BASEL, Switzerland — The space age has arrived at Europe’s greatest modern and contemporary art fair, courtesy of the woven aluminum bands of Herzog & de Meuron’s huge new exhibition hall, which transform the look of the once quaint Messeplatz. Combine this with Tadashi Kawamata’s faux-favela shacks temporarily sited outside the main entrance, and Art Basel’s 44th edition seems to convey two quite different messages about the future at once. Luckily, the mood and tenor emanating from the 304 international exhibitors inside is decidedly more upbeat this year than last, thanks to a veritable river of commerce flowing through the great hall.

That flow began on Tuesday, courtesy the unhurried first influx of VIP collectors, curators, art advisors, and well-connected hangers-on. Important American collectors including Eli Broad, Ron Pizzuti, Marty Margulies, Peter Brant, Leon Black, Howard Rachofsky, and Don and Mera Rubell roamed the aisles, as did the Russian Roman Abramovich.

Commerce ignited instantly at Paris Galerie Kamel Mennour as “Overlapping Figures,” a pair of bronze, plaster, and wood sculptures from 2011-12 by Venice Biennale Silver Lion winner Camille Henrot sold at €18,000 ($23,900) each, as did six of the nine limited-edition videos of “Grosse Fatigue,” the work that won Art Basel's own emerging art prize, selling at prices ranging from €30-50,000 ($39,800-66,400).

The scent of Venice was also in the air at London’s Victoria Miro, where Sarah Sze’s 48-inch-high “Standing Pile (Cairn)” (2013), a deceptively light sculpture in mixed media and concrete block, sold for $32,000. It is close in spirit to the sculptures she made for the American Pavilion.

Bigger transactions were also registered quickly at Milan/London’s Massimo de Carlo, where a suite of five small canvases by Rudolf Stingel, “Untitled (Bolego)” (2006) — which features the artist with his head bowed, presumably blowing out birthday candles whose light is suggested at the bottom edge of the canvases — sold to an American collector for approximately $2 million. Moments later, New York private dealer Philippe Segalot entered the stand, heard the Stingels had sold and threw up his hands, exclaiming, “Shit, I can leave now.”

Stingel’s stature was further burnished at London’s Sadie Coles which was displaying his huge “Untitled” self-portrait from 2012 — also sold for approximately $2 million.

A lot of art prospecting was also going on at New York’s 303 Gallery as two large untitled silver paintings from 2013 by Jacob Kassay — a new addition to the gallery’s artist roster — sold at $150,000 apiece. Swiss artist Valentin Carron’s “David,” a Robert Gober-esque floor piece of entwined feet in acrylic, lacquer, and dichroitic glass in two parts, sold for CH35,000 ($37,700). Another Carron work, an impressively scaled painting resembling a stained glass window and bearing a long title, “Ein auto, ein Schiff, ubelriechernder schmerz Weiss und gedampft” (2013), also went for the same price.

At Antwerp’s Zeno X, “Unfired Clay Figures” by Mark Manders (another Biennale participant, representing the Netherlands), sold for €140,000 ($185,900), while a small figurative painting by Michael Borremans, “The Well” (2013), sold for €150,000 ($199,200).

Los Angeles-based Blum & Poe, slated to open a New York satellite in the near future, sold many works in the opening hours of the VIP view, including Yoshitomo Nara’s smiling oil-on-canvas “Cloudy” (2006), for $250,000, as well as lesser-known works by several other Japanese artists connected with the avant-garde Mono-Ha group from the 1970s. These included Nobuo Sekine’s “Part of Nothingness” (1970/1994), a wall relief comprised of cloth, stone, and rope for $150,000, and two works by Kishio Suga — “Fragments of Space” (1973), in wood, glass and ink, and the felt “Entirety of Corner” (1975) — which went for approximately $60,000 apiece.

The gallery also sold two newly cast, incised abstract bronze sculptures by Mark Grotjahn — “Untitled (Sun, out of the shell standing flat SF2.a)” and “Untitled (Two Noses out of the shell standing flat SF.a)” — for $175,000 each. “It’s the unfolding of a new era — not frantic, but super-steady and thoughtful,” philosophized Blum about the state of the art market. “People know their stuff and recognize quality.”

As for what to expect from the remaining days at the fair, Blum added, “Some bigger things are also on reserve and I’m waiting for the more thoughtful people to come back.”

Paris’s Galerie Crousel offered a copper fragment from Danh Vo’s remarkable project, “We the People (Detail)” (2011-13), the artist's recreation of the original panels from the Statue of Liberty. Weighing in at 195 kilograms, this amazing work sold for €65,000.

Hall 2.1, situated on the second floor of the exhibition space, had more primary market material than the more established fare found in Hall 2.0, on the ground floor, where one finds the more blue-chip salons of Acquavella Galleries and Pace. This year, Galerie Bischofberger and Krugier, two major Swiss galleries long associated with Art Basel, didn’t participate, leaving big chunks of sought-after space and some rare chances for galleries to move downstairs. Among those making the move were Metro Pictures and White Cube.

New York’s Cheim & Read also benefitted, moving to more central space, nestled between powerhouses Hauser & Wirth and White Cube. “We used to be by the bathroom,” said John Cheim about his former location, “and now we have better neighbors.”

The gallery has already sold two Joan Mitchell AbEx-era paintings. “Untitled” (1956), for $6 million, went to a French couple, while “Untitled” (1965), was snapped up by a Polish foundation for $2 million. The gallery also sold Sean Scully’s handsome large-scale abstraction “Wall of Light Pink Orange” (2012), featuring rectangle- and square-shaped wedges of color, for $700,000, and Gada Amer’s “Black-RFGA” (2013), for $250,000, to a Mexican collector. Scully’s huge painting, featured nearby at Art Unlimited and priced at $1.5 million, had two museum reserves, according to Cheim.

There was also plenty of action at White Cube, where a £4-million ($5.3-million) Damien Hirst, “Love Remembered” (2007) was one of the more expensive offerings still available. Mark Bradford’s huge, multi-layered “Dusty Knees” (2013), in mixed media on canvas, had already sold for approximately $725,000. Three works by the fast-rising Chicago-bred artist Theaster Gates also found buyers, including the menacing “Shine Study 1” (2013) in wood, roofing paper, tar, and metal, which went for $135,000. 

At a certain point, New York private dealer Alberto Mugrabi walked into the stand, encountering the already sold Gates. After beckoning White Cube’s Jay Jopling, he soon bought a larger one off the dealer’s iPad for approximately $240,000.

One might wonder what accounts for all of this spirited commerce after such a long season of fairs and auctions. “A million and a half to two million dollars doesn’t buy you very much anymore,” reasoned Oliver Barker, a top Sotheby’s contemporary specialist based in London and one of a horde of auction types trolling the fair looking for action (or at least market intelligence). “There’s a lot of unspent money from the May sales,” he continued, “and the mood seems very positive.” It certainly felt that way here, almost anywhere you looked.

New York newcomer Dominique Levy, at last a stand-alone gallerist after years as a partner with Robert Mnuchin in L&M Arts, instantaneously proved her mettle here. Her strong stand was full of delights: Robert Ryman’s “Untitled” painting from 1966, which sold “for north of $7 million,” according to Levy; a stunning Frank Stella suite of six 12-by-12-inch paintings from 1961, collectively titled “Six Benjamin Moore Paintings,” which went for north of $6 million; and a 2013 painting by newly represented gallery artist Pierre Soulages, sparkling with horizontal ridges of glistening jet black, which drew approximately €500,000 ($664,100).

At New York/London’s Helly Nahmad, the atmosphere was much better than recent headlines might lead you to assume. A small, impressive room off the main stand was decorated in thick white carpet and held a pair of white leather Modernist chairs, matching seven white Lucio Fontana“Concetto Spaziale” paintings from 1966 (the year the legendary Italian won the top prize at Venice for his “Manifesto Blanco” installation). So far, three Fontana paintings had sold for between $2 million and $6 million, according to Joe Nahmad, who came up with the idea for the Fontana homage.

The gallery also sold Alexander Calder’s beautiful and massive “Sumac” (1961), a hanging mobile in painted sheet metal and wire, for approximately $10 million. 

Nearby, David Nahmad casually surveyed the action. When asked about the sales, however, he feigned ignorance, offering a seasoned observation from the buy-and-hold school of dealing: “I hope they [the gallery] sell the minimum because when you sell, you lose.”

To see images from Art Basel in Basel, click on the slideshow.

Despite his superhuman ability to end up in the news, Kanye West doesn’t give many interviews. Last night, though, the New York Times published a lengthy career spanning Q&A between the rapper and writer Jon Caramanica — which is, as far as we can tell, Kanye’s first in-depth conversation with a member of the press in about five years. So why now? Because he’s about to put out his sixth studio album, “Yeezus,” which we know little about despite the fact that it’s a bona fide major (underline, italicize, and bold that “major”) release that’s due to hit stores next Tuesday. After reading the interview we still don’t know much about the record, but that doesn’t make West’s talk about being awesome, not regretting the whole Taylor Swift incident, and who he considers his peers any less riveting.

We strongly recommend reading Caramanica’s 4,586-word article in its entirety, but here are our six favorite moments of the interview’s near-limitless highlights:

On his issues with the Grammys:

I don’t know if this is statistically right, but I’m assuming I have the most Grammys of anyone my age, but I haven’t won one against a white person.… But the thing is, I don’t care about the Grammys; I just would like for the statistics to be more accurate.

On the instinct that led him to charge the stage during Taylor Swift’s MTV Awards speech:

It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is.

On what “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” really was:

“Dark Fantasy” was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: “Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves.”

On the “greatest inspiration” behind “Yeezus”:

Architecture — you know, this one Corbusier lamp was like, my greatest inspiration. I lived in Paris in this loft space and recorded in my living room, and it just had the worst acoustics possible, but also the songs had to be super simple, because if you turned up some complicated sound and a track with too much bass, it’s not going to work in that space. This is earlier this year. I would go to museums and just like, the Louvre would have a furniture exhibit, and I visited it like, five times, even privately. And I would go see actual Corbusier homes in real life and just talk about, you know, why did they design it? They did like, the biggest glass panes that had ever been done.

On the importance of Christmas presents:

But ultimately, this guy that was talking to me doesn’t make Christmas presents, meaning that nobody was asking for his [stuff] as a Christmas present. If you don’t make Christmas presents, meaning making something that’s so emotionally connected to people, don’t talk to me.

On the great minds he groups himself with:

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means.... I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern.

And to think, we didn’t even touch on the parts about him admitting he can’t sing and saying that he’d “rather sit in a factory than sit in a Maybach.” Brash, contradictory, arrogant — those are just a few words that might come to mind when reading the article. But the word that most defines Kanye to us: compelling. No matter what you think of him, West proves time and time again that to ignore him is to miss out on something culturally important. We still have no idea how “Yeezus” will turn out, but this interview, like the rest of the of the run-up to the album’s release, has guaranteed that it’s the release we’ll pay the most attention to this summer. Actually, make that this year.

JAKARTA — People with a fear of snakes may not want to watch this video. These pythons are being used for a massage.

A popular spa in the Indonesian capital is offering this extreme treatment during the Year of the Snake - but it's not for the squeamish.

The Snake Spa is a combination of traditional body massage and the physical sensation of having several pythons on top of the customer's body. The movement of the pythons against the human's body is believed to trigger an adrenaline rush that has a positive impact on the human metabolism. Entrepreneur Erma Mayasari has been a spa enthusiast for over a year. Erma has tried the snake spa twice. She says after initial reservations she enjoys the sensation of the pythons rubbing their scales against her skin. "I wanted to do something new and challenging, so I tried out the snake massage here. At first I was afraid and sweating, but afterwards I felt good and relaxed."

The pythons are about two years old and they are usually fed before the 30 minute spa session. To ensure costumer's safety, two staff members are always on standby inside the treatment room to monitor the behaviour of the non-poisonous snakes. Spa manager Paulus Abraham says he believes the spa is catching the attention of both local and foreign customers. He hopes treatment will promote people's health through unconventional methods. "The snakes can get people's adrenaline going. People will have a sense of fear because snakes are often identified as wild animals. In addition, people can also feel a unique sensation from a snake massage, that is quite different from what a therapist can do." The snake spa costs 47 US dollars, quite expensive for Indonesia where a traditional massage usually costs just around $10 US dollars.

Another popular treatment on offer is the Golf Ball Spa. The masseuse uses warmed golf balls to massage customers, especially down the spine and on the neck. Golf balls are chosen because their small size enables them to hit the right nerve points on the body. The golf ball spa is $30 US dollars for a 60 minute session. Having opened in 2009, this spa has marketed the concept of spa entertainment for its customers.

One of its most talked-about packages is the Beer Spa. The treatment uses local beer for foot massage as well as for a massage session in a bathtub. One of beer's main ingredients is yeast, which is believed to help regenerate skin cells and refresh the human body. The beer spa costs $47 US dollars, and it is particularly popular among some female customers.

Spa manager Paulus Abraham says the uncommon treatments have made this spa a surprise hit. "We have seen a great potential in the niche market for spas that cater to those spa enthusiasts looking for a unique experience and an unusual sensation." According to the spa, they have more than 100 customers per day on weekends. But as a growing number of health establishments in the capital begins to offer sensational packages to entice customers, some health experts warn about the safety of these practices. Neurologist Tomi Hardjatno, who also specialises in acupuncture, argues that there is often no credible scientific base behind these extreme spa methods. He says while the unusual treatment packages may have some positive impacts for customers, they may also have hidden negative impacts that people are unaware of. "Some spas have the intention to improve their customers' health by offering unusual physical stimulations using snakes and other things. However, these methods are not guaranteed to produce their desired effect."

But whether there are real health benefits of a massage with pythons or not, Erma is certainly enjoying her Snake Spa.

Arturo O’Farrill — who leads the Grammy-winning Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and who founded its umbrella nonprofit organization, the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance — was recently named an artist in residence at the Harlem School of the Arts. That’s fitting. Latin influence has long been vital to the culture of Harlem, preceding jazz’s earliest stirrings there. All of the music O’Farrill makes with his orchestra has some root in dance rhythms, so perhaps it’s no accident that he joins choreographer Twyla Tharp, who inaugurated the school’s residency program last fall. O’Farrill’s large-scale ambitions, which initially blossomed at Lincoln Center and then met with a moment of doubt several years ago, have bloomed anew and in many forms. So this is a well-deserved next step for an artist and an organization that define Afro-Latin jazz largely by erasing restrictive borders, and that exert influence all over New York City.

O’Farrill and his orchestra will have access to rehearsal space and an administrative office at the school’s new Herb Alpert Center, on St. Nicholas Avenue at 141st Street. The orchestra, which will perform on July 10 as a part of Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing, continues its regular concert season at Symphony Space, a short subway ride south from the Harlem school. It also performs every Sunday night at Birdland, a further brief ride down to midtown, where O’Farrill previously led a legacy edition of his father’s celebrated band, the Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra. A commemoration of the latter group’s tenure is coming on CD, with “Final Night at Birdland” (Zoho, due August 13).

The story of O’Farrill’s awakening to Afro-Latin legacy and to a larger sense of purpose is stirring, as is the deepening of his music and mission. I’ll never forget him speaking from the Symphony Space Stage in late 2011, during a concert to honor percussionist-trumpeter Jerry Gonzalez and his brother, bassist Andy Gonzalez, and to mark the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance’s 10th anniversary.

“When I first began to play music, I rejected my father and my inherited culture,” O’Farrill said. “I didn’t want to play no clavé,” he said of the five-beat pattern elemental to Cuban music. “I remember Andy and Jerry Gonzalez telling me that it was OK to play clavé, that it was part of me. Andy urged me to check out the long line of great Cuban pianists who have established a great tradition, my father among them. I realized that the music we call ‘Latin’ is unbelievably important, unbelievably beautiful, and unbelievably hard to play — and as worthy of attention as any genre. In fact, in some ways it’s more so because it is a music that harkens closer to Africa than anything else in the current jazz pantheon. People who do it well should be commended for being truly multilingual in their approach to music.”

Initially, the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra fulfilled corrective ambitions and practical needs within Lincoln Center’s mission. O’Farrill was impressed by Wynton Marsalis’s championing of jazz repertory at Lincoln Center. In the mid-1990s, he approached Marsalis about creating a repertory group specifically for Latin jazz. “Soon after that, there was a benefit performance pairing Wynton’s orchestra with Tito Puente’s,” he told me during an interview for the Wall Street Journal in 2010. “Wynton had me lead a rehearsal of the Latin numbers. I wanted them to play a Cuban phrase, but they just could not articulate it authentically. They would ‘jazz’ it up. They could not Afro-Cubanize it. Wynton had this faraway look in his eye. I think that’s when he realized that it takes a specialized group of musicians. It’s a different approach in terms of your embouchure and your tonguing. It’s a different approach artistically, mentally, and emotionally.” Soon after, Marsalis took up his idea, and put him in charge.

Much like the orchestra led by Marsalis, the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra was originally meant to reinforce and extend historical repertory: Where Marsalis championed Ellington and Armstrong, O’Farrill showcased the classic mambo of “Machito” and Puente, as well as his father’s orchestral suites. But in 2008, the ALJO and Lincoln Center parted ways. O’Farrill sought better promotion, a broader artistic vision and, especially, a stronger focus on education. O’Farrill will always feel a sense of pride and debt toward Marsalis and Lincoln Center, he says; he thanked them from the stage at that 2011 anniversary concert. In the liner notes to the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra’s CD, “40 Acres and a Burro,” he described his feelings this way: “We are grateful to our hosts for our birth home, but it is definitely better to be the master of your own tidy cottage than a guest in someone else’s mansion.”

O’Farrill established his own nonprofit organization, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, in 2007. At the inaugural Symphony Space concert in 2008, O’Farrill led the ALJO through a program of new music whose composers hailed from Puerto Rico, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina, among other points. It sounded like a declaration of independence, and of expansive intent. “Ten years of existence is a milestone for the ALJO,” O’Farrill said, “not so much because we survived, but because we’ve created a new entry point into the cultural conversation. Our embrace of the bigger picture in jazz has welcomed many more people into the fold.”

That rang truest in December 2010, when O’Farrill brought his orchestra to Havana, Cuba. (I wrote about that trip here.)

In part he realized a private dream — to bring back the music of his father, who left Cuba for good in 1959, never to return. But it was also a public mission, perhaps best exemplified during a workshop at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory. At one point, he led the students in a chant: “Jazz no es norteamericano, es panamericano!” (Jazz is not North American, it is pan-American!)

As composer and pianist O’Farrill is very much his own man — listen to 2009’s “Risa Negra” (Zoho) for proof. As arranger and bandleader, he embodies his father’s intent: to celebrate the shared identity of Afro-Latin music and American jazz with originality and at the highest musical standards. With this orchestra as his instrument and supported by the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, he has upped the ante into something deeper and larger still. In younger years, Arturo O’Farrill, the son of legendary Cuban composer and bandleader Chico O’Farrill, ran away from his past. But once he stopped running, he found an open door to an expansive future.

On the evening of June 12, at Birdland, O’Farrill will host a benefit supporting music education for New York City youth, featuring his own quintet and the Fat Afro Latin Jazz Cats, a pre-professional youth orchestra administered by the Alliance that holds its sessions at the Greenwich Village jazz club Fat Cat. Next May, O’Farrill will lead his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra as it performs his father’s classic composition, “Afro Latin Jazz Suite.” From Greenwich Village to midtown to Harlem and well beyond, O’Farrill’s tidy cottage keeps growing in the most generous and open-minded fashion — through education, advocacy, new-music commissioning, and artistry at a consistently high level — into the sort of castle Afro Latin tradition and New York City arts deserve.

BASEL — In its seventh Basel edition, SCOPE challenges the centripetal  force pulling visitors to the Messe. The fair’s 4,000-square-meter tent, which holds 95 galleries, now sits directly across the Rhine from France in a former industrial neighborhood that is considerably farther from Art Basel than SCOPE’s location last year. However, for Daria Brit Greene, vice president of Hubshman Factors, which owns the fair, the new site was an exciting opportunity to pave the next steps of Basel’s cultural future. “It’s in an area that the city is hoping to redevelop into an arts and culture district,” she explains. “They’re building real estate and turning this former industrial stretch into a parkland like New York did with the High Line.”

The physical distance from Art Basel did make for a quiet first couple days. By Wednesday morning, however, the aisles were filling up with visitors, and dealers were feeling relieved. “The mood is much better today — people are interested in the works and are buying,” says Caroline Høyer, who is representing the New York–based “nomadic” project space Magpi Projects, one of 20 participants in the fair’s Breeder Program for young exhibitors. From a solo show of James Edwin Hall’s works, Høyer had just sold two photographs, one for $700 and one for $3,000.

Another Breeder participant, John Ferrère of Paris’s L’Inlassable Galerie, was similarly buoyant. The gallery sold two works on paper by Frederique Loutz for €1,000 each from its seven-artist booth. Though small in size, the booth and especially its pair of map-based works on paper by Caroline Courbasson was a highlight of the fair.

Hans Alf, a Copenhagen-based gallerist, sold three porcelain sculptures by Maria Rubinke to the Swiss Re Collection for €8,000 to €10,000 each. Aureus Contemporary of Basel and Providence, Rhode Island, placed a work by Claire Shegog with a prominent Zurich collection for €10,000. And Standing Pine, a Nagoya-based gallery, sold a Kenji Sugiyama for €15,000 to a Turkish collector.

These relatively low prices illustrate one of SCOPE’s strengths in a marketplace where collectors are largely sticking to the poles of blue chip and ultra-emerging artists. “Based on the last few fairs, I think that our price point is right for the market right now,” says Hubshman Factors’ Greene. “Most of the work here is pretty affordable, so people feel a lot more free to buy.”

However, exceptions to that rule can be seen in the fair’s signature work for Basel, El Anatsui’s “Skylines?”, 2008, at London’s October Gallery (which has sold two works by Romuald Hazoumè) and, at Vienna’s Mario Mauroner, in Bernardi Roig’s “Der Italiener” (“The Cow”), 2011, and two works from 2007 by Portugal’s representative at Venice, Joana Vasconcelos“Desejado” and “Formoso.”

While there were sales in the mid-range — Stanley Casselman’s “IR 24-6” at Vertes Modern for CHF 20,000 to an Italian collector; an Audrey Kawasaki at Thinkspace for €48,000; a Yves Hayat at Mark Hachem for €30,000 — many more top-notch pieces in that price range had received minimal interest at the fair as of Wednesday afternoon. An installation of six Michael Johansson sculptures at Milan’s Massimo Carasi was an eyecatcher but remained unsold at €30,000. Likewise, at Antwerp’s GalerieVan Der Planken“Indeterminate Line,” 1987, a Bernar Venet sculpture, remained available for €54,000, despite the artist’s recent popularity at fairs. 

To see images, click on the slideshow.

Art Basel, the world’s premier art fair, is welcoming more than 300 international exhibitors to its European flagship event this week.

The fair, in its 44^th edition, began Tuesday with the first influx of VIP collectors, curators and art advisors.

In this Eye on Art report, Blouin ARTINFO's Matthew Drutt went looking for hidden gems and found them from Ryan Gander at Paris’s GB Agency, Michael Kvium at Copenhagen’s Nils Staerk Gallery and H.C. Westermann at London’s Waddington Custot.

Art Basel runs from June 13 to 16.

– Kanye Holds Court in Basel: By now, Kanye West’s art-inflected first-interview-in-five-years New York Times interview is old news, but the rapper is not quite done going on art-fueled rants. Yesterday, after taking in the fare at Art Basel (apparently, he was on the hunt for Rick Owens furniture) he hosted an impromptu listening party — built "via Instagram and a few cryptic emails" — of his new album "Yeezus" at Design Miami/Basel. In the process, he also delivered a long speech (see below) about his art world inspirations as well as the current state of art. "What I want people to understand about sampling and producing is that it’s really similar to — and I know this is obvious what I’m going to say, because I’m a black guy so I’m gonna name the ‘most obvious artist in the world’ — Warhol, but it’s very similar to the way Warhol would appropriate a Campbell’s Soup can is the way I would sonically appropriate a Ray Charles sample or a Michael Jackson sample." [TDB]

– Bristol's Breakdancing Messiah: It's Banksy meets Bible studies: The UK's latest street art sensation is Bristol's golden mural depicting a scantily clad Jesus Christ upside down, mid-breakdance. The 28-foot image, painted by artist Cosmo Sarson, was inspired by a 2004 event in which Pope John Paul II seemed to enjoy a breakdancing performance held at the Vatican. "Breakdancing is all very well, but I still reckon Jesus walking on water edges it," quipped one local. [Independent]

– German Police Bust Art Forgery Ring: A Multimillion-pound international art forgery ring, that has produced 400 "previously unknown" fake paintings by Russian avant-garde artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich since 2005, has been busted by German police. Police claim that 100 officers raided businesses, homes and art galleries in Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Israel, and Switzerland, and took two suspects into custody. [Guardian]

– Turrell Takeover: The New York Times's lengthy profile of James Turrell — set to practically take over the museum world with shows across the country — details the technical difficulties involved in installing the 70-year-old artist’s light pieces, the "dense and impenetrable vocabulary" the artist uses to describe his work, and Turrell’s "greatest work and lifelong fixation"— the Roden Crater. Well worth reading. [NYT]

– Artify.it Will Artify No More: The San Francisco-based startup Artify.it, which made a splash when it launched last June, has officially shut down, according to a company spokesperson. The start-up, which aspired to be the "Netflix of art," raised $800,000 from the likes of PayPal founder Peter Thiel. It offered art rentals to subscribers at $50 a month. "While reception to our concept has been very positive, only a portion of [potential customers] are in San Francisco area, so it becomes a challenge to find qualified leads," explained founder and CEO Lorenzo Thione. [Pando Daily]

– Pixel Art at Video Game Convention: Hidden away in Los Angeles’s annual E3 convention, a platform for launching big-budget video games, is an art exhibition called "Into the Pixel," now in its tenth year. "The thing is, these people are not computer geeks — they’re real artists," said Martin Rae, the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. "And this is some of the top-tier art on the planet." [NYT]

– Failed Thomas Hart Benton Heist in Kansas City: After breaking into the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio early Wednesday, the thief of a $16,000 original sketch by the artist was quickly apprehended by Kansas City police when he was spotted pedaling away on a bicycle with two picture frames sticking out of his unzipped backpack. The intruder also took a framed poster of a Benton painting, $169 from the museum’s donation box and an old cat food tin used by Benton for art supplies. [Kansas City Star]

– Pink Bulldog Public Art Theft: A 200-pound statue of a pink bulldog wearing shoes and a water bottle strapped to its back, on display in West Hollywood as part of the city’s Art on the Outside public art program, has been reported missing. City officials report that the statue was last seen on June 9 in its original location. Artist William Sweetlove is offering a reward for its return. [CBS]

– Bâloise Prize Awarded at Art Basel: South African Artist Kemang Wa Lehulere and German artist Jenni Tischer have each been awarded an approximately $30,000 purse and named the winners of the Bâloise Prize at Art Basel. The annual award is given to artists showing in Art Basel’s young and emerging artists segment, called Statements. Works by the winning artists will be donated to the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna. [Press Release]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Kanye West at Design Miami/Basel

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Fittingly enough, “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” made its first appearance in California, as part of the sprawling Pacific Standard Time. That initiative did much to raise awareness of Californian art beyond the borders of the Golden State, and now “State of Mind” is heading to the East Coast, where it will be up at the Bronx Museum of the Artsfrom June 23 to September 8.

What can visitors expect? While a lot of attention is paid to conceptual art in the exhibition, it’s not just a conceptual art show; it includes everything from drawings, sculptures, and artists’ books to installation, video, sound works, and even a painting or two. “State of Mind” is curated by Constance M. Lewallen and Karen Moss, and recently ARTINFO had a chance to talk with Moss about the role of women artists, the challenges of re-creating performance art, and what makes this show uniquely Californian.

There are some big-name artists in this show — such as Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and Bruce Nauman — as well as other names that are less familiar. Are there any lesser-known artists here who may be surprising discoveries to visitors?

I think there are. We were very conscious when curating the show to try to balance the well-known artists with those whose career is being rekindled. The artist whose work is the signature of the show, appearing on the cover of the catalogue, is Robert Kinmont. He was pretty well-known in the '70s and did these conceptual exercises and photographs. This one is called “Eight Natural Handstands.” He did them starting at a precipice overlooking a canyon and each subsequent piece is in a different topography all the way to the forest. We thought that the piece was particularly interesting because it denotes the edginess of the show, and it’s also humorous. People think it looks impossible but he really did a handstand there.

Another lesser-known artist is Gary Beydler, who does these amazing films that kind of deconstruct the process of filmmaking. One is of the Venice pier. He shows it every day under different circumstances, day and night, with crowds or no crowds. He spliced it together but instead of doing it chronologically he did it according to his position on the pier. It coalesces into a giant sunset into the ocean. Unfortunately he passed away the same year we launched the show. There is another piece where he drove through a tunnel on the 110 freeway. He took photographs at different intervals and then edited them together. They’ve been wildly popular.

We also tried to show some of the women artists who are less well-known. We have well-known figures like Eleanor Antin, Martha Rosler, Lynn Hershman, and Suzanne Lacy, but we also have Susan Mogul, who, along with Suzanne Lacy, studied with Judy Chicago at Cal Arts, and Ilene Segalove, whose work is in a similar vein. Women were just coming into their own — if we had ended in '70 or '72 we would have had about two women artists.

When did you end?

We have one or two works from before or after this period, but it’s essentially 1968 to 1974.

Some of the works on view are documents that serve as traces of performance art or installations. I imagine it must be a curatorial challenge to decide how best to represent art that was tied to a specific place and a specific moment in time. Do you worry that this kind of documentation can’t really capture the power of the original artwork?

Of course that’s an ongoing problem. Some of this documentation, particularly with Chris Burden and Paul McCarthy, has itself taken on an artistic status. We have the original black-and-white tapes showing all Paul McCarthy’s performances from '71 to '74 and also Chris Burden’s documents, which he considers full-on artworks. The show itself is surprisingly lively. One of the comments people make is that they had been expecting to see a bunch of boring black-and-white photographs. There are a lot of very lively and colorful and moving works in the show.

We’re very careful with the installations to try to create vignettes that tell the story of different artists’ works. For instance with Allen Ruppersberg’s “Al’s Grand Hotel,” we have original television coverage from a French television station, we have slides that the artist made, we have the soundtrack from Terry Allen, and we have a cutout from one of the hotel rooms. We also have mock-ups of Lynn Hershman’s Dante Hotel. Thanks to the Getty Foundation’s support, we were able to meet with every artist and poke around their personal archives, so a lot of the documentation came from the artists themselves.

Do you also incorporate live performances?

We try to have as many live performances as we can. When the show was up at Berkeley, Linda Montano slept in the gallery, which was a reenactment of her 1972 piece “Sleeping in Berkeley.” At the Orange County Museum, she Skyped in so we could see her sleeping in her home in upstate New York.

At the open house on June 23, there will be a performance piece on the roof of the Bronx Museum of a work by Darryl Sapien and Michael Hinton. They did these endurance performances where they set up manly tasks for themselves. This one is called “War Games” and it uses wrestling and a chess game. What’s really interesting is that the artists are in their '60s now so their sons are reenacting their roles.

Can you tell me more about “Al’s Grand Hotel,” in which the artist set up a temporary hotel in Los Angeles? Did people actually rent and stay in these rooms?

Yes, they did. It was an old house on Sunset Boulevard, and each room was thematic. Al also had Al’s Café, so he was doing these installations in these kind of quasi-public, quasi-private spaces. Part of it was that there weren’t a lot of artist bars in L.A., unlike New York. So he created these spaces for people to come to as a public gathering.

For her Dante Hotel, Hershman organized that project with Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola’s wife, who is an artist, and in their case it was supposed to be up for about a month. You didn’t stay there; it was an installation you visited. They had wax figures in a bed that were supposed to be people. Someone thought they were dead bodies and called the police. The police shut it down and took away the wax figures as evidence!

Couldn’t the cops tell that the figures were made of wax and not evidence of murder?

I think they just thought the whole thing was too bizarre and figured there had to be drugs involved.

One especially powerful piece is a photograph of Chris Burden’s “Shoot,” in which he had a friend shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle in response to the killings of protesters at Kent State. What were the circumstances of the original performance?

Chris was a grad student at UC Irvine where a number of these artists went to school. They had a student-run gallery called F Space in Santa Ana, and he staged it as part of a series of performances there. He was just supposed to be grazed but the bullet actually penetrated his skin. In the show you see it on a video but you also see a still image.

I teach, and students always say to me, “What’s the difference between Chris Burden getting shot and someone doing that on ‘Jackass?’” My answer is very simple: It’s all about the intent of the artist and the context in which it took place. His intention was to create an endurance performance where he uses his body as the material for the artwork. The whole series of videotapes shows him exposing his body to tasks and endurance tests, and he’s also questioning what constitutes art.

The Bronx Museum is the only East Coast venue for the show, which was previously on view as part of the Pacific Standard Time series. Do you think that there’s a California feel to the works produced there? Will East Coast viewers immediately sense that there’s something different going on here?

One of the things that we wanted to try to do here with this show was to defy some of the stereotypes. Not just about East Coast versus West Coast but about northern California versus southern California. Everyone always says that northern California was more about the body and spiritual issues and very experimental, whereas L.A. was more dominated by the media and popular culture. That’s true in certain artists’ work, but we try to show that both areas have both kinds of art.

I think that the real key to what makes California different is the experimental ethos. Artists were unafraid to experiment with a wide variety of materials. East Coast conceptual art is very language-based and deals with text and images. There is that in California as well, such as in the work of Douglas Huebler, John Baldessari, and Charles Gaines, who work with linguistic conceptualism. But you generally have work that is more visceral, body-oriented, sculptural.

Because it was the site for so much social and political activism, a lot of the work in the show references social and political issues very overtly. The free speech movement at Berkeley, anti-Vietnam, women’s lib, Chicano and African-American groups, labor protests — California was really a hotbed for much of the social and political activism and this is reflected probably to a greater extent than with the East Coast artists. There are also works addressing environmental issues, animal rights issues, and issues of sexuality and freedom of sexuality.

Also, a lot of these artists, such as Baldessari, Huebler, Kaprow, unlike their New York counterparts, taught in the art schools, so they had a lasting influence. It’s really now in its third or fourth generation. A lot of artists today are very much interested in conceptualism, performance art, artists’ books, video, installation. The media that were new genres then are now part of artistic practice in general, and a lot of that began in California.

To many, debates over nuclear fission are a thing of the past, obscured by an ever-rotating wheel of issues, from income inequality to the erosion of our privacy. The Cold War is over. We have more important things to worry about. But as the environmental movement scrambles to deal with ever increasing and long looming problems, and countries are showing no signs of backing out of their nuclear programs, it’s a topic that’s worth bringing back to the table.

Two new works, vast in scope but different in focus, explore the current debates over nuclear energy, one by observing its past and the other by hazily predicting its future.

Although it believes its involved in demythologizing everything we know about nuclear energy, “Pandora’s Promise” is actually a standard advocacy documentary that frames its reactionary premise within a banal personal narrative. As the film proclaims, director Robert Stone, who made “Radio Bikini,” the Academy Award-nominated anti-nuclear weapons documentary in 1988, had a eureka moment: What if everything he learned in decades involved with the environmental movement was wrong? Forget about nuclear weapons proliferation; what if nuclear energy not only has positive uses, but is the answer to solving many of the world’s problems?

And for all we know, he may be right. Stone is not alone in struggling to turn the tide on nuclear energy and has amassed a team of supporters to fill in the blanks, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes (“The Making of the Atom Bomb”), environmentalist Stewart Brand, and others. But the film takes on the tone of gee-whiz bewilderment, using these strong voices not to begin a conversation with the audience, but to make you feel like you’re behind the curve because you’re own eureka moment hasn’t arrived. “Pandora’s Promise” lacks a strong argument, hoping that the popular and authoritative talking heads will be enough to convince the viewer that they need to buy what’s being sold.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the film just owned up to its completely biased approach to the topic. Instead, it takes on the view that it’s being objective by allowing the voice of the opposition to be heard. But in a film aimed to please, and where real arguments are hard to find, the filmmaker presents activists still engaged in an anti-nuclear stance as cartoonish buffoons. Show oppositional voices or not, engage with their arguments or ignore them, but to pretend you’re presenting an unbiased portrait while actually mocking those who disagree only foregrounds a lack of clear ideas.

On the other side of the spectrum is Rudolph Herzog’s “A Short History of Nuclear Folly,” recently published by Melville House. The writer, son of filmmaker Werner Herzog, is not afraid to put his biased view up front. The book, he says, displays “how people in the past approached a new technology with a nearly fatal mixture of frivolity, naivete, and unscrupulousness, and how they allowed economic and global-political interests to trump social and ecological reason.”

While “Pandora’s Promise” engages in a black-and-white, good or bad scenario, Herzog’s book is a more nuanced, if comical, presentation of nuclear’s complicated history, like “Dr. Strangelove” happening behind closed doors. The book moves from the Hollywood production of “The Conqueror,” a ridiculous film starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn and shot in Snow Canyon, where the dust blown in from nuclear tests may have possibly killed The Duke and eight other members of the cast and crew, to irresponsible handling of nuclear medical technology in Brazil, with a lot of bumbling scientists in between.

What both works refuse to engage, in different ways, is the moral argument. “Pandora’s Promise” promises that what they’re telling is the truth. But what if it isn’t? What are the consequences of buying into a nuclear plan that may not work? Fukushima was only two years ago — are we ready for that again? “Nuclear Folly” completely skims over many of the major events of nuclear catastrophe — Fukushima, Hiroshima, Chernobyl — because, it seems, they don’t necessarily fit nicely into Herzog’s narrative. The fallout is too tragic.

The debate will rage on, even if behind closed doors. It’s not clear if either of these works will make a dent in the public consciousness and spark a conversation over the future of nuclear fission, or if the questions they pose can ever be answered. It’s a double-edged sword. Or as Gernot Zippe, whose work developing centrifuges increased the risk of nuclear proliferation, told the BBC in 2008: “With a kitchen knife you can peel a potato or kill your neighbor.”

Eddie Redmayne is expected to play the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” which James Marsh (“Man on Wire,” “Shadow Dancer”) will direct from a script written by the New Zealand novelist-dramatist-filmmaker Andrew McCarten.

The film is being fast-tracked for a fall start by producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of the British company Working Title, which worked with Redmayne on “Les Misérables.”

As a postgraduate student at Cambridge University in 1963, Hawking was diagnosed with an atypical form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (motor neurone or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and given two years to live. He is now 71. According to Deadline, “The Theory of Everything” will focus on Hawking’s 1965-91 marriage to Jane Wilde, with whom he has three children.

The 2004 BBC film “Hawking,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Lisa Dillon, follow the couple’s relationship from 1963 to 1965 and enfolds the onset of his illness and his disproving of Sir Fred Hoyle’s version of the Steady State Theory of the cosmological principle in favor of the Big Bang.

Jane Hawking described her early days of the marriage, her role as Hawking’s caregiver, and their parting in her 1999 memoir “Music to Move the Stars,” much criticized for its candor about Hawking’s ego.

Since the publication of this interview with her in The Guardian, which coincided with the BBC film, Hawking’s controversial marriage to one of his nurses, the former Elaine Mason, also ended in divorce amid allegations that she had abused him.

Jane, a linguist and Spanish poetry scholar, has since married the composer and choirmaster Jonathan Hellyer Jones. She and Hawking have resumed a friendly relationship. She visits with him and has written a second memoir, “Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.” The producers of “The Theory of Everything” are currently seeking an actress to play Jane.

Redmayne is also linked with a role in Thomas Vinterberg’s revisionist version of “Far From the Madding Crowd,” in which Carey Mulligan will play Bathsheba Everdene and Matthias Schoenaerts will play Gabriel Oak. Redmayne would presumably play William Boldwood, the repressed farmer whose passion for Bathsheba is unleashed by the Valentine’s Day card she unwisely sends him. Vinterberg’s approach to Thomas Hardy’s novel, which he has adapted with David Nicholls, will apparently be raw and sexual.  

MANILA — They first gained fame on YouTube, dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Now, the orange-uniformed men at a central Philippine jail make their big screen debut in a movie about prison reforms.

The 98-minute movie, "Dance of the Steel Bars", was shot at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, with 750 prisoners forming the backdrop to a story about an American wrongly accused of murder and the bond he forms with a fellow inmate with a talent for dance.

"This film talks about redemption, about brotherhood," Cesar Apolinario, a television journalist and the film's co-director, told Reuters. "I did not only see them as brilliant dancers, but they are actually brilliant actors."

The plot revolves around the real-life reforms carried out in the Cebu jail, where a security adviser introduced daily dance routines in 2007 to instill discipline and camaraderie.

The film was screened inside the Cebu jail on June 7.

"I'm thrilled to see it. And my family will be happy to see the film," said one of the inmates, Macario Sambarihan.

The fast-paced movie features fight scenes portraying gang wars, common in crowded Philippine prisons, juxtaposed with dance sequences in the jail courtyard familiar to millions who have viewed the inmates' Michael Jackson tributes.

"We did not simplify the steps for them," said Los Angeles-based dancer Cindera Che, who choreographed four dance sequences. "We want them to rise up, to our level. And they did."

The producers are betting on the inmates' Internet fame for the project's commercial success. The prisoners' dance on YouTube has been viewed by more than 40 million people, said Stu Higton, executive producer of Dubai-based Portfolio Films International.

"Dance of the Steel Bars" opened in the Philippines on Wednesday and will be distributed in Asia, the Middle East and the United States.

I woke up Saturday morning dreading the thought of having to waste two hours of my life watching “The Internship.” When I signed up to do this blockbuster diary series, I knew I was going to have to see some atrocious films, but a week after “After Earth,” I wasn’t sure I could stomach watching Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play middle-aged Google interns. But then something wonderful happened. I thought to myself, “Why don’t I just check how the movie’s doing, maybe it’s doing so bad at the box office that I won’t have to see it.” And sure enough, it was. The $58 million buddy pic was on pace for a tepid debut, and to add insult to injury, it looked as if it was going to be destroyed by the bargain-priced genre flick, “The Purge.”

I should get this out now: I really don’t like horror films. In all honesty, I can’t think of one I’ve ever wanted to see. Plus, gore and extreme violence, both of which horror films tend to be stuffed with, don’t do it for me. So, while I was glad to avoid watching Vaughn and Wilson act like fools, I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of seeing James DeManaco’s film. But it turned out that the film, which stars Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, was kind of fun, which can’t be said for many of the films released earlier this season.

It helps that “The Purge” has a great premise: in the near future, America is all but free of crime, because the Tea Party-like New Founding Fathers have instituted The Purge, one day each year when all crime is legal. It’s also an extremely fast moving film, foregoing character development that might bore you. Plus, for the squeamish out there, it’s relatively gore-free, although it’s plenty creepy (those masks!). That’s not enough to overcome the fact that it’s frequently dumb — there’s laughing at campiness of a movie, and then there’s laughing at the stupidity of it — and racially problematic (or, at least, not prepared to deal with some issues it creates for itself), but it will occasionally make you jump out of your seat. It’s a genre film after all, and though there are hints that it’s striving for more, it never quite gets there, even if it does provide some actual thrills.

What’s most interesting about the film is not the film itself, but how it did at the box office last weekend. Costing a mere $3 million to make, “The Purge” ended up grossing $36.4 million, making it the top earning film of the weekend, easily topping, in order, “Fast & Furious 6,” “Now You See Me,” and “The Internship.” “The Purge” nearly doubled projections for the weekend too, which, according to the Hollywood Reporter, were $20 million (that alone would have made for a great debut). It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it was about the film that led to it’s shocking over performance, but it certainly didn’t hurt that it’s one of the only horror films being released this summer. Its ad campaign was unusually effective, too, focusing on the simple, horrifying imagery of the film’s villains. Plus, even before this weekend, buzz for “The Internship,” the one high profile release of the weekend, seemed half hearted at best. Was anyone clamoring for a zany Vaughn and Wilson movie? Apparently not.

But what I think really helped (and this relates to something we wrote about in this space a couple weeks ago) is that “The Purge” was different than most summer fare. It’s not a sequel, a superhero epic, or a huge explosion-filled action fest. The film’s box office performance will (and probably should) be viewed as an aberration by the studios, but maybe, just maybe, it’ll push someone to actually take a chance with their next tent pole flick. Unlikely, but one can hope.

“The Purge”

Director: James DeMonaco

Writer: James DeMonaco

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey

Opening Week Gross: $36.4 million