Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar's latest film "I'm So Excited!" is a raunchy screwball comedy that the Oscar-winning director said marks a return to his roots as a satirist even as it delivers biting commentary on modern-day Spain.

The Spanish-language movie, which opens the Los Angeles Film Festival on Thursday and will be on limited release in U.S. cinemas on June 28, follows passengers on a flight from Spain to Mexico City after their plane experiences a serious malfunction.

Almodovar, 63, returns to his comedy past after exploring more dramatic themes over the past decade, including 2002's "Talk To Her" - which won him a best original screenplay Oscar - and 2011's "The Skin I Live In."

"During the '80s, I made a lot of comedies, so this was like returning to my roots," Almodovar told Reuters. "I think I just needed to make something lighter."

In the film, the pilots and flamboyantly gay flight attendants attempt to distract the passengers by providing them with alcohol and drugs, which leads to sex and dancing to the 1982 Pointer Sisters' hit song "I'm So Excited."

The film stars several actors who previously worked with Almodovar, including Javier Camara, Lola Duenas, Cecilia Roth and Blanca Suarez. Spanish Hollywood stars Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz also make appearances.

Almodovar said he unconsciously channeled the vision of sexually explicit American filmmaker John Waters, who directed 1988's "Hairspray" and 2004's "A Dirty Shame." He referred to him as "one of my best American friends."

With Waters in mind, Almodovar said the film has elements that may lead viewers to describe it as "dirty," as the passengers "do everything that is forbidden to do on a plane."

METAPHOR FOR SPAIN

"In Spain, being excited means being horny," the director said. "In the second part of the movie, this is the state of the passengers."

Almodovar, who is gay, grew up during the repressive rule of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. After the caudillo's death in 1975, democracy suddenly brought a "big explosion of freedom," he said.

His debut film, 1980's "Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom" is described as having captured the newfound cultural and sexual freedom of that time.

While "I'm So Excited!" was intended to play for laughs, Almodovar said it is also a metaphor for Spain that has been hit by a two-year recession that has left about a quarter of its workforce jobless.

The director said the film reflects the "political corruption and financial embezzlement" that has ensnared the country, and its banking crisis that required a $54 billion (41 billion euro) European Union-backed bailout last year.

"What is metaphorical (in this movie) is that journey which consists in turning around in circles without knowing where they are going to land," Almodovar said. "They need an emergency landing but don't know exactly who will be commanding (it)."

He added, "There is a lot of fear and uncertainly - two words that define my feeling as a Spanish citizen."

"I'm So Excited!" is distributed in the United States by Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Classics.

No one is more surprised than Kevin Rahm that his "Mad Men" character Ted Chaough has become a major player in season six of the AMC drama.

On July 13, 2011, Adbusters, a magazine “concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces,” issued a proposal for a peaceful protest on Wall Street. From that moment, the Occupy movement, as we know it, had begun. But as filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites learned, it started long before that. Taking their camera down to the protests, and exploring the different offshoots of the movement around the country and its underlying forces, they ended up with “99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film,” put together by the duo with a team of almost 100 filmmakers across the country. In a phone conversation, Ewell and Aites spoke with ARTINFO’s Craig Hubert about what brought them down to the protests, the logistics of the collaborative process, and what they hope people take away from the film.

What were the origins of getting involved with Occupy and making a film about the movement?

Aaron: Well, we’re not part of Occupy.

Audrey: Essentially, we live in New York. The first few days of Occupy we really were not in tune at all. The few things I had seen in the news made me really uninterested in it. It looked like a bunch of sock puppets and people playing hacky sack, stuff like that. It wasn’t until October 1, 2011, the day of the Brooklyn Bridge march, when over 700 people were arrested on the bridge, that I really took note. At that point, I was watching a live-stream of the whole thing and I was transfixed by what I was seeing, this massive assemblage of people who were led on to the bridge and were kettled, and systematically arrested. The drama of it was so compelling — people were screaming out their names. Then the person filming it on the bridge said his battery was running out and a couple seconds later the screen went black. At this point I was completely involved in the drama, from the “there’s a crazy thing happening” perspective, you know? I flipped on the news and there wasn’t any coverage. There was a real story here that I hadn’t been getting. Whatever I had been seeing on the news wasn’t accurate. There was obviously something dramatic unfolding. Also, I was very disturbed that 740-odd people being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the day was not being covered by the mainstream media outlets. I felt very uncomfortable, and compelled in that moment. I have a camera, I’m a filmmaker, I at least have the ability to record this. So Aaron and I grabbed our camera and went down and filmed. We went down to Zuccotti Park and what we saw there was simply not what we were seeing recorded. It wasn’t a planned thing at all.

When did the idea of making it a collaborative film, including all these other voices, come together?

Audrey: It was part and parcel. At that point, there weren’t many occupations around the country yet, this was very early. A lot of people had flocked to New York to be a part of this thing. What we saw when we got there were all these people from all these different areas and backgrounds standing up to tell their story. So immediately, what hit me about it was this patchwork quality, this American pastiche of voices. It had to be collaborative because that is what I was seeing there. Everybody’s voices were welcome, and it resonated with me on that level.

Aaron: We’re not really interested in a film that’s just our perspective of what Occupy was. We thought the most interesting way to do it would be to combine a bunch of subjective voices and try to find some semblance of objectivity within that.

Audrey: We also just approached it as an experiment. From day one it was, let’s set up an experimental film around this. We were standing there watching the Occupy people go through their processes, which were foreign to us, and we said, why don’t we set up a parallel but unaffiliated experiment where we don’t know exactly what their aims are, or how they’re going to go about trying to achieve those aims, but let’s set up a film based around those same principals, adjust as we go, and see if we can make a cohesive end product.

Technically, how did this work?

Audrey: I started by putting out a few press releases, mainly in film publications and through film forums, and reaching out to filmmakers that we knew. Most of the responses we were getting back were from New York and L.A., and that was not the film we wanted to make. So I started to put out press releases in more general media. At that point, we were flooded with responses — it was really overwhelming, actually. We let everyone know there were a couple of rules we were organizing this thing around. One, it wasn’t going to be propaganda. Anybody that was uncomfortable with that should leave. Quite a few people left at that point because we said this is not a pro-Occupy film, exactly — everyone’s allowed to contribute their voice, whether that’s pro or anti. The other thing we said was that the more experienced filmmakers were going to lead this process, because I couldn’t conceive of a way where we could have so many inexperienced people trying to make a film together. Making films is incredibly hard and skilled work. So we needed that guidance there. And the last thing was that anybody was welcome, as long as they would adhere to the other guidelines, whether or not they had any other film experience at all. That was interesting, incorporating them into the process.

Were they incorporated all the way through, even into the post-production process?

Audrey: No, but that’s normal for any film. There were different people involved in different stages, depending on what they were doing. We would have people help out with the social media feeds, or have graphic designers come or web developers, different people who wanted to be part of the project but didn’t want to shoot something.

How were the choices made on what to cover outside of New York?

Audrey: While it’s true that Aaron and I were guiding the process and keeping the whole thing together, others stepped forward and said, you know, I would like to do a piece on student debt. Brilliant, perfect. We wanted to look at not just what was going on with the Occupy movement, but with the underlying issues that had brought all these people there. We started this whole thing with an email list, where we said, OK guys, what are you interested in, what do you want to work on, but it got out of hand really quickly. This is where having a lot of inexperienced people involved was difficult, because people wanted to start talking about what music would be in the film. So Aaron and I made an outline and then people would step forward and say, I’ll work on this part, or somebody would say, it’s not on there, but I would like to do something with this. So in that way, it really came together in a collaborative fashion.

Aaron: Another thing that she’s not really saying is that she really organized these people into teams, so it wasn’t just one person going out and sending something back. It would be all the filmmakers from this part of the country — Audrey would coordinate them and have them work together.

Audrey: One of the interesting things we learned from this experiment was that the only way for us to be effective in what we were doing was actually to have a very strict hierarchy. What it came down to was, because it had so many moving pieces, it needed really centralized oversight. Consensus was not an option for us. It was not effective, and almost immediately we got rid of it.

Aaron: But that’s just for us.

What do you hope people take away from the film?

Audrey: We’ve seen a really big interest from two different groups. The baby boomers, actually, are hugely interested in the film, the people who were there in the ’60s and the ’70s. They went through their social unrest, their protest movements and anti-war movements, and they’re really fascinated by this. For the most part, they weren’t out there in the squares, or in the parks, but they have a lot of curiosity about it. They want to know what’s going on. What’s happening now. The other groups that are interested are obviously people involved in Occupy, but then other younger people also, who have that mentality, the energy and spirit of change. With them, it’s really different. They tend to know more about what was going on, because they’re probably watching more things on the Internet, whether it’s live streaming or other alternative media sources. They’re more current. But I think what everyone is wondering, at this point, is: What’s happening now? What’s happening at this point? Our hope is that people are going to go to this film, watch it, and first get that framework that they need. What happened? Not just with the movement, but what happened with the country? How did we get here?

Aaron: The goal from the very beginning was to make something that everyone could understand and have a clear view on exactly what it is and what it was. We wanted it to be a very inclusive film, so literally anyone could sit down and watch it and get a clear understanding of the entire movement, why it came into existence and what it did. If you were just watching the news back at home, you weren’t able to have a clear understanding of what it was at all.

Audrey: The question becomes: Are the problems still there? What’s going on now? We’re hoping people will watch this and come out of it going: What works? What didn’t work? How do we address the issues that are still very much present?

“99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film” is screening on June 14 at New York’s IFC Center as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Every summer, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is promiscuous with theater, every nook and cranny of the historic city crammed with experimental works, most of them with a cross-cultural pedigree. If you want to get a sampling of what that feels like, you should head over to Arlene’s Grocery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and take in “Stop the Tempo.” There are only five performances left — on June 14, 15, 16, and 18 — but it’s worth the trip downtown. 

The Origin Theatre Company, George Heslin’s adventurous group dedicated to premiering European works in America, is presenting this 65-minute drama by Gianina Carbinariu about disaffected Romanian youth. The interactive space usually dedicated to rock performances is the perfect venue as the three actors — Olivia Horton, Reuben Barsky, and Sarah Silk— weave among the tables with a clarifying anger at the world they’ve inherited. In the play, directed by Matt Torney, the over stimulation of capitalistic consumerism after the stultifying reign of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu sends the trio into a series of pranks which morph into terrorism.

The attractive and talented cast is the main reason to see the production, especially Barsky, who has the dangerous energy of a young Mark Ruffalo. This is the 23-year-old actor’s professional debut, after a having been discovered by Heslin and Torney in a showcase at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. The Philadelphia-born actor, who is also a member of the Amoralists, one of New York’s youngest off-Broadway companies, is fairly typical of hundreds of actors who are trying to gain a foothold in the theater world, doing readings, showcases, and workshops for little or no money. Barsky recently spoke with ARTINFO’s Patrick Pacheco about “Stop the Tempo” and his “first real paying gig” as an actor.

This is a play by a 36-year-old Romanian writer. Did you do much research into the club scene in Bucharest?

The Romanian aspect does come into it, the tremendous political change that they’ve gone through and their identity crisis. But I think it’s more universal to us. We can relate to those adolescent feelings of not belonging. I know I’ve always felt like an alien, not able to fit in. We are now faced with such an eclectic mix of choices in the 21st century that it’s even more difficult to pinpoint where one belongs.

What comes through is the anger. Is that fun to play?

Oh, yeah, all that resentment toward society. No problem with that. My character comes from a broken home, he’s a failed DJ, and his girlfriend has left him for someone else. Anger, neglect, resentment.  I’ve had my days. You can focus a lot of emotions through anger. It’s one of the easiest to connect with because it’s so simple and clear.  

Like these characters, have you had the impulse to disconnect entirely from the world?

Absolutely. I can stay in my apartment in Bushwick all day long. Life just seems pointless. We’re moving in a direction and there’s no purpose. But at the end of the day, I don’t think that’s true. I saw a great documentary about the homeless. And someone asked them why they go on. And one person said, “Because I believe I have a purpose. I don’t know what it is. But I believe I have one.” I think it takes a lot of trying. And a lot of failing.

How have your audiences been at Arlene’s Grocery?  

I’d been there before just hanging out at the bar, but it feels great to be acting there. Sometimes we play before six people, sometimes before 80. But no matter how many, they’re anxious to go on the ride with you.

How long are you going to give yourself to make it as an actor?

A friend of mine studies experts and he says that it takes 10 years for a profession to sink in — whether you’re a plumber, an electrician, a professor, or an actor. Ten years of studying and experience to become a true expert in your field. Actors have an uphill battle because we’re not always working. But I’d say there’s definitely a 10-year rule.

And so in 2023, do you figure you’ll re-assess the situation?

I hope I won’t have to. 

–  Art + Auction’s list of 50 most collectible artists under the age of 50, which we published in two parts, took a look at emerging artists who have committed collector bases and rising profiles, from Julie Mehretu to Ragnar Kjartansson.

–  As the artworld flocked to Switzerland for Art Basel, Judd Tully reported on transactions ranging from an Alberto Mugrabi-purchased Theaster Gates to massive Magritte sales, Coline Milliard looked into the Venice Biennale tie-ins at Basel, Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop discovered supersized artworks at Basel Unlimited as well as the emerging stars at LISTE, while Alexander Forbes investigated other satellite fairs Scope and Volta9.

–  Concurrently at Design Miami/Basel, Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop reported on the bigger booths and maturing vision of the fair, the three recipients of the 2013 W Hotel Designers of the Future Award, and an abundance of wearable jewelry art by Anish Kapoor and the Campana Brothers.

–  Protean Painter Joe Bradley answered 26 questions about his current exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and his unexpected appreciation for the Jeff Koons show at Gagosian.

–  Chloe Wyma looked back at Peggy Guggenheim’s quirky avant-garde personal style in a slideshow of the patron’s accidentally arty looks.

–  Modern Painters sat down with 83-year-old former “Radical Figuration” artist Jo Baer in her Amsterdam studio to discuss her current exhibitions and the mysteries of Ireland.

–  Ashton Cooper profiled underappreciated “Pictures” Artist Troy Brauntuch and his current show at Petzel Gallery.

–  Rozalia Jovanovic spoke with art collector Peter Hort about buying art online and how the art dealer’s role is changing in the online market.

–  Judd Tully rounded up the highlights of the upcoming London summer auctions with insight from officials at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

–  Kate Deimling interviewed curator Karen Moss, as her show “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970,” previously on view on the West Coast, started its trip to the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

This week’s VIDEOS:

Emma Watson, the erstwhile Hermione Granger, has landed her own fantasy franchise, “Queen of the Tearling.” Like the Harry Potter series, it will be produced for Warner Bros. by David Heyman.

The “Tearling” films, set to make Watson a major star, will attempt to replicate the vast success of Peter Jackson’s J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations and HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” which is based on novelist George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” saga.

Erika Johansen’s “Tearling” trilogy, which begins publication next summer, is “set three centuries after a small portion of the human race has populated a land mass that mysteriously emerged in the wake of an environmental catastrophe,” according to HarperCollins’ press release.

Watson will play an idealistic 19-year-old princess, Kelsea Glynn, “who must reclaim her deceased mother’s throne and redeem her kingdom, the Tearling, from forces of corruption and [the] dark magic of the Red Queen, the sorceress-tyrant of the neighboring country, Mortmesne.” 

Announced yesterday in Variety, the news was timed, perhaps, to coincide with the release today of “The Bling Ring.” Although Sofia Coppola’s fable about celebrity envy, the pitfalls of social media, and teenage alienation is an ensemble film, Watson gives its most sophisticated performance as the most egotistical of the Valley girls who burgle the homes (specifically the wardrobes) of such stars as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

Her character, Nicki, is based on Alexis Neiers, who parlayed her notoriety as one of the burglars into a short-lived reality show and spent five days of her month-long prison sentence in a cell next to Lohan’s. Watson occupies the film’s hall of mirrors with convincingly snotty aplomb; it’s a knowing portrayal of a delusional young woman, as good as her work as the jilted wardrobe assistant in “My Week With Marilyn.”

It also continues the cautious sexualization of 23-year-old Watson’s post-Hermione persona — a subject of fascination for the tabloids and trashier websites — begun in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” “The Bling Ring” has Nicki briefly do a pole dance (so bored it’s mocking) in Paris Hilton’s nightclub-themed rec room and also protrude her tongue lasciviously during a disco scene.

An elegant fashion icon and poised talk-show guest, Watson meanwhile plays a cursing, axe-wielding version of herself in the apocalypse comedy “This Is the End.” She is clearly a good sport. Hermione Granger is dead, long live the princess. Hopefully, “Kelsea Glynn” will partake of her wit.

Art Basel has been the story of the week, as the art world’s luminaries flocked to the Swiss burg to enjoy the world’s most celebrated galleries of modern and contemporary art galleries. In addition, to surveying the fare in the aisles of Art Basel, our reporters also took in the action at the week’s other fairs: Design Miami/Basel, Volta, and Scope. Here, we round up our photo coverage. Enjoy!

To see images of Basel’s week of fairs, click on the slideshow.

A rare 75-year-old comic book featuring the debut of Superman found in a Minnesota home's wall fetched $175,000 at auction, said comic book seller Comicconnect.com.  

The identity of the buyer in the online auction was not disclosed. The comic book, Action Comics No. 1 from June 1938, was the first appearance of the all-American superhero by writer Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster.

It had been estimated to sell for about $100,000, Comicconnect.com CEO Stephen Fishler said, adding that there are about 100 remaining copies of the 250,000 original copies.

"It's so noteworthy because it was a historic milestone," Fishler told Reuters. "There was no such thing as a superhero or a man in costume (in 1938)."

The comic book was sold by building contractor David Gonzalez, who discovered it among newspapers used as insulation in a wall during a home renovation in Hoffman, Minnesota, about 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Gonzalez bought the vacant 1938 home for $10,100, Fishler said.

The book's condition was graded 1.5 out of 10 because its back cover was accidentally ripped shortly after it was found.

"Conservatively, that's a $50,000 tear, but probably more," Fishler said.

A mint condition copy of Action Comics No. 1 would command about $3 million, Fishler said. A 9.5 graded copy of Action Comics No. 1 sold for $2.16 million in 2011.

Superman gets a big-screen reboot in the movie "Man of Steel," which just openned in North America.

Chinese herbology, a complex system harnessing animal, vegetable, and mineral elements to treat illnesses, has been the backbone of Chinese traditional medicine for thousands of years. In artist Zhang Huan’s latest series of work, to be shown at Pace Gallery in New York in spring 2014, it is the medium with which he creates textured paintings about “physical birth, senility, illness, and death.”

Offering a sneak peek, Zhang, who is one of China’s most prominent contemporary artists, reveals a series that draws on both personal and political history—with implications of hysteria and a slow-spreading sickness. There are dark scenes of ritual shaming from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Communist propaganda images, and, interestingly, portraits of British royalty, including the back of a white bouffant head that is unmistakably the queen’s, though Zhang is coy about the implications of the British subject matter, saying only that “British royalty has a special relationship with modern Britain and the rest of the world.”

He wants his paintings, like the herbal materials used to make them, to be ultimately healing. “We can draw lessons from history, dui zheng xia yao,” he says, repeating an aphorism that means one must identify the illness and treat it with the right medicine, “and give China the right prescription for the future.”

The Chinese medical herbs are dried, colored, and affixed to the surface of the canvas—a process not unlike what he has done with his famous monochrome ash paintings, where burned incense is used like paint.

Ash is a trademark of Zhang’s work. In recent years, it has been used in his most iconic pieces, such as the monumental ash statues of Buddha and other works that reference his recurring themes of life, death, and rebirth. Ash has also been used in a series of “historical” paintings, impastoed works depicting scenes from China’s Cultural Revolution, Chinese leaders, and anonymous family portraits. Here, it embodies a sense of the past, captured imperfectly in these scented, dusty remains, and is also a symbol of prayer and hope.

As to how the Chinese medicine paintings are a continuation of his previous ideas, he says both Chinese herbs and ash have curative properties. “While Chinese medicine is used to cure cancers in human bodies, ash is used for mankind’s mental illness.” To him, ash, made from joss sticks that Chinese Buddhists and Taoists offer to the gods for blessings and deliverance, is a therapeutic substance. “It is our collective soul, our memories, our hope, and our blessings,” he says. This “living, breathing substance” is meticulously collected by his staff from temples around Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou every month.

At age 48, Zhang is one of China’s biggest art stars; his installations and sculptures are exhibited in top museums worldwide and internationally collected. Currently, he has a major solo exhibition on view at the Palazzo Vecchio, an ancient town hall in Florence, Italy. The exhibition, titled “Soul and Spirit,” is a far-ranging showcase that runs through several parts of the historic building and around it, extending to Fort Belvedere and the Boboli Gardens.

But despite his artistic preoccupation with the spiritual, Zhang, who converses in Mandarin, is a straight shooter with an impish air. A joke is never far away. He says his two children, a son aged 13 and a daughter aged 11, are not good at their studies. “You can’t run away from DNA,” he adds with a chuckle. “Their father’s is too strong.”

It has often been pointed out that his recent work—meditative, calm, concerned with mortality—is a lifetime away from the hell-raising performance pieces that established his career in the early 1990s. One of the youngest members of experimental Beijing East Village group, he did several seminal works where he used his body in extreme, potentially self-destructive exercises.

Among the most famous is 12 Square Meters, 1994, where he sat naked in a public toilet, covered in fish oil and honey, while flies engulfed him. It was inspired by the small, filthy bathrooms in rural villages and the exploration of the tension between disgust and attraction.

Later, after an eight-year sojourn in New York, Buddhism became a recurring theme in his work (he officially became a Buddhist in 2005), but he says he is not making Buddhist art. “I’m using Buddhism to talk about being human, about being in the world.”

From physical transgression in ephemeral acts to a Buddhist-inspired quest for enlightenment—looking back, what does he think of his journey so far? “To be honest, I’ve been fighting for so long so that I can make a living through my art. Back in my Beijing days, I often wondered, ‘When will the day come that I can make money from this?’ Now there’s no need to think about these things, and I’m happy to be able to provide employment to others.” He hires about 100 assistants for his 50,000-square-meter studio-cum-factory space.

Then he grows ruminative and says mysteriously, “But we all need a bigger perspective, right?” He pauses. “Sometimes for the big institutions and their big retrospectives of my work, I don’t even go to the opening. You reach the point where you are concerned with the big questions: Where are we going? Where do we come from? These are problems we can’t solve. Problems of life and death. How do we end the cycle? How do we spend the next 10 to 20 years?”

Well, in the not-so-distant future, Zhang himself hopes to become a movie director and has two ideas: the first is a love story set in Tibet, for which he already has the story line figured out; the second is a film about Chairman Mao Zedong. Asked if he’s planning a documentary on Mao, he says, “No, a fictional film.” His impish side slips back into the conversation again. Poking fun at his own bald pate, he says, “I’ll play Chiang Kai-shek!”

To see images, click on the slideshow.

A prominent dermatologist and virologist at NYU Langone Medical Center, Alvin Friedman-Kien is a rare breed of art collector, whose interests run both
 broad and deep, encompassing a vast range of artifacts, from flea-market finds to museum-worthy objects. Matthew Drutt speaks with Friedman-Kien about his passion for the treasures, ancient and modern, that fill his homes.

How did you get your start?

I began collecting marbles when I was 6 years old; by 
8, I had moved on to stamps, and at 11 I bought my first Oriental carpet, at a Salvation Army store for $5. At that time rugs were kind of out of fashion, but I acquired lots of used books about them. I spent my early teenage years studying rugs and occasionally buying them at estate sales and thrift shops. I still own that first carpet, which remains one of my favorite objects.

How would you describe your range of interests?

I have always been an eclectic collector. I find ancient and contemporary works from disparate civilizations seem to fit together in a harmonious way. I continue to acquire pieces from pre-Columbian textiles and Southeast Asian sculptures to photographs
 by André Kertész, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, and Herb Ritts to Dutch and Flemish genre and landscape painting, and early modern canvases and sculpture, as well as contemporary art.

How do you find things?

Often in unexpected places. In high school, one of my classmates was Nina Castelli, the daughter of Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend. As a teenager I visited their apartment just above the Leo Castelli Gallery, where I saw the most fantastic contemporary art for the first time. Some years later I bought a painting by Lee Bontecou at her first Castelli show. While doing medical research in London in 1958, by chance I met Morris Graves, the distinguished American artist from the Pacific Northwest who was living in Ireland. I had long had a reproduction of his
 painting Bird Singing in the Moonlight
 from MoMA on the
 wall in my room at 
the medical school. He encouraged me
 to become familiar
 with the various 
arts of Asia, especially Japanese and Chinese painting, 
sculpture, and ceramics. I bought my 
first piece of Ming 
furniture from Gisèle Croës in Brussels 40 years ago, and shortly after purchased a charming set of terra-cotta dancing tomb figures that are very rare. They represent the very essence of Tang sculptures.

What are the works
 you are most proud of?

One of my favorites is 
a female portrait by John Graham, who had been married to Ileana Sonnabend’s mother and lived in the basement of the building where the Castelli gallery was located. A classics professor had left the painting to Columbia University, which didn’t want it. There are also several paintings and drawings by Graves among the pieces that I still treasure most.

What have you bought most recently?

I have just acquired a pair of exceptional stone Indian jalis that I first saw many years ago at Spink, in London, where I used to buy South and Southeast Asian art. The pieces had been split up and sold to two collectors, but Simon Ray, who used to work there and now has his own gallery, recently brought them back together. When he sent me a catalogue, I called him right away. They should never have been split up and now
I can keep them together.

This article appears in the June 2013 issue of Art+Auction.

To see images, click on the slideshow.

If you’ve made it through Masimiliano Gioni’s 156 artist strong “Encyclopedic Palace” and still have a hankering for more, the Arsenale’s wide selection of national pavilions won’t fail to disappoint. Leaving the Eurocentrism of the Giardini behind, the Arsenale offers smaller, warehouse-like spaces that seem more like a studio setting than a white cube.

See our picks for the five best below or in the slideshow.

Turkey

More stomach churning than a listing vaporetto at high water, Ali Kazma’s Turkish pavilion show, called “Resistance,” documents those pushing the boundaries of the human body and blurring the line between human and machine. The multi-channel video projection shows puffed-up Italian body builders, extreme body modifiers, Japanese bondage, and human dissections for med students, juxtaposed with quiet disciplines like calligraphy or images of a lab with robots so advanced they’ve developed their own language. The whole thing suggests a unity of extremes.

UAE

Mohammed Kazem and curator Reem Fadda oscillate between place and placelessness in their “Walking on Water” show. The immersive installation features a 360-degree view of open ocean, the viewer bobbing along as if standing on the video camera’s vessel. It’s a disorienting space that, when walking, gives the viewer the feeling that he or she is moving along with the sea. On the floor, a screen reads out a constantly changing set of GPS coordinates, mapping out the path of the camera. However useful the coordinates may be with a proper devise with which to interpret them, in this context they’re utterly futile — laughably so — pointing to the technological crutches that leave us inept when not plugged in. 

Latvia

In what’s likely the most affective statement in the Arsenale, a large tree swings upside down from the ceiling, creaking from the sheer force of movement and slowly dropping limbs to the floor. This is Kaspars Podieks and Kriss Salmanis’s pavilion, “North by North-East.” Hung on the far wall, ten large-scale black-and-white photographic portraits of residents of Latvia’s Drusti parish standing emotionless in the snow outside what are presumably their homes and workplaces. Like the tree, these individuals are presented out of context and in flux, in the process of being forcibly moved from their lands.

Argentina

Nicola Costantino presents a quartet of installations for her Argentine pavilion inspired by Eva Peron. In “Eva and Sonny,” a video work in period costume, six different figures represent various stages in Evita’s life. The pavilion as a whole serves to destabilize the way in which we form expectations around people, especially public individuals, to the extent that they inadvertently become trapped in some caricature of their reality. The most exemplary and straightforward representation of this intent is a kinetic sculpture in which Costantino has created the silhouette of one of Peron’s gowns own of steel and placed it on a constantly moving robotic platform, confined within an octagonal barrier.

Georgia

Just when you think you’ve hit the very end of the Arsenale’s art offerings, the Georgian Pavilion, curated by Joanna Warsza, looms ahead. Attached to one of the 12th-century Venetian buildings like a haphazard extension, “Kamikaze Loggia” takes its name from the unlicensed additions made to buildings during the period directly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Inside, the Bouillon Group, Thea Djordjadze, Nikoloz Lutidze, Gela Patashuri, Ei Arakawa, Sergei Tcherepnin, and Gio Sumbadze present an exhibition that responds to these exercises in informal architecture, showing how they can be viewed as a social attempt to undermine the structures of yore physically.

Las Vegas, the self-styled "Entertainment Capital of the World", is known for its big name glamour and glitzy flashing lights. But when those lights die there's still room for them to shine at The Neon Museum.  On the north end of the Strip, the museum displays about 160 classic neon signs that have been replaced by LED lights and other more modern lighting.

Day One, July 4

ROSKILDE, Denmark — The gates to Roskilde, one of Europe’s biggest and most anticipated music festivals, were open at 5 p.m. on Thursday. I made my way over to the Arena entrance, which is adjacent to the East Campground, at 20 minutes to the hour and was actually disappointed at the crowd I encountered. The excitement was palpable, but I was expecting more people. But as 5 p.m. neared, the group swelled from dozens to hundreds, to what by the end was more than a thousand. When the guards finally opened the gate, people came streaming in from every direction, but strangely, the chaos was orderly. There was sprinting and yelling, but nearly no one fell, the shoving was minimal, and when either of those things did happen, the apologies came in effusive bursts.

The festival’s main site, Orange Stage, was opened by Danish disco revivalists Vinnie Who. Roskilde traditionally likes to have an up-and-coming Danish act open Orange, but that’s not who Vinnie Who are. As I was told by many of the locals, they’re an odd choice — the band that has plateaued, people said, and they’re hard to get excited about.

It was not a very strong night for the main stage. While a portion of the crowd was excited to see the night’s headliner, Slipknot, I couldn’t have cared less. Besides not being into sludge metal, I think their shtick — horror movie masks, jump suits, steel can drummers on rising platforms — is corny. It seems like the sort of thing an angsty teen with no taste would be into. But at least Slipknot had energy, something you can’t say for Swedish indie pop super-group Ingrid. Counting Lykke Li, Peter Bjorn and John, and Miike Snow among its members, you’d expect something that was fun and catchy, but this was just bland. The surprise appearance by Chrissy Hynde was nice, but also highlighted how boring everything else was.

Fortunately, Kendrick Lamar was there to rescue the night. The rapper has experienced a meteoric rise in the U.S. over the last year, but I wasn’t ready for the reception he would receive on the other side of the Atlantic. He played the Arena Stage, which can fit a crowd of 17,000, but even that couldn’t contain everyone who showed up. The thousands unable to squeeze under the stage’s tent weren’t dissuaded from trying to get a glimpse of the rapper, though, and some even took to the fragile trees surrounding the area to get a better view. The MC kicked things off with a five minute-long Euro dance medley to pump up the crowd, and then delved into songs from last year’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city.” I like Lamar’s music but have never been able to really connect to it. That wasn’t the case on Thursday — his performance was easily one of the most visceral of the festival. Lamar is on his way to being a star, and that’s exactly how he carried himself.

Day Two, July 5

Bands started playing at noon, but I wasn’t interested in any shows until an early evening set from Toronto-based punk act Metz. I caught them in a dank Brooklyn club last year, and though that set was stuffed with all the chaos and aggression I’ve come to expect from the band, this performance was better. For just over a half hour they thrashed through a dozen songs that got the crowd gesticulating unpredictably, despite the heat and the audience’s lack of familiarity with the tunes. If I seem surprised, it’s mainly because part of what makes Metz so good is how deafeningly loud they can get, something outdoor festivals aren’t really conducive to. But they played the Pavilion Stage, which had a tent covering and offered the dingy charms of a cramped club (a.k.a. the perfect setting for scuzzy rock).

The big deal on Friday, though no one would admit it without some prodding, was the headliner: Rihanna. Roskilde, traditionally, is a rock and metal festival, but as the fans at the previous evening’s Lamar show could tell you, the music landscape has changed — even in Metal-loving Scandinavia.

While no one would own up to wanting to see Rihanna, the massive area surrounding the Orange Stage was jammed with people. A decent view was impossible to find, even two hours before the set. The crowd seemed a little annoyed that the 25-year-old took the stage a half hour after she was set to, but the wait felt worth it. Like all the other performers at the festival, the singer was sure to thank the crowd repeatedly. But as she regally commanded the stage, it was clear this performance was for her, not us. Her refusal to immediately dive into hits was a fascinating move to see a pop star pull off, even though it must have been grating to some in the crowd. Also, she snuck the chorus from Ginuwine’s “Pony” into a medley of her hits, which was awesome.

Day Three, July 6

As tired as everyone may have been after the first two days of music (and a week into the actual festival), no one was about to let up on Saturday, Roskilde’s unofficial main day. And it made sense, considering the last addition to the line-up and the night’s headliner: Metallica.

To say that the legendary thrash metal band was the act the festival was most excited about would be an understatement (the group’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, grew up in Denmark). A few people started queuing up for RiRi the morning of her performance, but people were camped out for Metallica, spending their entire day drinking in the sun waiting for a chance to slip into the pit. A third, at best, actually made it in. And when the band finally took the stage the 60,000 plus fans gathered, filling up the Orange Stage area like no other time during the weekend, and completely lost their minds. The set was shockingly loud; another member of the foreign press, who left after the band played “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” told me that at his hostel, quite a distance from the grounds, he could still hear the band clearly.

Fortunately for the select few not wanting to watch James Hetfield yell for two hours, there were plenty of other options that night. After a half hour I set off for the Pavilion Stage to take in the slightly quieter but just as combative Pissed Jeans. The sloppy Philadelphia group play bleak everyman punk — think songs about office- and suburbia-induced boredom — but the band’s delirious live show is entrancing. It’s impossible to turn away from singer Matt Korvette, especially once he starts stumbling around the stage and nuzzling with bandmates, berating the crowd for skipping Metallica, and joking about the stupidity of crowd surfing. I don’t think the primarily Scandinavian crowd really got what he was going on about, but they stayed put until the end.

After a quick detour by a desert rave out near the campgrounds, I set forth to the Arena Stage, where Sigur Rós, who could have been the headliner any other night, was playing. The show was about as good of a translation of a band’s music to the stage as I’ve ever seen — it was packed with beauty (their A.V. component was the best of the festival), intense build-ups, and celestial crescendos. Despite their competition on the Orange Stage, the crowd was thousands deep. A billion people have already written about what an experience Sigur Rós is live, and I’m kind of bummed so many people had to miss out on it because of scheduling.

Day Four, July 7

By Sunday, the week-long party had finally started to catch up with everyone. The few brave souls who’d managed to raise themselves from their campsites were looking rough by the time I reached the grounds.

It was almost as if the programmers knew this, starting things off with more restrained acts like the sleepy James Blake, who opened up the day at the Orange Stage. Of course, the always excellent Queens of the Stone Age are anything but subdued, but they were an aberration on Sunday. The charisma of frontman Josh Homme and their aggressive but still melodic hard rock was the right thing to wake the crowd from their hungover stupor. But that was undone just an hour later, as Kraftwerk closed the main stage down that night. The Germans’ set was fine, but as with Blake, the music is more suited for listening to alone in your room, rather than at a major rock festival. I heard from a number of people that it seemed like an oddly flat note to close out the Orange Stage on.

So again it was up to a performer on the Arena Stage to carry the night, a task R&B singer Miguel was more than up to (though on this night he seemed more interested in being a rock star than anything else). Taking the stage in black suede jacket adorned with fringe —which he’d soon discard — the singer and his backing band produced an incredibly sleazy performance filled with preening, sneering, and shirtlessness. I still don’t buy the whole Miguel as a heartbreaker thing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work in the right circumstances, and his Sunday night performance hit it. Even as it crashed into the beginning of the night’s headline set, the crowd didn’t thin; if anything, it grew more and more rabid, especially when he got to Mariah Carey’s “#Beautiful.” It was over-the-top and genuinely weird, but it also felt like something special and the right way to finish off the weekend.

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While universities from Harvard to Pratt are grappling to deal with the impact of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on traditional forms of education, controversial online education provider Coursera has just announced a partnership with the Museum of Modern Art to provide professional development MOOCs for primary and secondary school teachers. The first MoMA MOOC, “Art and Inquiry,” which commences on July 29, is a free online course that instructs teachers in “museum teaching strategies” for the classroom. 

Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, formerly of early MOOC provider Udacity, launched Coursera in April 2012 with $16 million in venture capital. They now have over four million users, or  “Courserians” as they call them, and 83 institutional partners including Princeton University, Berklee College of Music, the California Institute of the Arts and the American Museum of Natural History.

While MoMA already provides online courses at the cost of $150-$350, as well as a “Learning website” that provides things like slide sets, videos, and images to teachers for free, this venture combines the two by providing an online class to teachers at no cost. The Coursera class, which already has 8,000 enrollees, is being created by Lisa Mazzola, MoMA’s assistant director in charge of school and teacher programs. According to a description on Coursera’s website, it will “introduce ways to integrate works of art into your classroom by using inquiry-based teaching methods commonly used in museum settings.”

Deborah Howes, director of digital learning in MoMA's Department of Education, says that the current MoMA learning website is not enough. “Teachers also need modeling and mentoring on how to use museum materials and teaching methods effectively,” Howes wrote in a blog post on MoMA’s website. “We offer some on-the-ground teacher workshops on this subject, but we never have enough space or time to accommodate the large number of teachers who request help.” 

While MOOCs have recently produced a lot of hype, with Harvard and MIT launching their own Ivy League MOOC website called edX, many educators and experts are wary of their rapid proliferation. Although the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently pledged $3 million to MOOC-related grants, Dan Greenstein, the head of postsecondary success at the Gates Foundation, has expressed concern. “For the presidents and chancellors I’ve met with, their innovation exhaustion comes out in an obvious and growing frustration with MOOCs,” Greenstein wrote in an Inside Higher Ed op-ed. “For them, MOOCs are a perfect storm of hype, hyperbole, and hysteria – and yet many have plunged headlong into them without a real clear sense of why or how MOOCs can help more students succeed.”

The relationship between arts education and MOOCs is a fraught one. Recently, Pratt Dean Andrew W. Barnes told his staff that the Brooklyn art college would not be joining in on the MOOC trend. “As more and more universities migrate toward the MOOC movement, the difference between what they do and what we do will become more apparent,” Barnes wrote in an email sent to faculty and staff. “And, the choice students will have about college will make us more attractive in much the same way that organic produce and locally sourced restaurants and community-based stores have become more attractive.” 

On the other hand, while the MOOC issue remains unsettled in the halls of higher learning, the MoMA MOOC may turn out to be an interesting alternative for providing free and expert arts education to primary and secondary school teachers amid the menace of declining arts education funding nationwide.

Kickstarter now funds more arts-related projects than the National Endowment for the Arts. So reported Katherine Boyle in a recent Washington Post article.

According to Perry Chen, founder of Kickstarter, the site had funded more than $600 million in arts projects. (For 2012, the NEA had a total federal appropriation of $146 million, of which 80 percent went toward grants.)

As Boyle noted:

Individuals have always been the backbone of arts funding. The NEA has never tried to compete with individual donors, and that’s the premise of Kickstarter—it’s a platform that allows individual donors to fund projects. In 2011, individuals contributed $13 billion to arts and cultural charities. According to the NEA, individuals make up 75 percent of all private giving, much more than corporations or foundations. Kickstarter, in essence, simplifies the long-held American tradition of individual private donors giving to the arts.

Hardly a week goes by without my hearing of a new and worthy “fan funded” project. I just got word of a Kickstarter campaign to support “Nuestra Tango,” for which brothers Luques and Zaccai Curtis, bassist and pianist respectively, will reunite their Hartford, Connecticut-based band, Insight, and collaborate with Argentine singer Natalie Fernandez. (You can find that one here.)

Right now, I’m listening to dazzling tracks of a two-CD set due in September from pianist Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-Uba ensemble. When this group debuted in New York 30 years ago, it was startling for its balance of unfettered improvisation and undiluted Cuban folklore within a complex and often grand structure.

As I reported for ARTINFO in April, in performance at Brooklyn’s roulette, “Rosewoman’s concept sounded every bit as fresh as it did three decades ago, and yet more developed and exalted.” A few days later, Rosewoman brought the group into the studio; she’d raised more than $23,000 via Kickstarter to seed her budget. I predict that the results will awaken a wider audience to the unique beauty and depth of music that New Yorkers in the know have admired for decades.

In an interview on the website of Chamber Music America (a nonprofit that has supported her work with grants over the years), Rosewoman said the following:

The Kickstarter process is very nerve-wracking and time-consuming, but it’s also very effective and exciting, and it really helped get the word out. Without it, the project would have been unfeasible—though the amount we asked for did by no means cover the total cost. In the past, we all had to wait for everything; we had to wait for a journalist to give us any visibility; we had to wait for a record label to give us a chance; we had to hope that somebody would do something for us. Today, you can promote yourself in every way; you can get visibility; you can project things most important to yourself, your career, what you’re doing, what you’ve done, and what you’re going to do through the media yourself.

Of course, Kickstarter is hardly the only game in town.

Maria Schneider’s recent project, “Winter Morning Walks” — two CDs featuring the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Dawn Upshaw — was funded through the ArtistShare site.

Now, Smalls, a tiny Greenwich Village jazz club that has had a big impact on the New York scene, is making use of the Indiegogo site (click here) to raise funds to help subsidize the club; increase wages for musicians; create a nonprofit foundation for musicians in need; and for this interesting proposition:

The Smalls Audio/Video Archive:

The Smalls archive library began in September of 2007 and since then more than 7000 shows at Smalls have been recorded & cataloged. This includes two years of video and more than 500 musicians represented in the archive. In addition, Smalls Jazz Club live-streams every show at the club and rebroadcasts the show once until the next live broadcast. This 60 seat club often sees internet viewership in the 10,000’s nightly.

Smalls organizers state their objective as such:

Our goal is to build a website for our subscription-based revenue sharing system. For a small subscription fee, fans will have unlimited access to an ever growing library of audio & video (approximately 21 shows per week). Revenue will be pooled and distributed to all of the artists in the archive based on the number of minutes they get listened to quarterly. All musicians on a date get credited — in this way popular sidemen can earn as much as leaders. Direct download of specific dates will also be available. If a fan chooses to directly download a date then the revenue will go directly to the artist rather than the pool. As long as the artist’s content stays in the archive then the artist will continue to collect revenue. The Smalls nightly live-video stream will be made available for free with a valid email registration.

Will this strategy grow into a viable long-term path? Will these platforms crowd one another out down the line? Will potential funders weary of repeated appeals or just run dry of will and funds? It’s too soon to tell how crowd-sourced and fan-funded projects will affect the careers of musicians and the arc of jazz and other genres. It’s clear that for musicians such as Schneider and Rosewoman, fan funding has enabled the kinds of large-scale and expensive projects that music labels often shy away from or at least scale back.

At this point, fan-funded projects amount to experiments that sidestep not just the turmoil of a recording industry in crisis, but also the long-established gatekeeper roles of music label A&R executives and foundation grant administrators. I don’t think that necessarily means we’re witnessing a revolution — savvy and creative musicians, especially in jazz, have long blazed their own paths and found their own supporters. But this is one more wrinkle, both fascinating and promising, of a music business in transition.

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Jay-Z has more discerning taste in art than you might think — or at least his managers do. Though he’s been name-dropping blue chip artists like Picasso and Basquiat in his rhymes for years, Wednesday’s music video shoot for his new song “Picasso Baby” at Chelsea’s Pace Gallery featured a carefully curated lineup of some of contemporary art’s biggest names. Mickalene Thomas shared a dance with the 43-year-old MC. Sanford Biggers sketched furiously while PS1 founder Alanna Heiss spun around the gallery with a cast on her leg. Dustin Yellin performed an impromptu breakdance. Ryan McNamara pulled people from the audience to the bench at the gallery’s center, which faced a pedestal where Jay-Z stood, statue-like, at the beginning of each run-through of the track. “It’s not like I planned it,” McNamara said. “I found out about this today and I heard Jay-Z was involved.”

Though intended as a reference to “The Artist is Present,” the marathon performance art piece by Marina Abramovic (who was also on hand) and evocative of The National’s recent, six-hour performance of “Sorrow” with Ragnar Kjartansson (who was not), the event was essentially a cameo-filled music video shoot. The celebrities putting in appearances were perfectly tailored to the art-heavy track. Marilyn Minter bopped on the bench with Dana Schutz before standing up and kissing Jay-Z’s gold Roc-a-Fella pendant. Rashid Johnson traded jabs with the hip-hop superstar. Lawrence Weiner reclined patiently while the rapper went around cajoling the crowd standing on the edges of the vast gallery. He was eventually joined by a man in a harlequin outfit and cow mask. Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg got up and strutted to the bass-heavy track. “It was so much fun,” she said afterward. “You can’t imagine.”

The highlight of the afternoon, though, was Jay-Z’s showdown with Abramovic. Most guests spent little more than a minute engaging with the MC but, true to form, she lasted the track’s full four minutes and six seconds. She stared him down, getting so close that their foreheads touched, and he seemed to back down — though the pair was all smiles and hugs after the song ended. Their exchange may have been a far cry from Abramovic’s charged collaborations with Ulay, but it was also the only moment (save perhaps McNamara’s gesture toward inclusiveness) during the event when an art-world representative stopped fawning over the multi-millionaire recording artist and tried to lend his performance some kind of gallery-appropriate gravitas. Exactly how the scene’s short-lived intensity will figure in director Mark Romanek’s finished “Picasso Baby” short is anybody’s guess, but it seems safe to say that this won’t be the holy grail (or even the Magna Carta) of music videos.

To see pictures from Jay-Z's “Picasso Baby” music video shoot, click the slideshow.

In the wake of another successful Art Basel last month, many New York collectors and gallerists returned home just long enough to pack up and head to the Hamptons — and not just for the beaches. Collecting season is not yet over, with three fairs coming up on Long Island’s East End: ArtHamptons and artMRKT Hamptons from July 11 to 14, followed by Art Southampton from July 25 to 29.

Since the inaugural SCOPE Hamptons fair in 2005, gallerists have been taking advantage of the area’s summertime concentration of art aficionados; ArtHamptons is now in its sixth year, artMRKT Hamptons its third, and Art Southampton is returning after a successful first outing, having doubled in size.

“You’ve got an educated audience that is interested, and they’re relaxed, they’ve got some free time, so it’s a good moment to get them involved in the conversation,” says artMRKT cofounder and director Max Fishko. Rick Friedman, the founder of ArtHamptons, puts it this way: “Everybody has a home that could use another painting, basically, so there are a lot of opportunities.” And given the purchasing power on the East End, those opportunities will likely be lucrative: Despite the relatively small size of ArtHamptons — it now has 78 exhibitors — Friedman reports that some works at the fair have sold for more than $1 million.

Art that has done well in the past has often played to the grand scale of Hamptons houses. “Most of them are huge and white, so we do actually bring larger format [works] than if we’re going to some fair in the city, and more colorful,” says Gregoire Vogelsang of Belgium’s Vogelsang Gallery. He is returning to ArtHamptons based on past success, and says he plans to show at multiple Hamptons fairs next year. And Eli Klein of Eli Klein Fine Art— the only gallery that will be exhibiting at all three fairs this year — notes that “outdoor sculpture goes over well in the Hamptons,” where “any number of collectors maintain fabulous sculpture gardens.” At ArtHamptons Klein is showing “Captured Rhino,” 2012, a 39-by-35-by-106 inch stainless steel and wood sculpture by the Beijing-based artist Li Hui in an edition of five, each priced at $126,000.

Still, Hamptons fairs are not only about spending huge sums on huge artworks: Friedman says that works at his fair more typically go for between $10,000 and $50,000 — what he describes as “still an impulse buy in the Hamptons” (something that’s certainly “not true of other places around the country,” he adds). And the timing of the Hamptons fairs, at the very end of the marathon fair season, means that gallerists have a strong incentive to surprise seasoned collectors with unfamiliar work.

“I do see, particularly in the summertime fairs in the Hamptons, an emphasis on emerging, on contemporary, on discovery,” Fishko says. “If people are going to make a serious purchase of a secondary market piece of art, they’re likely going to do it from their gallery in New York. They don’t need you to come up to the Hamptons and show it to them.”

Fishko’s artMRKT Hamptons, with just 39 exhibitors, seems to champion this “discovery” ethos. Its roster includes a number of up-and-coming galleries — including Southampton’s Tripoli Gallery, making its art fair debut — as well as a fresh take on catering, which will be supplied this year by some of Brooklyn’s most popular gourmet food trucks. “We’re just trying to do something that we think is going to be fun and cool,” says Fishko.

Kevin Van Gorp, director of L.A.’s 101/exhibit— another gallery making its artMRKT Hamptons debut — sees the fair as an opportunity to “create momentum with younger crowds.” (He also points to Sag Harbor, with clubs and bars open until 2 a.m., as a “viable alternative for networking and hanging out,” particularly for those who may not have Southampton homes to dine in.)

And while ArtHamptons appears to be foregrounding the past with a theme of “Hamptons Bohemia” — celebrating the East End’s rich history of resident artists like the late Larry Rivers, whose work will be on view at Tibor de Nagy— the fair has also brought in Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly, the founders of the cutting-edge SPRING/BREAK Art Show in Nolita — to curate “Bushwick Bohemia,” a group exhibition of artists from the burgeoning Brooklyn scene.

Another work by an emerging artist at the fair will be “Goodbye My Love,” an installation by the Cuban Esterio Segura, presented by Saltfineart. A series of 12 red planes with heart-shaped fuselages suspended from the ceiling, the piece was featured in the 2012 Havana Biennale and recently hung in an walkway-cum-exhibition space in Times Square. As Friedman says, “People have never seen anything like this in the Hamptons.”