masterpiece from making its mark.

Eleven of the 64 lots offered failed to find buyers, making for a decent buy-in rate of 13 percent by lot and 18 percent by value. The tally rates as Sotheby’s fifth biggest contemporary art evening sale and easily exceeded last May’s $266,591,000 result.

Still, the evening felt like a mild roller coaster as two of five works by Jeff Koons were bought in, most surprisingly, the one offered by mega-collector Peter Brant, “New Hoover Celebrity IV, New Hoover Convertible, New Shelton 5 Gallon Wet/Dry, New Shelton 10 Gallon Wet/Dry Double Decker” (est. $10-15 million). Brant bought the 1981-86 sculpture, which — logically — consists of the four titular vacuum cleaners, at Sotheby’s New York in April 1991 for $137,500.

But Koons’s earlier piece, “The New Jeff Koons” (1980), a fluorescent light box featuring the boy wonder himself posed with a box of crayolas and an Ethelbert drawing pad, sold for $9,405,000 (est. $2.5-3.5 million). Like the Newman, this Koons also carried an anonymous third-party financial guarantee. It sold to private dealer Phillipe Segalot.

Another guaranteed work, Yves Klein’s other-worldly sculpture, “eponge bleue sans titre, SE 168” (1959), formerly in the collection of New York gallery great Sidney Janis, sold to Sandy Rower, the head of the Alexander Calder Foundation, for $22,005,000 (est. on request).

Brant was also a buyer early on, nabbing Glenn Ligon’s dense and richly textured text painting, “Stranger #64” (2012), for $1,265,000 (est. $350-450,000). It was one of eight artist-donated works to benefit the new Whitney Museum of American Art’s downtown building, bringing that tally to $11.8 million, almost doubling the $6.6-million high estimate.

Another work of the Whitney sampler, John Currin’s pretty, 28-by-20-inch “Lydian” (2012), sold to the telephone for $2,965,000 (est. $500-700,000). The underbidders included Jose Mugrabi.

Back to the heavy hitters: though Newman’s 1953 painting was the AbEx-era star of the evening, Jackson Pollock’s gorgeously painted pre-drip “Blue Unconscious” (1946) proved an excellent buy at $20,885,000 (est. $20-30 million). At 84 by 56 inches, it rates as the largest of a small numbered series and was exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery in Pollock’s breakout solo there in February 1947. It last sold at auction at the old Parke-Bernet galleries, a forerunner of Sotheby’s stateside enterprise, in April 1965 for $45,000.

Less exciting, though fetching the exact same amount, was Clyfford Still’s later “PH-21” (1962) (est. $16-20 million).

The heady mix of American and European postwar masterworks culminated with a giant, photo-based Gerhard Richter painting, “Domplatz, Mailand” (1968), which sold to New York mega-collector Donald Bryant, Jr. for a record $37,125,000 (est. $30-50 million). This work ranks as the most expensive work by a living artist ever to sell at auction.

From a distance, Richter’s scene of the busy square by the Milan cathedral looks like crisp black and white, but as you move closer to the canvas, it dematerializes into a dizzying blur of abstract patterns. Bryant, who just last week at Sotheby’s nabbed a Picasso painted metal sculpture, “Sylvette” (1954) for $13.6 million, pumped his right arm in the air in victory as the auctioneer’s gavel slammed down. “I just love that picture,” he said, heading out of the salesroom, “and I feel very lucky. I expected it was going to be that much and I was ready to go to $40 million and no more.”

The 108-by-114-inch Richter last sold at Sotheby’s London in December 1998 for £2,201,500 ($3,650,306) and spent many years in relative obscurity in the lobby of a Pritzker family owned hotel in Chicago.

Another grand composition, Cy Twombly’s “Untitled (Bolsena)” (1969), composed in a graffitied mélange of oil-based house paint, lead pencil, and wax crayon on canvas, drew stiff bidding, selling for $15,397,000 (est. $10-15 million). It was another top lot insured with a third-party guarantee.

Unusually, the evening had its share of winning bidders who were actually in the room, as evidenced by the success of fashion magnate Giancarlo Giammetti, who bought Jean-Michel Basquiat’s suitably Roman-themed “Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold” (1981), which made $6,885,000 (est. $7-8 million). The painting recently appeared in the huge Basquiat show at Gagosian in Chelsea.

Even with these kinds of magnum-sized numbers, some top-rated works failed, including the rare and top-notch Francis Bacon composition of his lover and muse, Peter Lacey, “Study for Portrait of P.L.” (1962), which crashed without a single hand raised (est. $30-40 million). The 78-by-57-inch canvas had one problem, according to Gerard Faggionato, the London dealer who is the co-representative of the Francis Bacon estate. “It’s very simple,” said Faggionato, “too high of an estimate. It’s not complicated and it didn’t attract any bids.” The dealer also said the painting had changed hands fairly recently at a high price, close to the over-reaching estimate.

“Still,” remarked New York dealer Roland Augustine later, “it was a very strong sale and it’s remarkable that the market continues this way. We’re pretty close to the top now, so I think it will plateau soon.”

That off-the-cuff prediction will be tested Wednesday evening at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary art sale.

– Vermeer's Secret Apprentice: In his new book, "Vermeer's Family Secrets," art historian Benjamin Binstock suggests that Vermeer's daughter Maria— who sports a pearl earring in one of her father's most famous works — served as his studio assistant and eventually his apprentice, with many of her paintings being passed off as those of her father by his widow in order to pay the bills. According to evidence gathered by Binstock, at least seven paintings long deemed the work of Johannes Vermeer may actually be masterpieces by Maria Vermeer. [NPR]

– Ai Weiwei is a Terrible Hairdresser: Last week in Beijing's hip Caochangdi nabe, blogger Anthony Tao found himself on the receiving end of artist and activist Ai Weiwei's clippers, receiving one of the amateur hairstylist's notoriously bad haircuts. "I've given hundreds," Ai said. "The kind that will make you want to cry… I could make a book out of it." [Beijing Cream]

– Crisis-Slammed Countries Still Spend Big in Venice: Despite a worsening global economy and the ongoing financial crisis in the Eurozone, most nations participating in the 2013 Venice Biennale are spending sums equivalent to and greater than their pavilions' 2011 budgets. The Italian pavilion's budget, however, is about half of the €1.5 million curator Vittorio Sgarbi disposed of in 2011, with €600,000 coming from the state and another €140,000 raised through a crowd-funding campaign thus far. Greece's pavilion, meanwhile, has a budget of €350,000, with €250,000 of that coming from the state. "Concerning state funding, there is no change compared to the 54th Venice Biennale. It is exactly the same amount," said Greek pavilion curator Syrago Tsiara. [TAN]

– Mural Goes Grey for Liam Neeson Shoot: Residents of uptown Manhattan are less than taken with Liam Neeson after the crew working on his latest film, "A Walk Among the Tombstones," painted over a much-loved mural because it wasn't in keeping with the movie's gritty early-1990s setting. The colorful mural, which referenced the Beatles's "Abbey Road" album cover and featured the words "All You Need Is Love" atop psychedelic pools of color, was painted four years ago on Fort Washington Avenue. "Unfortunately, because the project is a period piece, we sometimes have to change out signage that may not match the aesthetic of a certain neighborhood during a certain time period," said the film's location scout, David Ginsberg. "We were not aware of how much of an important role this particular mural played in the neighborhood." [DNAinfo]

– France Considers Smartphone Tax for Culture: The French government may charge a tax on sales of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices with Internet connectivity in order to help fund the arts. President François Hollande called on former television executive Pierre Lescure to come up with ideas on ways to upgrade the country's cultural funding, and among his 75 suggestions, one was to begin charging a one percent tax (to be raised to three or four percent eventually) on sales of such devices, which could raise as much as $113 million per year. [CBC]

– Report Bursts Hirshhorn Bubble: According to a report by the Smithsonian Institution studying the feasibility of its four-years-in-the-making "Seasonal Inflatable Structure," better known as the Bubble, which would rise 145 feet out of the Hirshhorn Museum's rooftop, the project will almost certainly operate at a loss, with its budget ballooning to over $15 million. "We’ve said from the beginning, and the secretary [G. Wayne Clough] has said it, this is a bold project," Smithsonian undersecretary for history, art, and culture Richard Kurin said. "We’ve encouraged this, but it has to be raised by private money. In terms of doing that, we’re still trying to raise money for construction of the Inflatable Structure. We’ve been at this for some years. We hope its time has come now, but if not, we look forward to a better time." [Washington Post]

– Blockbuster Mao Portrait Sale in Beijing: A portrait photograph of late chairman Mao Zedong that was taken by his wife Jiang Qing in 1961 surpassed all expectations in a sale at Beijing's Huachen Auctions on Friday, selling for $55,300, after a pair of telephone bidders drove its price up to 10 times its pre-sale estimate. "The photo was highly sought-after, mainly because its photographer was such a unique figure," said Li Xin, the manager of Huachen's photography department. "It clearly aroused huge interest. It also shows that 'red-classic' photos like this are becoming well recognized by the market. I saw many new faces in the salesroom." [China.org]

– Smithsonian Stretches for Yoga Exhibition: In October the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will open the exhibition "Yoga: The Art of Transformation," a show exploring the history of yoga in Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, and Jain traditions in more than 120 Indian sculptures, manuscripts, films, photographs and paintings on loan from 25 collections all over Europe, India, and the U.S. The show will span the 3rd century CE to the 20th century, and chart yoga's fall from favor during India's colonial era and its subsequent return to widespread popularity. No word yet on whether the Smithsonian will jump on the yoga-in-museums trend as part of the show's programming. [Active Life D.C.]

– German Dealers Block European Art Tax Bump: Germany's national association of art dealers, the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Kunsthändler (or BDGV), with the help of the country's minister of culture Bernd Neumann, has successfully lobbied against the lifting of temporary tax cuts on sales of artworks that would have resulted in the tax rate jumping up 12 percent, from 7 percent to 19 percent. The matter will be up for debate in the federal assembly again next month, but if members can't agree on a new plan the tax will remain at 7 percent for the next year. "We still can’t predict anything concrete," said BDGV member Thea Dymke, "but this is what we are hoping for." [TAN]

– Darren Bader Wins 2013 Calder Prize: The Calder Foundation has selected the U.S. artist Darren Bader as the recipient of the 2013 Calder Prize, which comes with a $50,000 cash prize and a residency at the Atelier Calder. As an added perk, one of Badder's trademark conceptual pieces — which incorporate found and appropriated objects, text, films, music, and more into strange and singular installations and sculptures — will be placed in a marquee public collection. [Press Release]

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

Using laptops, tablets, and six-sided speakers, Princeton University's Laptop Orchestra teaches students the art of creating and coding music. It's neither Mozart nor Star Wars. 

The Wiener Festwochen, Vienna’s annual festival for performing arts and classical music, opened this week and will be flooding the Austrian capital with a wealth of performances and concerts over the next four weeks. Originally founded in the 1920s, the cultural marathon was revived in the 1950s and has become one of the most anticipated annual highlights in Austria, attracting international artists and an international audience ever since.

This year’s edition marks a turning point in the recent history of the festival, with artistic director Luc Bondy bidding his farewell after 16 years, having spent 11 at the festival’s helm and five as performing arts chief. The Swiss theater and opera director is moving on to Paris to focus on his responsibilities as the director of the Odéon Theatre and will be succeeded by Markus Hinterhäuser, currently director of the Salzburg Festival.

During his “very long spring” in Vienna, as he put it in a goodbye note, Bondy directed theater and opera productions such as Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” and Handel’s “Hercules” with Stéphane Lissner, the musical director of the festival, and brought prestigious international directors to the Austrian capital, Peter Sellars, Simon McBurney,Deborah Warner, and William Kentridge among them.

Twice during Bondy’s involvement with the Wiener Festwochen, the Festival made it onto the evening news, first in 2000, when the late artist, director, and actor Christoph Schlingensief set up a container scenario reminiscent of the reality TV Show “Big Brother” on the opera Square in Vienna with authentic asylum seekers as its inhabitants, confronting the election of the far-right Freedom Party into the National Council with his provocative art and television project “Foreigners Out – Artists against Human Rights,” and again in 2007, when the festival’s performing arts director Marie Zimmermann committed suicide, while the festival was midway – “we miss her,” Bondy wrote in his note.

Next to its traditionally vibrant theater and performing arts program, the Wiener Festwochen and its associated International Music Festival have made Vienna the place to be for lovers of classical music and opera in spring, with world class musicians performing in the city’s historic venues. This year’s opera program pays tribute to Giuseppe Verdi’s bicentennial with a production of “Il Trovatore” under the musical direction of Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber. Katie Mitchell’s production of George Benjamin’s opera “Written on Skin” (with a libretto by Martin Crimp), which premiered in Aix-en-Provence last summer, has also been causing a lot of excitement. It will be conducted by Kent Nagano.

The second bicentennial that is dominating the opera world this year – that of Richard Wagner– will be celebrated in June, when French conductor Marc Minkowski, whose debut with the Vienna Philharmonic for the opening night left local critics disappointed, returns to the festival for two versions of the “Flying Dutchman” in a single day with the Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble. Russian bass-baritone Yevgeny Nikitin will be singing the title role (after having withdrawn from the part at the Bayreuth festival last year, due to controversy caused by old video footage of the singer, revealing obscure tattoos on his torso, including a partly covered swastika).

Possibly the most anticipated highlight of this year’s festival may well be the international birthday bash with more than 50 concerts celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the venerable Vienna Concert Hall with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker plus Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic as orchestras in residence. The glamorous line-up of soloists includes Italian soprano and Vienna State Opera star Barbara Frittoli and Swedish mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, violinists Joshua Bell and Hillary Hahn, pianists Maurizio Pollini, Oleg Maisenberg, Emanuel Ax, Till Fellner and the Turkish twin shooting stars Ferhan and Ferzan Önder, to name but a few.

With all the hype surrounding this year’s festival, Austrian media are already speculating in anticipation of next year, when Markus Hinterhäuser will take the helm as new artistic director, especially since it has been made known that the festival’s brand identity is to undergo a thorough makeover. We'll see. And hear.

For more information on the Wiener Festwochen and the Vienna Music Festival, click here and here.

See highlights from this year’s Vienna Music Festival in the slideshow.

The Cannes Film Festival gets underway on Wednesday with Australian director Baz Luhrmann's 3D extravaganza "The Great Gatsby", a lavish production eclipsing more modest launches in recent years that reflected global economic gloom.

Already showing in theatres in Canada and the United States, the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is a rare case when Cannes, the year's most important cinema gathering, has not kicked off with a world premiere.

After the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio screened to the press, and ahead of a glitzy red carpet evening gala, Luhrmann appeared unmoved by those critics who had said the film was a case of style over substance.

"I never get one of those big, high critics scores," Luhrmann told a news conference, flanked by cast members including Tobey Maguire and Amitabh Bachchan.

"I just care people are going out and seeing it."

The movie, estimated to have cost $105 million to make, received mixed reviews, but opened in North America last weekend with a larger-than-expected $51 million for distributor Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc..

The opening night kicks off 12 days of world premieres, champagne parties and celebrity spotting along Cannes' chic waterfront Croisette, with Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Watson among big names in town this year.

In Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby", DiCaprio plays the title role Jay Gatsby, a millionaire pining for a lost love during the height of the "Roaring Twenties", while Maguire is narrator Nick Carraway. Rapper Jay-Z produced the soundtrack.

DiCaprio, remaining calm despite the crush of reporters and photographers following his every move, said he was fascinated by the character of Gatsby.

"One of the most powerful things about this novel is that it is still discussed nearly 90 years later," he said.

Cloudy skies did not deter badge holders and passers-by from cramming cafes around the main festival building, while dozens of gleaming luxury yachts in the nearby harbor prepared to welcome their wealthy guests.

With the film's feast of lavish costumes and hedonistic parties, festival veterans are eager to see if Luhrmann will top his last opening at Cannes in 2001, viewed as the last truly over-the-top launch party.

In that year he filled the red carpet with can-can girls to promote his movie "Moulin Rouge".

"For a few years the mood at Cannes was a bit more subdued but the economy has picked up a bit and business is good so people are expecting a big opening," said Wendy Mitchell, editor of trade magazine Screen International.

Some industry insiders said Cannes' decision to invite Luhrmann to open was a concession indicative of the cosy ties between Tinseltown and the French festival that champions eclectic, low-budget movies while also courting Hollywood.

After the opening night the focus will shift to hundreds of other films screening at Cannes, including 20 movies from 10 countries competing for the coveted Palme D'Or award presented on the final day, May 26.

The list, which regularly features Oscar contenders come the awards season, includes five U.S. movies - the highest number in six years - from directors Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, the Coen brothers, and James Gray.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg is heading a star-studded jury to decide the prizes along with Australian actress Nicole Kidman and two of 2013's Oscar winners, Taiwan-born director Ang Lee and Austrian actor Christoph Waltz.

"I look at this as two weeks of celebrating film, not two weeks of pitting one film against the other," Spielberg told a news conference.

Watch video on the buzz at the red carpet in Cannes:

The 19th Biennale of Sydney (BOS19) is shaping up to be a fantastic event if the artist preview list is anything to go by. A list of 18 artists selected to participate in the art show was unveiled today by BOS19 Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg, who also gave a brief insight into the background of the BOS19 theme, “You Imagine What You Desire.”

“‘You Imagine What You Desire’ is an evocation celebrating the artistic imagination as a spirited describing and exploration of the world through metaphor and poesis,” Engberg explains. “It makes enquiries into contemporary aesthetic experience, and relates this to historical precedents and future opportunities to imagine possible worlds.”

Based on what she describes as a curatorial approach that “seeks splendour and rapture in works that remain true to a greater, even sublime visuality,” Engberg has chosen the following artists to participate in BOS19: Yael Bartana, Ulla von Brandenberg, Mircea Cantor, David Claerbout, Yingmei Duan, Krisztina Erdei, Douglas Gordon, Henna-Riikka Halonen, Roni Horn, Mikhail Karikis, Laurent Montaron, Agnieszka Polska, Augustin Rebetez, Maxime Rossi, Wael Shawky, John Stezaker, Corin Sworn, and Tori Wrånes.

This early glimpse into the direction of BOS19 reveals a strong focus on European artists working with video, including David Claerbout, Laurent Montaron, and Agnieszka Polska. There is also a strong contingent of Scottish-based artists led by Douglas Gordon and Corin Sworn, perhaps influenced by Engberg’s time as a Visiting Critic at the Glasgow School of Art. As yet no Australian participants have been identified, but that will surely change when the full list is revealed.

According to Engberg, this year's fair “seeks to understand the need artists have today to create immersive and expanded environments, and locates this activity as part of an art historical trajectory, and as a pursuit into the issues of human consciousness, and their psychological, cognitive and corporeal imperatives.

“It reminds us that powerful art is not divorced from the cultural conditions, political, social, and climatic environments in which it is generated. That indeed it often exists to provide a meta-commentary on these aspects of society – and even, sometimes, act as an antidote and proposition. As a future vision.”

The 19th Biennale of Sydney will take place from Friday, March 21 – Monday, June 9, 2014.

To see works by 18 of the artists selected to participate in BOS19, click on the slideshow.

In the May 2013 issue, Art+Auction took a look at some of the must-have timepieces available at this month’s  watch auctions, including those at Sotheby’s Geneva, May 11, Christie’s Geneva on May 13, and at Heritage Auctions in New York on May 21. Here’s a sampling of some of the most dazzling chronographic collectibles available at the sales.

To see images of highlights from the watch auctions, click on the slideshow.