Is the art market experiencing a new boom, or is it all  just another bubble destined to burst? With artists seemingly setting benchmarks at auction on a monthly basis and prices at fairs for pedestrian artworks pushing into the millions of dollars, there are fears in the art world of another crash. Privately, some people are talking about a steep market correction—as much as 60 to 80 percent in the contemporary art sector.

It is understandable why there is such skepticism about the current bull market for art and collectibles. Twice in the past decade we’ve seen the inflation of asset values in the art market followed by their inevitable, painful deflation. The parallels and analogies to today’s market situation are clear and worrying. But at the same time, there are significant differences that are worth taking a minute to review.

Many forces affecting today’s asset bubble reflect broad macroeconomic trends having little or nothing to do with the current art market or its past performance. Easy monetary policy in the United States, keeping bond yields low, has pushed a slice of the excess investment capital into so-called alternative asset classes in which investors see security and the possibility of long-term value. There has been a flight to objects.

Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Japan is more or less printing money and lending it at impossibly low rates, flooding the global financial markets with excess liquidity and further bloating asset prices. Japanese money flowing into China has helped create a real estate bubble in that country. Chinese central bankers  over the summer, in a wise step, moved to stop or at least restrict these capital inflows.

The art market itself has changed in several important ways. The role of the collector is changing as a greater number buy and sell work—both privately and at auction—with increasing frequency. This means a lot of art is coming onto the market more often and at steeper prices. More and more it seems that art buyers today are interested in speculation for its own sake. There is no such thing as buy and hold anymore.

There has also been a transformation at the top end of the dealer system. Ten years ago big art dealers made a lot of their money in the secondary market, buying inventory and then reselling it. Today these same dealers are cashing in on the primary market—as secondary market prices for new works by contemporary artists skyrocket, they can charge almost any price for works by artists in demand: It is as if they are floating these artists like junk bonds.

More money is flowing into the art world from newly minted millionaires in developing economies. Meanwhile, offshore bank accounts are quietly being cleaned out as tax authorities in the United States and elsewhere tighten loopholes, adding to the liquidity bubble. This  trend is likely to be reversed in part with rising interest rates, but with so much cash sloshing around and nowhere to put it, art prices will continue to rise.

ROSKILDE, Denmark — Over four days last week, the Roskilde Festival played host to nearly 200 bands from across the globe and music spectrum. There was almost always something I wanted to see, and while there were sacrifices that needed to be made, I was witness to some amazing moments on the festival’s massive grounds. Here are a few things that stood out.

Show No One Was Willing to Admit They Wanted to See

I talked to a lot of locals at the festival, always sure to ask who they were looking forward to seeing. The first two days I heard answers like The Savages, Animal Collective, and Crystal Castles. But when I started pressing, almost always their answer would change sheepishly to Rihanna. And sure enough, when the singer took the stage on Friday night, it felt like nearly everyone at the festival was there. It may not have actually been the biggest crowd of the weekend (though it was surely the second largest), but considering how hard it was to get people to say the pop star’s name, the turn out was astronomical.

Most Excited (and Possibly Dangerous) Crowd

Arena was packed during Kendrick Lamar’s Thursday performance, with thousands unable to cram under the stage’s massive tent. That didn’t stop people from trying to sing and dance along with the Los Angeles rapper, some so determined that they climbed the flimsy trees surrounding the area to get a better glimpse of their idol. People were literally dancing in trees to the “good kid m.A.A.d city” artist! Never have I felt so old as when I stared up at the handful of 16- to 20-year-olds screaming along to “Backseat Freestyle” above my head.

Most Justifiably Baffled Crowd

It wasn’t the tales of office drone life that the primarily Scandinavian crowd seemed confused by during Pissed Jeans’s Saturday night set, but the band itself. The drummer was texting (or tweeting, something with his iPhone), the lead singer was ripping off his shirt and mocking them for not being at another show, and the guitarist and bassist were standing on stage like statues. No knew how to react to it all, but for those who stayed on trying to make sense of what exactly the Philadelphia band was doing, it was one of the festival’s more compelling sets.

Best Time to Walk Around the Festival

Many locals commented on how much they liked to walk around the festival as the sun was going down, just to take everything in before the night’s biggest shows. For me, the best time I had walking the grounds was during Metallica’s jam-packed Saturday night set. I may have missed out on some classic thrash metal, but I got to take in the antic insanity of Pissed Jeans, watch the infant stages of a desert rave, and make it all the way to the other side of the festival to get caught up in the majesty of Sigur Rós. Not a bad way to spend two hours.

Strangest Sight

On Saturday night, near Apollo, U.K. DJ collective Numbers were trying to get a rave started in the area north of the Mad Max-like campgrounds. When I walked over there, after midnight, it was too early for things to have gotten fully underway, but that didn’t stop the single solitary glow stick salesman from trying to hawk his wares. Wearing neon lit bunny ears, the lonely figure lackadaisically waved around blue and green wands trying to capture the attention of the would-be ravers. He was unsuccessful but he continued his slow dance for upwards of a half hour.

Best Reason to Utilize Ear Plugs

Speaking of Metallica, no band was louder at the festival. It wasn’t even a competition. While some of the Orange Stage acts tried to take it to 11 (Queens of the Stone Age in particular), the sound, even at it’s loudest, was muddled. But Metallica was deafeningly loud and crystal clear. I never thought I’d be the person who wears earplugs at a show before turning 30, but how quickly that changed when I heard the band start tearing into their hits.

Worst Headliner

It pains me to say this, but the answer is simple: Kraftwerk. The group was able to adequately translate their music to the stage, but all that meant was that the headliner’s performance consisted of watching a handful of old men flatly play keyboard. Yes, they’re legends, but it was hard not to be left cold, especially when more visceral bands like Sigur Rós or Queens of the Stone Age would have ended the festival on a much higher note.

Best Stage

There was of course the Orange Stage, where all the headliners played, and Arena, which featured some of the festival’s more exhilarating performances, but to me, the venue of the weekend was the Pavilion stage. Nearly none of the bands playing — a group that included Metz, Pissed Jeans, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra— seemed particularly well suited for an outdoor festival, but the stage captured that dingy, club-like feel they all required. Set after set, whoever showed up, left drenched in dance-induced sweat.

Best Performance

Miguel’s Sunday evening Arena set, in which the R&B singer transformed into a rock star, blew me away. I didn’t know what to expect when the rising star and his sleazy backing band hit the stage clad in leather and suede, but after a couple songs I was hooked. I would’ve never thought that the silkiness of last year’s wonderful “Kaleidiscope Dreams” needed more crunch, but it worked and there wasn’t a more crowd-pleasing set all weekend long. From beginning to end, whenever the singer needed a break, he knew he could count on the crowd to keep the song going. Even though I was exhausted after standing through four days of concerts, I didn’t want his set to end.

Jack Shainman Gallery hosted its second annual Chelsea Block Party Thursday night. 

Inside the gallery, New York native Hank Willis Thomas held court as he debuted a show of selected works in the front room.  In the back, visitors took in "Question Bridge: Black Males,” Thomas's ambitious collaboration with Chris Johnson, Kamal Sinclair, and Bayeté Ross-Smith. The transmedia project and five-channel video installation focuses on black male identity in the US. 

Associate director Elisabeth Sann said Thomas's exhibition was an ideal choice for the party - and it was clear he could draw a crowd. 

On the street, Art world PR rep April Hunt deejayed the event, while Kimchi Taco and Luke’s Lobster food trucks served up snacks.

LOS ANGELES – Coming just two weeks after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in favor of gay marriage, Outfest Los Angeles launched Thursday night and will run through July 21.

Leading the way opening night was filmmaker Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s comedy, “C.O.G.,” last January’s Sundance hit based on an essay by writer David Sedaris.

In the movie, Jonathan Groff (“Glee”) plays a closeted Ivy League grad from an affluent family who decides to rough it, picking apples on a farm in Oregon. Alvarez told the L.A. Times it’s “more of a coming-of-age story more than a coming-out story.”

In fact, “coming out,” long a thematic cornerstone of gay cinema, is almost an afterthought at this year’s festival.

“If you take a look at all the films, I think a major theme is that there are no real coming-out stories,” festival publicist Kevin McAlpine told ARTINFO. “Often in films the one character is struggling to come out. That’s not really a thing here. The gay characters are very much out.”

Starting in 1982, Outfest is the city’s oldest continuous film festival. This year’s event offers 157 movies and videos from 28 countries in seven languages.

“Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth,” a documentary about the writer’s journey from sharecropper’s daughter to activist, poet, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of “The Color Purple,” will also be screened.

In addition to Alice Walker, the festival’s theme of “Heroes” will honor Gore Vidal with the documentary “Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.”

Special events include screenings like “The Bride of Frankenstein,” as well as a screenwriter’s lab reading and a producer’s expo on fundraising and digital production and distribution.

The closing night gala will feature filmmaker Darren Stein’s “GBF,” starring Natasha Lyonne, Megan Mullaly, and Rebecca Gayheart. In it, a high school student comes out and finds himself adopted as the gay best friend to the school’s most popular girls.

Unlike the past, the gay character doesn’t face ostracism, indicating the change in attitude toward the gay and lesbian community.

As McAlpine noted, “GBF is just like the new teen comedy where it actually centers on the gay guy being the popular kid.”

LOS ANGELES – The fifth annual Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles kicked off Wednesday with the U.S. premiere of Ron Chapman’s “Who the F**k is Arthur Fogel?,” a documentary about the man behind seven of the ten bestselling worldwide concert tours, including Madonna, Bono, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Sting, and others.

Running July 10-18, this non-profit festival is expected to attract 20,000 visitors and will offer more than 100 screenings of features, documentary, and short films from around the world.

Also included is an exhibition of award-winning shorts during next month’s Downtown L.A. Art Walk, a 3-D film program devoted to French cinema, and workshops covering topics like film finance, distribution, and music supervision.

Special showcases devoted to feminism, Latino-American filmmakers, and downtown L.A. culture and personalities will include the Los Angeles premiere of “Femme,” a new documentary produced by Sharon Stone featuring interviews with Gloria Steinem, Mira Nair, and others that examines a future where women are the majority in power.

Other festival highlights include “My Father and the Man in Black,” Jonathan Holiff’s documentary about his father, Johnny Cash’s manager, Saul Holiff, screening, appropriately enough, at the Grammy Museum, as well as a closing night unspooling of the Roman Polanski classic “Chinatown,” showing at downtown’s iconic Union Station.

Twenty years ago, downtown L.A. was a place where bankers and lawyers came to work, but sidewalks were overrun with the homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts. Today it boasts some of the city’s leading cultural institutions and has become a hub for fine dining and nightlife.

“The creative nexus of downtown L.A. emanates today in lots of directions — film, food, the arts, fashion,” said festival co-director Greg Ptacek on the festival’s website, where he describes L.A.-centric titles like, “5th Street,” a police drama set on the streets of L.A., and “The Human Scale,” a documentary about the new wave of urban planning looking at five cities, including Los Angeles.

“Our programming reflects downtown L.A.’s vibrant new urbanism, the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of its communities and neighborhoods, and its seminal role in the early days of American cinema,” festival PR head Natasha Walker told ARTINFO in a statement. “Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles celebrates the renaissance of downtown L.A. in all its facets, its historic movie palaces, its legendary cultural institutions, its thriving business and residential communities, and its unique ethnic-cultural diversity.”

“I have an idea of what will do well out here,” said art dealer Mark Borghi, standing by his booth on the opening night of ArtHamptons at the Sculpture Fields of Nova’s Ark. Behind us, the space was filled with cheerful work by Carole Feuerman — including a sculpture of a woman in a bathing suit, seemingly in reverie, hugging a brightly colored beach ball. “Actually,” he said, referencing the fair as a whole, “this is a departure for us.”

A quick glance at the fairgoers at ArtHamptons — walking the aisles in their madras jackets and aqua-hued wrap dresses, seemingly present as much for the opportunity to kiss, swill cocktails, and sample the Swedish hors d’oeuvres with their peers in leisure as to look at the art — revealed a crowd drawn to artwork that is a touch more soothing, sporty, and accessible than other fairs, and a drop less challenging.

Two years ago, Mark Borghi Gallery, which normally trades in secondary market works by some of the more cool and cerebral artists — like Georg Baselitz and Alexander Calder— brought works by Willem de Kooning. But, according to Borghi now, that may not have been the best fit. “Collectors that we normally sell to don’t come to this fair,” said Borghi. “If you’re going to buy a $2-million Franz Kline, you don’t come to this fair. But,” he added looking back at the sculptures of the swimmers, “there’s a market for this type of work.” At this point, Borghi had already closed a deal on “Pin Up,” a large sexy work by Tom Dash superimposing an image of a nude pin-up model on photos of race cars, for $18,000. Price is another factor he considers when making his selection for the Hamptons. “For this particular fair and lots of these [similar] fairs, it’s a $2,000 to $10,000 range,” said Borghi. “In other words, it’s not that difficult to think about.”

While this year’s booth fare may have been out of character for Borghi, he wasn’t alone. Everywhere, at both ArtHamptons and artMRKT Hamptons, which also opened Thursday at the nearby Bridgehampton Historical Society, gallerists were bringing out their fun stuff — and it was selling.

Young Contemporary, a gallery from Seoul, Korea, made its first sale within the first two hours after ArtHamptons opened to VIPs, parting with four small paintings by Lee Yu Min. At $300 each, the summer landscapes — each featuring a fluffy white dog doing human summer activities like surfing or walking down the beach in a bikini — struck just the right note in terms of levity and price. While Zin Helena Song, an art student from Long Island University who was manning the booth, wouldn’t mention any specific sale details, she did say, “It’s been good.”

London-based Cynthia Corbett Gallery also had the mood of the Hamptons in mind when choosing what to display. “We brought a lot of color with us,” said gallery manager Celia Kinchington. “We’ve got Andy Burgess here with Palm Springs, blue skies, pools. This has been really popular. A lot of people have been stopping to look at it.” A sculpture by Andrea Stanislav featuring two glittering, intertwined horse heads slowly rotating on a mirrored pedestal (appropriately titled “Wild Horses”) had also drawn quite a bit of attention, almost but not quite hooking a Southampton veterinarian at $18,500. But while these were at the higher price range of the wares on display — the most expensive work here was priced at $55,000 — lower-fare items were also grabbing attention, including a dozen of Nina Jun’s confectionary ceramic sculptures. Priced between $900-3,000, the sculptures, which somewhat resemble party balloons, had attracted quite a bit of interest. “Loads of people were looking at those,” said Kinchington.

At first glance, the curating duo behind the “quote Bushwick Bohemia unquote” exhibit — Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly— seemed to be challenging casual fairgoers with their installation, which featured a faux-construction site wall with the words “Vacant Lot” spray-painted over it. Their show title pokes light fun at the overarching theme of the fair, “Hamptons Bohemia.” “There’s something dark about romanticizing any artist utopia or any geographic location that carries the ‘bohemia’ moniker,” Gori told ARTINFO, “because it inevitably means that there won’t be artists there soon.” Inside the booth are examples of Joe Brittain’s minimalist-looking “pulped book” works — including a couple of pieces for which he consumed and spat out an entire book before putting the whitish mash in a frame. Gori and Kelly also brought work they thought would go over well on the East End. On the outside of the booth, a painting of a woman on the beach holding a beach ball had a distinctly Hamptons-esque vibe. And while the work in the booth ranged from $500-15,000, they were also selling works in boxes, at a “conceptual stoop sale,” all going for less than $1,000.

At artMRKT Hamptons, the decidedly hip event whose opening night soirée was hosted by the tony Norwood Club and offered curated food trucks for hungry fairgoers, Adam Stennett was one of the standout installations: quietly painting in solitude in an outdoor shed that he built and will be inhabiting for the weekend as an endurance piece, living off of only the things that he packed for himself. Indoors, Stennett’s art dealer, Glenn Horowitz Booksellers, hawked small limited-edition items like sardine cans and bottles of water. These mementos from his survival stunt were selling for $100 apiece, each one signed and dated.

To see works from ArtHamptons and artMRKT Hamptons, click the slideshow.

AGE: 65

HAILS FROM: Denver, Colorado

PRESIDES OVER: Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe and New York

GALLERY’S SPECIALTIES: Classic Western art, the Taos Society of Artists, the Santa Fe Art Colony, 19th- and 20th-century American art, European Impressionism, photography

ARTISTS SHOWN: Tony Angell, George Ault, Cyrus Baldridge, Elbridge Ayer Burbank, John Coffer, Maynard Dixon, John Felsing, Jonathan Prince, Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell, William Zorach

FIRST GALLERY SHOW: A group exhibition of Taos and Santa Fe painters in 1976

Tell us about your background and your first experiences with art.

I grew up in Denver, where my grandfather had a small art collection. That was where the spark that got me into the art world came from. When I was younger I would constantly go to museums and look at lots of art, training my eye artist by artist.

Do you remember the first piece of art that captured your attention?

It was a painting by Leon Shulman Gaspard that my grandfather had; that was the kind of art he collected. [Gaspard, a Russian-born painter trained in France, moved to Taos in 1918 after being severely wounded as a French aviator in World War I.]

What prompted you to open your first gallery?

The art drew me to the business. To make money, I cut and delivered wood while I got my Bachelor of Arts from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, but other than that, I have always been an art dealer. I opened my first gallery in 1976 in Santa Fe; prior to that, I was dealing art by the local masters from Taos and Santa Fe out of my house. These are the same artists I ended up showing in my gallery. I expanded to New York in 1992 for convenience more than anything else. Being connected to the main marketplace was essential.

How did you choose your specialty?

I just started with the artists who were here in Santa Fe, like Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as Victor Higgins, Ernest Blumenschein, Marsden Hartley, Frederic Remington, all the Taos artists, and the early Exploratory artists.

Was there anyone who, early on, gave you good advice?

I received great help from Victor Hansen, an antiques dealer in Santa Fe, and from Rudy Wunderlich of Kennedy Galleries, in New York. I learned a lot from them—especially that I needed to know about the art in order to sell it.

Has the art market in Santa Fe changed since you have been involved with it?

In the 1970s and ’80s the art market in Santa Fe was much stronger. There were fewer galleries, but the quality was incredibly high. Bill McAdoo had McAdoo Galleries. There was also Don Blair and Jamison Gallery. The key gallery in Taos was Jane Hiatt’s Village Gallery, which was probably the most important in the region. Now the market seems to have shrunk in Santa Fe. There is more competition for less high-quality artwork. An infusion of more national talent would create a healthier market, but the power in the art market has become concentrated in New York and the European cities, with some focus in Los Angeles as well.

What is the most challenging part of running a gallery today?

I love the art, everything else is difficult.

Are there any works that have been difficult for you to part with?

Yes, some great O’Keeffes and Thiebauds.

In which art fair do you most enjoy participating?

The Armory Show at the Pier because the energy is so fantastic.

Has your personal taste influenced the selection of artists you show?

I am drawn to artists who have their own language and are not merely copying someone else. It most definitely affects what I show in the gallery.

If you could own any artwork in the world, money aside, what would it be?

One great Paul Cézanne, one great Henri Matisse, one great Pablo Picasso, and one great Kandinsky.

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

If you were not an art dealer, what would you be doing?

I would be an entrepreneur, creating businesses. But then again, I am currently involved in other businesses, from restaurants to banking. I take a lot of what I learn from them and bring it into the gallery. 

When Ishiro Honda set out to make “Godzilla” back in 1953, he was greatly influenced by the release of “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” featuring the inspired work of legendary stop-motion artist, Ray Harryhausen. In pre-production, the monster at the center of Honda’s movie took on various iterations, from a giant octopus to a hairy ape-like creature with an oversized mushroom-shaped head. The mushroom was to represent the cloud that formed over Hiroshima eight years earlier on August 6th, 1945.

Eventually the filmmakers settled on the dinosaur-like creature we recognize today, but the mushroom cloud remained, if not literally then figuratively, as Godzilla tore through Tokyo leaving a path of destruction that reminded viewers of the horror of Hiroshima. Guillermo del Toro’s monster-versus-robot epic, “Pacific Rim” has no comparable real-world relevance, and that’s fine. A movie doesn’t need relevance or zeitgeist to make it worthwhile.

The Mexican-born maestro behind such distinctive art house titles as “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone,” and mainstream flicks like “Hell Boy” and its sequel, hasn’t directed a movie in five years. He has had a pair of misfires – his dream project, “At the Mountains of Madness,” a big-budget adaptation of the novella by H.P. Lovecraft which Universal pulled the plug on, and “The Hobbit,” which was taken over by Peter Jackson, a movie del Toro says he still hasn’t seen.

“Pacific Rim” sounds like the perfect comeback for del Toro, a man who exudes a boyish exuberance of the macabre and all things monster, but with the critical eye of a master craftsman. Auteurs rarely make $190 million summer tent pole movies, and when they do, the result often feels cleansed of any trait that makes the filmmaker or his work distinctive. Sadly, such is the case with del Toro’s latest.

Set in the not too distant future, “Pacific Rim” imagines humanity's first encounter with aliens who arrive not from the stars but through a fissure in the bottom of the sea. Called ‘Kaiju,’ they resemble colossal prehistoric beasts whose goal is to wipe out mankind. Our only hope lies with ‘Jaegers,’ an army of giant robots piloted by an international team of our best and brightest. Charlie Hunnam plays Raleigh Becket, a Jaeger pilot who is teamed with his brother in the movie’s opening moments as they take on a monster named Axehead who has just laid waste to the Golden Gate Bridge and is lurking somewhere off the coast. Jaeger pilots undergo a mental fusion process called ‘The Drift’ by which they are neurally connected, giving each partner a look into the mind of the other and providing screenwriter Travis Beachem (“Clash of the Titans) a way to inject character into his story.

‘The Drift’ becomes a central element five years after the opening sequence when Becket travels to Hong Kong’s Shatterdome (Pan Pacific Defense Corps headquarters), where Jaegers are engineered and housed, along with an international crew of pilots. There are Chuck and Herc Hansen, a father-son team from Australia, as well as the Kaidanovskys, a husband-wife team of Russians who, with their bleached hair, look like they might break out a triple toe loop at any time. The Wei triplets, Chinese brothers in matching red uniforms, pilot a Jaeger called Crimson Typhoon, while the others have names like Coyote Tango, Striker Eureka and Stacker Pentecost. Oh wait, that last one isn’t the name of a Jaeger, it’s an actual character, the crew’s commander played by Idris Elba.

After a run-in with Herc Hansen, who feels Becket just doesn’t have what it takes, Becket is finally teamed with Mako Mori, (Rinko Kikuchi) who Pentecost rescued as a little girl. Mori is yearning to pilot a Jaeger, but to Pentecost she’s a surrogate daughter and he will do anything to keep her from harm’s way.

Del Toro is a master at creating monsters and otherworldly beasts as he proved with “Hell Boy II.” There he created by hand a wide variety of monsters, some with small cities carved in the top of their heads, or an image of death with rows of eyeballs embedded in her wide black wings.

It’s understandable to have low expectations for a movie like “Pacific Rim,” but one thing seemed certain – the monsters would be imaginative and varied like nothing we’ve seen before. So it comes as a surprise that the new movie features generic-looking monsters. Often shown in dim light, they appear to be nothing more than hulking, lizard-like beasts, while the Jaegers look like extras from “Transformers.” Together, they are the movie’s biggest let down.

The other disappointment is Beachem’s underbaked screenplay. The middle section of the movie, set in the Shatterdome, is meant to flesh out the characters, generate audience empathy and elevate the material to something more than just giant robots fighting giant monsters. This is a worthy aspiration for any storyteller but for Beachem it means emphasizing his weaknesses over his strengths. I don’t know what Travis Beachem’s strengths are, but writing fleshed-out characters with emotional resonance is not one of them. The Shatterdome section of the movie is not quite excruciating but audiences can be forgiven if they become impatient to return to the fight scenes.

The fault cannot be placed entirely on Beachem as del Toro, who elicited excellent performances in “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Cronos,” struggles with his cast here. Hunnam, who stars on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” is adequate at the movie’s center, but he is a natural-born supporting actor and lacks the gravity needed to hold down a movie this size. Idris Elba, as Pentecost, acquits himself well enough but struggles with the wafer-thin characterization the script affords him. And Charlie Day, from TV’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” turns up in what he describes as his first non-comedic role, except his character, Geiszler, a Kaiju expert with the key to defeating them, serves as the movie’s main source of comic relief.

Long-time del Toro stalwart, Ron Perlman has a cameo as the unlikely monikered, Hannibal Chau, a black market dealer in Kaiju remains who Geiszler does business with. His work here is over-the-top and cartoonish, but seems to be more a product of Beachem’s screenplay than of any misguided attempts by the actor to embellish his role. Kikuchi, an Oscar nominee for Alejandro Inarritu’s exquisite, “Babel,” is the only cast member somehow able to overcome the material’s limitations. Her character is confronted with strong conflicts – the paralyzing memory of her first encounter with a Kaiju as a child, her need to weigh Pentecost’s protective nature against her ambition as a pilot, coupled with her growing passion for Becket, amount to a net of contradictions absorbingly portrayed by the actor.

The most miraculous component of “Pacific Rim” is the fact that Warner Brothers greenlit a summer tent pole that isn’t based on existing material, doesn’t have a man with a cape and is not a remake of an earlier, better movie. With all its fantastical elements, it seemed to be a perfect fit for del Toro. It’s been a long time since he’s sat in the director’s chair and most of us awaited his return to greatness with open arms. But with “Pacific Rim” it seems we’ll have to keep on waiting.

After a lifetime of work in the sex trade, Kristen DiAngelo has decided to bring the profession out of the shadows with her documentary “American Courtesans.” In it, she talks candidly with women ranging from streetwalkers to big-money call girls, hoping to erase the stigma attached to an industry whose workers are frequently victimized but don’t enjoy equal protection under the law. Starting July 12, the film is available on DVD and VOD through Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and iTunes.

Recently, DiAngelo sat down to talk to ARTINFO about the challenges facing sex workers, and to dispel misconceptions about the world’s oldest profession.

You’ve never made a movie before. What was the impetus behind “American Courtesans”?

My friend Michael, he runs an S&M club called Paddles in New York, he took me down under the streets of New York to the most amazing set of underground dungeons I have seen anywhere in the world. There were rooms, like this Chinese torture chamber with these beautiful brocade walls of burgundy and gold and mirrors and brass gongs. Then we go into a medieval room with racks. Then we go into a wrestling room that’s padded from ceiling to floor, a doctor room with full medical equipment and tables for doctor-nurse play, a 1920s replica of a schoolhouse so you can do that little dunce thing in the corner. Somebody’s been writing on the chalkboard, ‘I will not look at girls, I will not look at girls,’ for that type of play. The last room we go into is the Madame Butterfly room because you walk in and it has these gorgeous geishas painted all over the walls. It was a cross-dressing room with rows of wigs and big shoes and clothing for men, but larger sizes. He [Michael] and I begin just talking about the life and what it’s like. All the crew starts talking, ‘I never knew this! I had no idea!’ So that’s where it started. I’m like, ‘We can do a really educational piece, just document a group of women who are real in this industry.’

In the movie, you talk candidly about being molested as a girl, as do many of the other women. Is that common among women in the profession?

Molestation is not a cause. If you can understand that sex is a physical thing and love is an emotional thing, and it’s great if they’re together but if they’re not, it doesn’t make it evil. If you take 100 molestation victims, you’re lucky to get one or two sex workers out of them. It does give you, sometimes, a tool, a survival mechanism. It does make you a warrior. And it does make you very determined – this is not going to happen to me.

You mention you’ve been beaten and raped more than once. Is that common in the profession?

I had no fear as a kid. I would put myself in bad situations and because of that, bad things happened. I know that predators can sense victims, and if that’s the way you begin to present yourself. It doesn’t happen to everybody. I take a lot of responsibility for that. I hadn’t dealt with any issues in my life from when I was younger. The industry’s very hard for women. When you hear about the rapes or the beatings or the trafficking that happens, I really believe that so much of that happens because you don’t have the same protection under the law as other people do.

Surprisingly, many of the women fondly recall their first time in the business.

Most of us believe it’s a right to have control over our bodies. If you need to go to work for money, you’re like, ‘Okay, I just need to pay the bills.’ How empowering is it to go in and say, ‘I need this much money and it’s worth this much,’ and have somebody go, ‘Right on. You’re right.’ You go, ‘Yeah, I’m empowered! I rock!’

Was that your experience the first time?

Absolutely. I remember to this day, it was quite a while ago, we got paid six dollars for a 20-minute massage. I got three dollars of that. That’s back when that was big money. I remember back then my rent was like $130 per month. Actually, this guy offers me another forty dollars. That forty dollars paid a third of my rent in twenty minutes.

Is it ever for pleasure, or is it only the money?

Every woman’s different. I don’t do anything I don’t like or don’t enjoy. And because of that, I can really say I love this industry. Some women don’t like it. Some women might not like working as a clerical assistant. Not everyone likes their job.

What about coming out to family and friends?

Not everybody in my life knows. That’s the case for all of these women. You never want somebody to feel heartache over a profession that you’ve chosen. The people in my family that I have chosen to tell, the two that are closest to me, the bond has become almost ten times stronger.

Were they men or women that you told, and do they react differently?

Both. I really think that if people love you, this won’t matter. It is a huge fear. We’ve had so many attacks from people in the industry and the religious right people. It’s not a hatred thing, it’s fear. And then from the religious right, I get serious hate mail – am I ready to die and pay for my sins? Stuff like that. Our biggest fear is that somebody we care about, it will cause them pain. 

When Pae White was invited to prepare a series of shows at the Vienna Museum für Angewandte Kunst, home to legendary holdings by Vienna Secessionists, she found herself drawn not to the works of Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann but to a variety of anonymous objects from the turn of the last century. Several made it into “Others,” her reinstallation of the permanent collections that seeks to draw attention away from period masterpieces. After that show debuted last fall, White’s attention kept returning to a group of painted-wood toys that had likely never made it out of MAK’s storage rooms. To celebrate these objects, which she freely describes as of “ambiguous value,” she reimagined nine as pieces in a chess set and sent pictures to her worldwide network of collaborators for interpretation and fabrication.

Describing the chess project one drizzly afternoon in her temporary studio, she starts pulling boxes from under a large central worktable, and her usually considered speech quickens with enthusiasm. “This is from Ethiopia,” she says, unpacking talismans of gritty found objects held together with wire. “From China, I’m having a set done like toys from McDonald’s. A company here in Long Beach is doing a promotional toy version. The most amazing ones just came in. I’ve worked with these people in Lithuania for many years, and they don’t speak any English. These are porcelain and platinum with a gold glaze. I was just speechless when I saw them, they’re so beautiful.” When we met, she had commissioned eight sets, including ones in ceramic from Mexico and wood from Germany, and was so delighted with the results she was considering enlisting others in the project.

Some 14 different chess sets will go on display in October at MAK, along with one of her monumental tapestries, this one depicting digital debris. The show will be small compared to a pair of recent midcareer surveys—“Material Mutters,” which traveled from Toronto’s Power Plant in2010 to site Santa Fe in 2011, and “In Love with Tomorrow,” on view at the Langen Foundation near Düsseldorf through July 7. Still, the works being prepared for MAK may well come as close as possible to summing up White’s all-embracing and relentlessly experimental practice.

The artist’s desire to render the same concepts in various media, simply to see what will turn out, attests to her deep curiosity about materials. And her decision to hand production to expert craftspeople with limited instructions demonstrates her embrace of chance. Her choice to represent the results as chess sets, rather than objets, reveals her longtime interest in blurring the border between design and art. And in her selection of those toys as subject matter, we can see White as champion of the overlooked, the undervalued, and the ephemeral, a role that has become her signature in the art world and, increasingly, with a broader public.

White grew up not far from the temporary studio that occupies the garage of the hilltop home, just north of downtown Los Angeles, that her architect husband, Tom Marble, designed and built in 2004. As a child she attended art classes at the Pasadena Museum of Art; by high school she was taking life drawing courses which she continued at Scripps College, about 30 minutes inland. “I don’t even know how many hundreds and hundreds of hours of that I practiced and never enjoyed it,” she recalls. “Then I took this mixed-media class, and all of a sudden it just opened up everything. It was total chaos. That was probably the first time I started feeling like there was potential in everything.”

Following graduation, she returned to Pasadena to pursue her MFA at the Art Center College of Design, then known for its design program. “It was a great time at the school because they had a fine-art department the administration never really expected to bring in any money. There were maybe 12 students,” she says. “But it just so happened these great people were teaching there: Steven Parrino and Mike Kelley. It was completely under the radar, so we could deter-mine the department’s direction. We felt equal with the faculty.”

After earning her master’s degree in 1991, White worked as Kelley’s studio assistant while taking steps toward a career in film and television. “I liked that you would work very hard for three months, and then you would have time to do your own thing,” she says. But within a few years she realized she would need to make a choice. In 1995 she incorporated much of the work she had done for a Gregg Araki movie into a show called “Summer Work” at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, in Santa Monica, and stopped taking art direction jobs.

The decision was based on time management rather than the hierarchies of commercial versus fine art. Through the 1990s she experimented with publication design, initially for museum exhibitions by her then boyfriend Jorge Pardo. White first worked with her longtime gallerist Brian Butler, of Los Angeles’s 1301PE, on a book and public sculpture that Wilhelm Schürmann commissioned for “The End of the Avant-Garde: Art as Service,” a 1995 exhibition at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, in Munich. She designed the benefit auction catalogue for the nonprofit lace (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) in 1998, the year she had her first solo show with Greengrassi, which continues to represent her in London. The catalogue she created in 2000 for the Moderna Museet’s “What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design,” in Stockholm, is a box of paper elements that refer to the work of her colleagues in the show.

That project caught the attention of Gregory Burke, curator of White’s Power Plant show, who at that time was the director of a regional museum in New Zealand, where he offered her a residency. “She was really pushing the potential of the print medium,” Burke remembers of her work on the catalogue. “For her it is not simply about reproducing work. We wrangled with the printer for weeks. She is absolutely compelled by the process.”

That same compulsion continues to guide White in all facets of her work. “I love the R&D,” she says at one point when explaining how she used a laser in one corner of her studio to etch paper coated with layers of color. “I have all of these tests of what results I get with changes in the energy, the power, the speed, the thickness of the material.” The ultimate results of these experiments are a series of drawings the artist dubbed “Phosphenes” for their attempt to capture the sense, if not the exact look, of those fluttering specks of light that appear when you rub your eyes.

White’s studio is littered with the outcomes of tests in other media as well. There are countless garish swatches from the company in Belgium that uses digital looms to weave her large-scale tapestries memorializing wisps of smoke (as seen in the 2010 Whitney Biennial) or crumpled pieces of foil (on display as the proscenium curtain at the Oslo Opera House). She made a point of using cotton and polyester thread, enjoying the contrast between the common material and the heroic proportions of her creations, as well as the alchemy involved in using its dullness to mimic the look of shiny metal or ethereal vapor. But when she began to tire of the series, she enlivened the process by asking her collaborators to include metallic thread in the mix. Currently, tests are being run to compare various patterns and textures, find ideal densities, and map color combinations, and she will use it in the MAK tapestry.

If the primary goal of White’s art is to confound viewer expectations and get us to focus on the ordinary by giving the ephemeral permanence, by using humble materials to create grandeur, and by undermining the heroic with the playful, she is no less contrarian in the face of the market. Despite frequent use of machines in her production, the artist seldom issues works in editions, preferring to create variants that grant her more room for experimentation. This past May at a Frieze New York booth cosponsored by Greengrassi, Milan’s Kaufmann Repetto, and Andrew Kreps Gallery of New York—a city where White has not shown in a gallery for 15 years—artworks spanning more than a decade of the artist’s career were on view, including Sick Amour, 2009–11, an autumnal accumulation of leaves handcrafted from canvas, metal, and soot, and “Briquettes and Support,” a 2003 series of cast-iron grilles in shapes reminiscent of kitschy tabletop animal figurines blown up to several feet high. The oldest work was Goodnight Moon, 2000, consisting of 49 hand-blown, mirrored glass bricks arrayed in a straight line where the floor and a wall met; earlier versions with different numbers of elements were meant to be arranged differently. While White regularly creates portable work for gallery shows and fairs—several laser-cut drawings from “Phosphenes” and a different series were seen in the booths of International Art Objects and Kaufmann Repetto at Independent earlier this spring—when it comes to museum installations and commissions, the artist takes site specificity very seriously. As she was researching the holdings of MAK for her intervention, she was asked by a curator to create a work for an exhibition in a remote Turkish town. After learning more about the location of the show, she had fabric printed using a 1903 pattern she found at MAK, but with colors drawn from a recent prediction of the season’s trendiest hues. Then she had the fabric displayed and sold just as any other fabric would be in the booth of a merchant at the local market.

“It was in Mardin, Turkey, very close to Syria,” White explains. “I just felt like that’s the kind of community that doesn’t necessarily want an assault from some sort of extreme, disconnected artwork. I want it to be more stealth, to be a part of that community.” Similarly, her submission for the 2007 Münster Sculpture Projects was a marzipan version of a soft taco, made by local pastry chefs and sold at a local shop. “It was really a way to have the pastry shop be a site,” she says. “I love going to someplace in Germany or Austria where they have a classic dish, and I have no idea what it is, but I find a way to merge my work with it.” This ability to integrate local stories into her vision is just as important when she is working on a grand scale. For “Making Worlds,” the 2009 Venice Biennale exhibition curated by Daniel Birnbaum, White took over a decaying, 13th-century open space. She installed a permeable ceiling of colored rope pierced in various places by chandeliers that had been coated in birdseed. She invited local singers who practice an ancient style reminiscent of birdsong to perform. In an interview at the time, she described them as “something of a raw material of the region.”

Increasingly, White finds herself taking on such large-scale projects, often public commissions. She is currently producing one from miles of brightly colored fiberglass tubing at the Los Angeles airport. For a London tube station, she is creating a vast neon light she describes as an amplification of the lamps used to treat seasonal affective disorder. Yet she feels ambivalent about becoming consumed by these projects. “I love developing these things,” she says, “but then when you have to get down to insurance and legal stuff, contracts, it’s a different process. And there is so little room for the element of chance with these public pieces.”

Perhaps that drive to stumble across something unexpected, to revel in the unpredictable is what is at the heart of her creations, both large and small. As she said of her Venice installation, “what’s interesting to me is that you can make a world in a very small gesture and you can make a world in a very huge gesture.” 

This article was published in the July 2013 issue of Art+Auction.

To see images, click on the slideshow.

Perhaps in defiance of the ease and convenience of booming production technologies, or just as a result of one widespread case of retro nostalgia, artists and designers are currently turning towards an unlikely medium for their work: tiny injection-molded modular bricks of ABS plastic, otherwise known as Legos.   

While building models out of these beloved toys has been a treasured pastime since the their invention in 1934, lately they’ve been used less as a hobby than as a creative medium, replacing traditional materials in places one would have assumed they don’t belong. There are iPhone accessories, prosthetic limbs, and entire works of art that illustrate Legos’ real, albeit completely, impractical potential. Tokyo-based artist Rie Hosokai, for example, used them to weave an uncomfortably rigid white dress for the Lego-sponsored Piece of Peace World Heritage Exhibit, on view in Hong Kong through the end of July. “We construct things from the most basic building blocks. What are we to discover from this process? To find the answer, we must continue to turn our gaze toward those around us,” her artist statement reads. (Take that as you will.)

More perplexing than Hosokai’s explanation is the fact that the same objects are also being reincarnated in plastic by 3-D printers, Lego’s high-tech foil. In contrast to the fluid, self-manning process of rapid prototyping, Lego construction requires human labor, attention, and lots (and lots) of time.  So in light of modern competition, what’s its prevailing appeal?

“I think it has been happening for years, but we are seeing more and more coverage of the creations as Lego gets accepted as an art medium, rather than a only a children's toy,” says Nathan Sawaya, the artist who used Legos to replace both the stone of the Rapa Nui people’s monolithic Moai sculptures and the oil paint of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in his critically acclaimed “Art of the Brick” exhibition currently on view at the Discovery Times Square.

“There is something very special about creating artwork out of this simple medium. I appreciate the cleanliness of the Lego brick, the right angles, the distinct lines,” Sawaya explains. “Everyone can relate to it since it is a toy that many children have at home. But it is more than that. My favorite thing about using Lego bricks is seeing someone be inspired by my artwork to go and pick up a few bricks and start creating on their own.”

ARTINFO has surveyed the recent, most creative uses of Legos: here are 11 amazing designs. 

To see highlights from our findings, click the slideshow.

Watch video of "Art of the Brick" show at Discovery Times Square:

Austria’s ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, the festival for contemporary dance has become the largest of its kind in Europe. This year’s program comprises over 100 performances in 14 venues, as well as workshops and talks with internationally acclaimed dancers and choreographers. New York’s Trajal Harrell opened the Festival last week with a thrilling “Voguing” Show, his work is also topic of a retrospective shown in Vienna. Further highlights include British dancer and choreographer Akram Khan’s solo production “DESH” with a set by Oscar decorated designer Tim Yip as well as Khan’s production “iTMOi (In the mind of Igor),” which he developed with his company for the 100th  anniversary of Igor  Stravinsky  and Vaclav Nijinsky’s “Le Sacre du Primtemps.”

Transgressing the borders between visual arts and dance, South African artist William Kentridge presents a new version of his documenta 13 installation “The Refusal of Time,” a multimedia dada opera titled “Refuse the Hour.” French choreographer Xavier Le Roy on the other hand explores hybrid body forms in his production “Low Pieces.”

Several side programs and satellite events complete the main program: the “Wild Walk! Because the night” series, a late night format that features performances by artists such as Jan Fabre & Antony Rizzi; the series “8:tension,” which is dedicated especially to newcomers, or the  the “East-West-Meeting” that takes place in the spectacular new foyer of the Weltmuseum Wien and that is dedicated to anthropological understandings. The best contemporary choreography will be awarded the “Prix J’ardin d’Europe.”

Find out more about the highlights of this year’s ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival in our slideshow.

See a trailer of Akram Khan’s new solo production “DESH” below

– Dia Founders Critique Deaccessioning: Three founders and original board members of the Dia Art Foundation— Heiner Friedrich, Fariha de Menil Friedrich, and Helen Winkler— penned a letter to current director Philippe Vergne criticizing a plan to sell off works by Cy Twombly, Barnett Newman, and John Chamberlain in order to fund future acquisitions. "Any intention to put artwork up for sale from the original collection, using it as a money pouch to fund other projects, is a complete betrayal of trust toward some of the great artists of the twentieth century," they write. "This collection is a public trust, and public trusts cannot be bandied about in trades and speculation." In a separate letter last week, former Winkler's brother and former Menil Collection director Paul Winkler also expressed his opposition to the sale. [MAN, NYT]

– Archaeologists Don't Dig Damien Hirst: Two archaeology professors from the University of Leicester— which is fresh off the discovery of the body of Richard III— recently came across Damien Hirst's famous teenage self-portrait with a severed head, "With Dead Head," and were none too pleased, penning an angry letter to the Independent. "Taking such a picture breaches all professional standards of those who regularly deal with the bodies of the dead," write professor Sarah Tarlow and project manager Matthew Beamish. "We are well aware that Hirst's art is intended to challenge and outrage and that it frequently deals with the bodies of the dead, but find this image to be exploitative and insensitive." [Independent]

– Thrift Store Art for Everyone: Head of the online organization, Rescued Art, Rodney Parrott devotes his life to finding fine art in thrift stores. Parrott restores the artworks himself and sells them online with the mission statement, "All people deserve art." So far, he has found a Kathe Kollwitz drawing, an Augusto Eugenio Chaufeurier photograph, and a Haku Maki print, but says he is still looking for something bigger. "I very well intend to save a piece worth more than $10,000 one day soon!" Parrott said. "It will most likely be an abstract piece by a valued artist without general fame. Perhaps an Alexander Calder painting, because he is best known for his sculptures. Or perhaps a wonderful textured image by Cody Hooper who is known more out west." [HuffPost]

– Germany Unveils E-David Painting Machine: A team at the University of Konstanz in Germany has created a painting machine called E-David, which stands for Drawing Apparatus for Vivid Image Display, and which uses sensors, a camera, and art supplies to draw and create paintings. [Phys]

– Florida Art Thief Nabbed: Matthew Taylor of Florida, who stole artworks from Los Angeles Fine Art Gallery, sold them, and then tried to blame his mother, recently got 7.5 years in jail and was ordered to pay $106,152 to two art galleries and $1.1 million to the IRS in restitution. [Courthouse News]

– Obama Boosts UNESCO Ties, Funding to $77M: "This is yet another demonstration of the interest the US has for our mission, and of Unesco for an even greater co-operation with America and the Americans," said Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO’s assistant director-general in charge of culture. [TAN]

– The Museum of Modern Art will re-stage its first-ever photography exhibition — Walker Evans' "American Photographs" — on its 75th anniversary, with 60 works from the original hanging, and will reissue the show's original catalogue. [NYT]

– The Qatar Museums Authority and the Fondazione Prada have launched a new curatorial award, dubbed "Curate," winners of which will get to put on their show in either Italy or Qatar. [Gallerist]

– A total of over 300 objects including pre-colonial African artifacts and artworks from Oceania and Indonesia belonging to collector Allan Stone will hit the auction block at Sotheby's in a two-part sale starting in November. [WSJ]

– In observance of the Dutch master's 407th birthday, Google has honored Rembrandt Harmernszoon van Rijn with what may be the most underwhelming Google Doodle ever. [Google]

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Visit our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

The dusty little hamlet of Marfa, long associated with Minimalist artist Donald Judd, came into focus recently through some controversy caused by Playboy Enterprises, whose installation of a quasi artwork/advertisement by Richard Phillips along one of its highways so angered locals that one ended up filing a complaint. But Marfa isn’t the only West Texas town to have attracted artists over the years, or to have raised some amount of art-related contention: Georgia O’Keeffe got locals talking when she sported male clothes in the Panhandle while teaching at a local university in 1916. Robert Smithson created his last work in Amarillo 40 years ago this summer. And along with its stellar collection of European art donated by Samuel Kress, the El Paso Museum of Art offers psychogeographical tours of the city via goat-walking. Below are some highlights of Texas art viewing.

Chinati Foundation, Marfa

While Richard Phillips’s installation in Marfa may be a knock-off of “15 Untitled Works in Concrete, 1980-1984,” one of Donald Judd’s most iconic installations, you can see the actual works at the nearby Chinati Foundation. Founded by Judd in 1986, the Chinati Foundation is comprised of 15 buildings spanning a 340-acre property in the high Chihuahuan desert. Still serving as a lightning rod attracting artists to West Texas, the foundation presents and preserves the large-scale public works that Judd originally commissioned for the Dia Foundation, along with other large-scale installations by his contemporaries like Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain, and Roni Horn, all of which — as per the Chinati’s mission — engage the surrounding landscape. For the ultimate Judd experience, make sure to get out there for Chinati Weekend in October. 

The Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo

While Judd transformed the landscape of Marfa with his cool minimalism, several hundred miles north, another West Texas town, Amarillo, got a makeover of a wackier variety courtesy of patron Stanley Marsh 3. One of the most notable works that Marsh commissioned was the Cadillac Ranch, a set of ten Cadillacs planted vertically in an open field. Visitors driving by on Historic Route 66 are encouraged to pull over and spray-paint the cars. Created in 1974 by the art collective Ant Farm, this “Stonehenge of the Panhandle” has become a popular icon and put the sleepy cattle town on the map: Bruce Springsteen has sung about it, Vogue used it as a backdrop for a fashion spread, and it was featured in a French television commercial. Most recently, as Marsh 3 was sued by several former employees and later indicted for sexual assault, residents clamored for the Ranch to come down. For now though, it’s still standing.

Amarillo Ramp, Amarillo

Earthworks artist Robert Smithson died 40 years ago while surveying a patch of private property in Amarillo for the creation of his “Amarillo Ramp.” A partial ring of packed sandstone shale 15 feet high and 3 feet wide, situated on a former lakebed that is now totally dried out, The Ramp — which was also commissioned by patron Stanley Marsh 3 — was completed in 1973 with the help of artists Richard Serra and Nancy Holt. And though it is much eroded from its original majestic shape, as with most of Smithson’s outdoor installations, it was, in fact, intended to reflect natural processes of erosion and decay. It has been said that another factor influencing the desirability of the property for his work was its conflicted ownership, which was disputed amongst members of the Marsh family. You can see this work only by private tour. But it’s worth it. 

Judd Foundation, Marfa

Recently, much anticipation and fanfare surrounded the opening this spring of Judd’s New York residence and studio at 101 Spring street. But if you really want to get a sense for how Judd lived, you’ll have to travel to Marfa, Texas where he spent the bulk of his time following his move down to this region of Texas in 1971. Judd bought up property and ranch lands all around Presidio County, converting them into living and working spaces: A former Safeway grocery store became his art studio, a 1930s hotel is now a conservation studio, and the offices of the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps became “The Block”, Judd’s residence, which includes a Judd-designed swimming pool, a private garden, and a personal library. At the various properties, you can see permanent installations by Judd and the art he collected.

Prada Marfa, Marfa

Before Playboy Marfa stirred up controversy along U.S. Highway 90 in the desert town, there was Prada Marfa. The permanent installation, built in 2005 by art duo Elmgreen and Dragset along the same roadway, recreates a Prada storefront displaying shoes and handbags selected by Miuccia Prada herself from the Fall/Winter 2005 collection. Though intended to deteriorate into the natural landscape without ever being restored, those plans changed when, three days after its unveiling, vandals broke into the faux storefront, stealing shoes and handbags and spray-painting the exterior wall with “Dumb” and “Dum Dum.”

“The X” or “La Equis,” Juarez, Mexico (at El Paso border)

The troubled border between Juarez and El Paso, the scene of many fatal drug-related shootouts, has long inspired writers and artists. Now, there is a permanent work of art to mark the blood-addled spot. While not actually in Texas, “The X,” or “La Equis,” situated in Juarez, Mexico on the south bank of the Rio Grande, was designed by Sebastian, an artist from Chihuahua, in honor of the blood spilled in the drug wars in Juarez. This nearly 200-foot-tall public art piece along César Chávez Border Highway, completed last spring, was also the subject of some controversy when it was first approved by the city six years ago at a cost of $2.8 million, causing critics to rail against government art spending.

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon

Described as “the Smithsonian with a Texas accent,” the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum has the most comprehensive historic art collection in the state of Texas, with some 8,000 objects of Southwestern, Texas Impressionist, and European art. Included in the permanent collection is “Red Landscape,” one of the four paintings that Georgia O’Keeffe completed while living in the panhandle where, from 1916-1918, she headed up the art department at West Texas State Normal College (now called West Texas A&M University). The museum recently added to its collection artifacts from her time there including her travel trunk containing some of her art books and her bed, along with an orange crate she used as a night stand and a desk from her classroom at Normal. These objects, along with the painting and photographs that were in the collection, are now part of a permanent installation dedicated to O’Keeffe. The museum also has smart, alluring shows that you’d never get this side of the Mississippi like “Wild and Wacky Weather on the Panhandle Plains” (through February 2014), which uses specific historic weather events to explore forces behind West Texas weather and offers visitors the chance to experience a simulated tornado. 

Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo

Don’t let Amarillo’s dusty cattle-ranching exterior fool you. The West Texas city, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island, has long been a nexus for important artists, and for a time it was something of a wormhole for modernist artists of the New York School. Thanks in part to artist and art dealer Dord Fitz whose Area Arts Foundation (AAF) hosted seminars and workshops, the conservative oil rich city soon saw the likes of Elaine de Kooning, Alex Katz, and Louise Nevelson on its turf. The Amarillo Museum of Art, which has the AAF collection on permanent loan, touts works by many of these visiting artists, and those in their circle, including Nevelson, Franz Kline, and Helen Frankenthaler. There are watercolors by Georgia O’Keefe (who also taught in Amarillo) and several works by John Marin, as well as work by artists in their circle like Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Alfred Stieglitz. Over the past ten years, the collection has grown dramatically thanks to a donation by Dr. and Mrs. William T. Price of Amarillo.  Their donations of sculpture, prints, paintings, and textiles from Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Middle East have introduced Asian art and culture to the Panhandle.

El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso

First accredited in 1972, the El Paso Museum of Art is best known for the Samuel Kress collection of European art from the 12th – 18th century including works by Canaletto, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Filippino Lippi, and Anthony van Dyck, among many others. Also, where else can you partake of “goatwalking,” a series devoted to walks with goats. Created by artist Christine Foerster, this tour offers a psychogeographic view of the city, and gets documented on the Goatwalking blog.

Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock

Of Lubbock’s many works of public art, one very recognizable one is the outsize pair of glasses at the Buddy Holly Center, a museum devoted to the legacy of the singer who called Lubbock home. The glasses, which replicate Holly’s signature specs, are a work by local artist Steve Teeters, whose sculptures can be seen in and around Lubbock. The Center is situated in an historic railway depot and has several exhibition and concert spaces devoted to the music and art of Lubbock and West Texas, including one guitar-shaped gallery, which offers a permanent show of all things Buddy Holly, including the musician’s Fender Stratocaster, a songbook, clothing, recording contracts, tour itineraries, and Holly’s actual glasses.

To see artwork in West Texas, click the slideshow.