– Nude War Between Ai Fans and Chinese Authorities: Ai Weiwei's assistant Zhao Zhao has been interrogated by the police over a photograph showing the artist surrounded by four equally naked women. The picture, entitled "One Tiger, Eight Breasts," is demure — there is no contact between the subjects. The authorities' accusations are suspected to be yet another attempt to silence the artist-activist. "If they see nudity as pornography, then China is still in the Qing dynasty," Ai tweeted. Soon after news of the investigation broke, Ai's supporters began tweeting their own nude photographs, from full-frontal shots to pictures of themselves as babies. [Independent, Guardian] 

– Kate Middleton at The Art Room: The Duchess of Cambridge could be set to sponsor The Art Room, an arts therapy charity with branches in Oxford and London. Last Wednesday, she was spotted visiting the London branch in Islington’s Robert Blair primary school to find out more about their activities. [ArtLyst] 

– Strike at the National Gallery: Gallery assistants have voted to support a strike in protest of new measures that would reduce their presence in the galleries and threaten the security of the art collection. If the warders go ahead with their industrial action, it would put the sold-out Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in jeopardy during the Christmas period. [Guardian] 

– The Curator's Dealer: Newsweek’s Blake Gopnik profiles gallerist and “unlikely art mogul” Marian Goodman. “She sees making art visible as her métier — as really what she does…and the market is the bad means of accomplishing that,” said Goodman artist Jeff Wall. The Hirshhorn Museum’s Kerry Brougher calls Goodman “a curator’s dealer” who wants art “to be out there where the public can see it," adding that he's actually heard her complain when art prices rise. [Newsweek]

– Brave New World of Repatriation?: Having entered the museum sphere in a big way with the Google Art Project, the search giant is now entwining itself further with the cause of world culture by bringing historical treasures — from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the opulence of Versailles — online. But some on the international stage have been pushing back, suspicious of the company's pursuit of their digital heritage. Is there a new antiquities battle on the horizon, complete with the idea of virtual repatriation? [NYT]

– Steakhouse Waiter Ring Found With Lichtenstein: A group of waiters at high-end New York steakhouses were indicted for stealing patrons’ credit card information and using it to buy and resell over $1 million in goods, including cases of vintage French wine, Louis Vuitton handbags, Cartier jewelry — and even a Roy Lichtenstein lithograph of Marilyn Monroe. [NYT]

– Arman Museum in Nice: The paintbrush-loving American artist's widow Corice Canton-Arman has announced that the city of Nice — which has just acquired the artist's exploded Triumph "La Tulipe" for the contemporary art museum MAMAC — will open a museum devoted to Arman in the "near future." [Connaissance des Arts]

– Clyfford Still Would Hate His Museums $10 Ticket Price: The Los Angeles Times gives the recently-opened Clyfford Still Museum in Denver — which houses 94 percent of the artist’s output — a rave review, with one caveat: “My sole complaint about the museum is its needless $10 admission fee,” writes critic Christopher Knight. “Ironically, it’s the kind of institutional tactic that put Still off the art world.” [LAT]

– Will No One Claim This Old Henry Moore?: A sculpture by Henry Moore that the artist donated to Britain in 1967 has fallen into disrepair, and no one is claiming ownership. The Ministry of Public Works oversaw the bronze until the department disbanded in 1970. Now, the graffiti-covered sculpture, worth an estimated £5 million, is, according to one art historian, “the most damaged Moore I have seen on display in Britain.” [Telegraph] 

– Art Investment Tips From a Pro: “If you want to make an investment, look for contemporary Chinese abstracts because this market is just coming up and they’re cheap,” said Thomas Olbricht, the former chairman of the German hair-products company Wella AG, whose collection of contemporary and historic art is currently on view at the Maison Rouge in Paris. “Then there’s Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Amselm Kiefer. You won’t lose money on them.” [Bloomberg]

– Prop 8 as Art Exhibition: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has mounted an exhibition devoted to issues surrounding Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Curator Aspara DiQuinzio commissioned eight poets and 30 artists, including Raymond Pettibon and Simon Fujiwara, to produce works on the subject. [LAT] 

– The Chelsea of South Africa: A group of neighborhoods called “Parks” in Johannesburg — Parkhurst, Parview, Parkwood, and Partown North — is home to “the most important assemblage of traditional contemporary art galleries in the entire country if not all of Africa,” according to the Financial Times. “Much like Chelsea in New York, the Parks have become a real hub for Johannesburg’s arts and culture, just on a smaller scale,” said Liza Essers, owner of the local Goodman Gallery, which represents William Kentridge and Willem Boshoff, among others. [FT]

– A Defense of Abramovic: Guy Trebay of the New York Times pens something of a defense of Marina Abramovic and her controversial MOCA gala performance, though he makes no explicit reference to Yvonne Rainer’s letter protesting the event. Abramovic’s provocative works “have made her, somewhat unexpectedly at 64, a darling of the increasingly incestuous worlds of fashion, society and art,” according to Trebay. As the unofficial “muse” to Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci, she is also, in all likelihood, “the first performance artist in history to wear haute couture.” [NYT] 

– Records Galore: IN THE AIR offers a round-up of the numerous auction records set last week, from Latin American artists in New York to diamonds in Geneva to medieval art in Paris. [ITA]

Just when we thought that the one good thing about the economic crisis was that it had underlined how preposterous Damien Hirst's 2007 "For the Love of God" was, that £50 million ($78 million) diamond-incrusted platinum skull is back in London — and this time, it's with the Tate's stamp of approval.

The piece, which has yet to enter a major collection and is collectively owned by a consortium of investors including Hirst himself, will be displayed in a special viewing room in the Turbine Hall during the first two months of the artist's major retrospective at Tate Modern next year. At the museum's press conference this morning, curator Ann Gallagher declined to comment on the security aspect of the display.

The notoriously press-shy Hirst wasn't present at the event. Instead, journalists were treated to a short film of the artist talking about the sparkly cranium. "I had a big fear that it would end up like a tacky piece of jewellery," says the artist with touching frankness. But who says it hasn't?

The Damien Hirst retrospective (April 4 – September 9 of next year) is part of the London 2012 Festival, a government-backed citywide art program coinciding with the Olympic Games. Britain is celebrating the artist who pretty much singlehandedly made the country the United States's equal on the art map, ushering in Cool Britannia and all that.

With more than 70 pieces, the Tate exhibition goes back to the late '80s, the cradle of the legend. Art history needs clear-cut events to mark the start of a movement, and "Freeze," the 1988 exhibition Hirst curated in a Docklands warehouse, serves this purpose beautifully. In 1988, this history says, the Young British Artists were born.

The same year also marked the beginning of an ongoing series in Hirst's career: the spot paintings (which are about to be exhibited in all the Gagosian galleries in the world). Among the very first of these, "Edge" was painted directly on the wall, and it will be recreated for the Tate exhibition. The exhibition will also have seminal butterfly paintings, including the 1991 piece "In and Out of Love" that involved live pupae hatching in the galleries, as well as early cabinets and installations such as the 1992 "Pharmacy." There will also, of course, be a herd's worth of animals in formaldehyde solution.

"He is incredibly productive," curator Gallagher said in explaining how challenging it had been to select what would go in the show. In the end, she has opted to focus on bodies of works that can be traced back to Hirst's early days — a method that conveniently leaves out the "Blue Paintings" series, slaughtered by the critics when first shown at London's Wallace Collection in 2009. The risk, though, is in emphasizing how much Hirst has been repeating himself over the last 20 years.

Up until the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, Hirst's work felt incredibly topical, nauseously so. He borrowed Warhol and Koons's strategies without their wit, or humor, creating supersized comments on the riches flowing through the art world. British artists have a very different stance these days. Just look at the work of this year's Turner Prize nominees: different shades of deft understatements. But perhaps the Tate show is what needed to finally shove Hirst in the history box, and clear the path for others to make their mark.

ARTINFO selects 1o of the most captivating shows opening, closing, and on view this week. Miami art fair week is on the horizon, of course, but here are the other shows art enthusiasts will be looking at this week around the world:

Robert Mapplethorpe curated by Sofia Coppola at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 7 Rue Debelleyme, Paris, opening November 25

Director Sophia Coppola is dealer Thaddaeus Ropac’s latest pick in his series of guest curators. Coppola selects lesser-known images of children, women, and floral still lifes by renowned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, layering her gaze onto his to create something unique.

Walter Vopava at Kunsthalle Krems, Franz-Zeller-Platz 3, Krems, opening November 27 

New Abstraction comes to Kunsthalle Krems through one of Austria’s most celebrated artists. Vopava (b. 1948) creates paintings in which process is intricately linked to his product, and his work offers a deep, Rothko-like meditative quality. 

Mark Handforth’s “Rolling Stop” at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Joan Lehman Building, 770 NE 125th St., North Miami, opening November 30

Miami-based artist Mark Handforth creates an illuminated neon landscape for viewers just in time for Miami Beach’s art fair festivities. The giant banyan tree colored with over 60 lights, “Electric Tree,” will be installed in Griffing Park, while 30 works, including a new light installation covering 80 feet of museum wall, will light up the city.

Folkert de Jong at Galerie Fons Welters, Bloemstraat 140, Amsterdam, opening November 26

Featuring an effigy of the Dutch prince William of Orange suspended in the gallery space, and a cast of supporting characters that include The Queen of Coal and The King of Water, de Jong calls attention to rulers of power in his historically fanciful sculptural narrative.

Donald Judd at Galerie Greta Meert, Rue du Canal 13, Brussels, Through March 10

The legendary Minimalist struts his design work in this exhibition of furniture from the 1970s. With great precision, these minimal but iconic pieces are exemplary of Judd’s attention to austere aesthetic functionality.

Rebecca Horn’s “The Neshapour Spirals” at Elisabetta Cipriani, Sprovieri Gallery, 23 Heddon St., London, through December 23

Rebecca Horn, best known for her performance, film, sculpture, and installation work, produces a series on a much smaller scale alongside Elisabetta Cipriani, Jewellery by Contemporary Artists. “The Neshapour Spirals” are comprised of Neshapour Turquoise and Snail Fossils, displayed alongside original gouaches produced by Horn.

Catherine Opie at Stephen Friedman Gallery, 25-28 Old Burlington St., London, opening November 23

Early portraits from Opie’s “Girlfriends” series are not just documentation of her friends and lovers, but also a freeze-frame of Opie’s domestic and familial landscape in those years.

Nobuyoshi Araki’s “Muses: Sans Titres” at Galerie Kamel Mennour, 47 Rue Saint-Andre des arts, Paris, through November 26

Araki’s painted photos include the faces and bodies of women such as Kaori and Lady Gaga, infused with his signature eye for bondage chic.

Tony Tasset’s “Hot Dog Man” and Sayre Gomez’s “Windows and Mirrors” at Kavi Gupta, 835 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, through January 28 

Sculptor Tony Tasset’s exaggerated “Hot Dog Man” and “Mood Sculpture” appear concurrently with the tenderly appropriated imagery of Sayre Gomez. While Tasset’s “Hot Dog Man” is an oversized tribute to cartoonists, heavy with satire and obscenities, Gomez’s borrowed blog images are beautifully arranged and elevated to new aesthetic heights through the artist's treatment.

A new breed of art fair is about to hit the British capital. Just one month after Frieze, the Other Art Fair's first edition will take over the Bargehouse on London's Southbank. Instead of the traditional gathering of art dealers, the new venture is geared exclusively towards contemporary artists not represented by galleries. "The country is full of amazing artists," fair director Ryan Stanier told ARTINFO UK. "If they are not with a gallery, it makes it very difficult for them to showcase their work. We wanted to produce an art fair for these artists."

"Artist-oriented fair," in this case, doesn't mean free-for-all. "We didn't really advertise the application process," said Stanier (although an application form was available on the fair's website). Over the last six months, TOAF's team scoured Britain's studios and graduate shows to pre-select 400 unrepresented artists, 200 of which were presented to the fair's selection committee. The committee, including artist Charming Baker, Sotheby's Institute programme director Anthony Downey, and BALTIC director Godfrey Worsdale, whittled the list down to 100 names. The accent here is put on curatorial selectivity.

But with no galleries to support them, artists are the ones who will foot the stand fee, which ranges from £690 ($1,098) for three square meters (32.2 square feet) of white wall to £1,450 ($2,308) for seven square meters (75.3 square feet). "I understand that it's a lot of money," said Stanier. "But as a company we don't make money out of the stand cost. We actually subsidise the rate. As an artist, if you are showing with a gallery, you are typically losing 50 percent of the value of the piece. With us, the artist is receiving 100 percent."

The Other Art Fair caters to artist-entrepreneurs ready to be dealer and promoter of their own production — something unrepresented artists have to do, said Stanier, if they want to make money out of their work. The Other Art Fair also sees itself as a stepping stone for artists to get into the mainstream art market. "As much as it is an opportunity for artists to sell their work directly to members of the public," said Stanier, "it's also an opportunity for them to meet galleries. What we are trying to do is to create a fertile breeding ground for galleries to discover new artists."

While artists tend to avoid hanging out at mainstream art fairs, often feeling that they have little to do with that part of the business, the Other Art Fair guarantees a maximum level of engagement from the exhibiting artists. Prospective buyers are actively encouraged to discuss the works on display, and even to negotiate prices. "The artist will receive 100 percent from the sale of their work," would-be collectors are reminded in the Web site's "Buying Tips" section, "therefore why not make an offer?"

"It's such an eclectic mix," fair director Stanier answered when asked about the fair's highlights. "One of the most challenging things has been trying to get all [the artists'] work to sit next to each other." However, with artworks starting at less than £1 ($1.5) in artists Jasper Joffe and Harry Pye's on-site 99p shop, there will be something for everybody.

The Other Art Fair runs November 24-27.

– Days of Swine and Poses: Artist Miru Kim caused a bit of a stir at Chelsea's Doosan Gallery earlier this year when she displayed photographs of herself crawling nude amid a herd of pigs, but that's nothing compared to the attention she's going to get next week when she recreates the work at Art Basel Miami Beach… live. Inspired by French philosophy, the artist says she's ready to jump back in the pen. After all, she's taken the worst the pigs can dish out. "Once, when I was focused on getting into position, one chomped down on my butt, which made me jump and run," she recalls. "It was very strange to have teeth marks and bruises there." Call her Francesca Bacon. [Societe Perrier] 

– How Leonardo Anticipated Darwin: British art critic Jonathan Jones takes a look at Leonardo's drawings of rocky mountains and marvels at the Renaissance master's grasp of landscape, which went beyond mere realism to contain "astonishing insights about geology and fossils" — some of them, inspired by seashells found on mountaintops, relating to the multimillennial span of the Earth's geological transformation. These findings, Jones writes, contradicted Genesis and prefigured the discoveries leading to Darwin's theory of evolution. [Guardian] 

– Laure Provost Wins Max Mara Award: The French film and installation artist captured the fashion company's annual prize for women artists, beating out Spartacus Chetwynd, Christina Mackie, Avis Newman, and Emily Wardill. [BBC] 

– Coppola’s Take on Mapplethorpe: The independent filmmaker Sofia Coppola will put her extensive background in still photography to use as she curates an exhibition of photography by Robert Mapplethorpe at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris. Her show follows in the recent footsteps of Mapplethorpe exhibitions by David Hockney in 2005 and Cindy Sherman in 2003. [Press Release]

– Not-So-Mysterious Benefactor: The artist David Hockney says that the Tate and LACMA are the two museums that "have meant the most to me over my lifetime," and in gratitude the 74-year-old artist plans to bequeath a large chunk of the paintings held in his $125 million foundation to the far-flung pair. This news, reported by the Times of London, seems to have come as a pleasant surprise to LACMA, which gave Hockney a 1988 retrospective. [LAT] 

– The Art.sy Pitch:  In a Wired profile, Art.sy COO Sebastian Cwilich reveals what he says to get "the high-end galleries” like Pace and Gagosian to sign up for his Pandora-for-art site: “If you don’t think that there’s going to be a lot more art discovered and purchased online, then you don’t need to talk to us. But if you believe that the world is changing, then you shouldn’t miss out.” Carter Cleveland, the company's 25-year-old CEO, expresses things a bit differently: "What we’re trying to do here is be an omniscient art historian for the entire world." [Wired] 

– Graffiti Art Takes Off in Singapore: Of course, in the fastidious country that caned a Swiss visitor last year for tagging a train, graffiti art is not political and is rendered on canvas or cardboard. Street art, this is not. [Reuters]

– Album Art Masterpiece to Go to Auction: Next month, Bonhams will oversee the sale of the original cover art for the Rolling Stones album “Let It Bleed.” Designed by Robert Brownjohn and featuring a gaudy cake made by Delia Smith, it is one of the most recognizable album covers in music history. The high estimate is £40,000. [The Independent]

– Where to Find Tons of Catholic Art in the U.S.: Who knew? Bob Jones University, generally known as a bastion of Protestant fundamentalist values, holds one of the largest collections of Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings. Catholic imagery doesn’t seem to bother Erin R. Jones, director of the BJU Museum and Gallery and wife of the current university president. “If you are going to have a strong university,” she says, “you need a strong collection of art.” [Washington Post]

– Obama Poster Recruited for Occupy Movement: An icon associated with Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign has been modified by its original designer, Shepard Fairey, in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The new poster shows the President’s face replaced by a Guy Fawkes mask originally known from the film “V for Vendetta,” accompanied with the text: “Mister President, we HOPE you're on our side.” [ITA]

– U.S. Arts Mission to China a Rare Success: The U.S.-China Forum on the Arts and Culture, which brought such creative figures as cellist Yo Yo Ma and actress Meryl Streep to China for a series of performances and readings, was widely praised in the official state media and on informal networking sites. But its success raises an uncomfortable question: Why are there not more programs like it? The U.S. is “not nearly as proactive as other countries,” said Alex Pearson, who runs an international literary festival in China. “Their embassy has an arts section,” she said, “but they don’t seem to have any money.” [NYT]

– Jurassic Bird Comes to the Museum: The 147-million-year-old fossil of a prehistoric winged creature, the Archaeopteryx, will be the "Mona Lisa" of the new display at London's Natural History Museum, to be unveiled in November of next year. The fossil played an important role in confirming Darwin's theory of evolution when it was discovered in 1861. (Yes, that's two Checklist items referencing Darwin today!) [Press Release]

– Formal Analysis of Occupy Posters: The Guardian is the latest media outlet to formally analyze the poster art of the Occupy movement, compiling a slide show of 14 of the most striking posters from across the world. “The movement is combining 1920s constructivism with modern graphic novel design to create striking series of images,” explains the newspaper. [Guardian]

– RIP English Poster Artist David Langdon: Posters by the draftsman were a universal fixture in midcentury London life, particularly during World War II. A contributor to the Daily Mirror, Punch, and the New Yorker, Langdon made cartoons imbued with bright, compact satire, with captions that wittily captured the political and civic culture of the times. He was 97. [The Guardian]

Valentino Garavani may have retired from fashion design nearly four years ago, but he certainly is keeping busy with a groundbreaking new way to execute fashion exhibitions. On December 5, the fashion legend will unveil the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum, a game-changing virtual initiative that it the first of its kind.

Instead of waiting in line for up to three hours, as Met Museum visitors eager to see “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” did over the summer, users can browse through the virtual exhibition of Valentino's designs from the comfort of a computer. Entrance to the virtual display is available through a downloadable desktop application connected to an online database that uses real-time 3-D technology. The carefully curated selection of Valentino's work consists of over 300 dresses — each with accompanying ad campaigns, illustrations, editorials, and red carpet photography — spread over virtual galleries that would make up a hefty 32,808-square-foot of museum space in real life (about the size the new Whitney Museum has planned for its rotating exhibitions and permanent collection).

“I see it as part of my legacy,” Valentino told WWD. “I am happy that thousands of students, young designers and fashion people will be able to see and study my work in every aspect of it, and in a manner easy and accessible for the younger generations. But it is also important to remember things of the past, to review the fashion that has shaped our lives. I would call it ‘Future Memory.’”

Created by Valentino’s longtime partner Giancarlo Giammeti — who was inspired to start the project after seeing the Web site for Pennsylvania’s Barnes Foundation — and designed and produced by Novacom Associés-Paris, in collaboration with Kinmonth-Monfreda Design Project in London, the virtual exhibition offers panoramic access to Valentino’s 50-year career.

The Web site, valentino-garavani-archives.org will allow a sneak peek until the museum’s official debut through an online video. Back in the physical world, Valentino and Giammetti will celebrate the museum with a real party at the IAC Headquarters in New York on December 7.

Capitalizing on the wild success of “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” and the numerous other fashion exhibitions around the world that featured designers like Cristóbal Balenciaga, Jean Paul Gaultier, Hussein Chalayan, Madame Grès, and more, Valentino is taking the recent trend to another level. When users can view dresses up close and from 360 degrees, scanning every stitch and detail, the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum may be even better than the real thing.

Beijing’s fall auction season opened last week, and it has already confirmed the pattern set at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last month of a cooler-headed market which, in the face of financial turmoil abroad and a credit crunch at home, is forsaking risk for quality. Unproven contemporary names were shunned in Beijing and even established artists failed where offerings were mediocre or reserves were unrealistic. Buyers prepared to spend were drawn — as in Hong Kong — to Chinese modern masters, antiquities, and artistic works of iron-clad provenance.

Of course, this air of measured prudence was partly due to the top-flight standing of the auction houses dominating the first week of a season that will run through many less distinguished establishments on the way to its close on December 9. The first week’s leader was China Guardian, the country’s oldest fine-art auction house and the player that, due both to its longevity (it was founded in 1993) and the relative transparency of its dealings, is the house that most closely aligns with international competitors like Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Other notable houses in action last week were Beijing Hanhai (China's third-most-prominent house after Poly Auctions and Guardian, and the seventh biggest in the world according to France’s Conseil des ventes), and Christie’s trademark licensee in mainland China, Forever auctions.

As we look toward Christie’s first Hong Kong sale of the season this Friday and the sales of China’s top house, Poly, next month, ARTINFO China brings you our picks for the six trends of the Chinese season so far.

1. MAINLAND AUCTIONS STILL OUTSTRIP HONG KONG

Guardian took RMB 3.858 billion ($607 million) in its season last week, down from its spring total of RMB 5.323 billion ($823.038 million) but still eclipsing last month’s season result for Sotheby’s Hong Kong, which took in a very healthy HK$3.2 billion ($411 million) against a pre-season estimate of HK$2.7 billion ($346 million). Given recent history, it can be expected that Guardian will also best Christie’s Hong Kong this fall. Notably even the smaller Chinese mainland house, Beijing Hanhai, last week took RMB 2.1 billion ($330 million), just short of Sotheby’s Hong Kong fall season take.

2. CHINESE MODERN MASTERS RULE THE MARKET

As also demonstrated in Hong Kong, the hottest section of the market here continues to be Chinese modern masters — the revered 20^th-century practitioners of traditional Chinese painting. The key names here are Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), Qi Baishi (1864-1957), Fu Baoshi (1904-1965), and Xu Beihong (1895-1953), each of whom already holds a place on the top-ten artists by auction compiled by Artprice (with Zhang and Qi tracking to be number one and two this year, edging Picasso into third place). No new world records for Chinese painting have been set so far this fall: that was Guardian’s feat in spring when Qi Baishi’s “A Long Life, a Peaceful World” (1946) sold for $65 million, the most a Chinese painting has ever fetched at auction. But new artist records were set by Fu Baoshi and Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), whose already healthy prices have skyrocketed since his death last year and who could well edge into the top rankings of artists at auction this year. Fu Baoshi could be judged to have broken his own record twice this season, since if the eight leaves from an album of Fu’s paintings interpreting the poems of Mao Zedong are considered to be a single work then the RMB 230 million ($36.16 million) they fetched at Hanhai auctions last week blitzes the artist record set earlier in the week at Guardian by his “Poetry of a Journey of the Pipa,” which sold for RMB 82.8 million ($13 million). Although other sectors of the market such as Chinese antique furniture also did quite strongly last week, Chinese modern masters are by far the stars of the season so far.

3. HONG KONG REMAINS THE PLACE TO SELL CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART

Another trend that has already been confirmed this season is that the majority of quality lots in Chinese contemporary art are being consigned in Hong Kong, not Beijing. This was most starkly demonstrated by the decision by Guy and Miriam Ullens to sell the highest-value tranches of their Chinese contemporary collection through Sotheby’s Hong Kong in spring and fall this year rather than through their favored local house, Poly. And this Saturday, 14 important early works by Chinese contemporary art stars will make up a glittering evening sale at Christie’s Hong Kong. Meanwhile, one can only wonder at the hubris of the consignors who sent out a series of untried young artists as so much cannon fodder in Guardian’s evening sale of Contemporary Chinese painting last Wednesday, only to see work after work passed in. This run of failures turned the evening sale into a near fiasco, with Guardian’s sell-through rate of 78 percent established earlier in the day at their Chinese modern oil painting sale almost reversed when the contemporary sale had approximately the same percentage of lots bought in.

4. CHINA'S BLUE CHIPS STAY BLUE 

Despite the lack of quality lots in Beijing, the market status of a number of China’s best-selling contemporary artists was upheld. Even with fairly indifferent work, Liu Wei — a market favourite in Hong Kong and in the West as well — lit up the room at Guardian’s depressed sale of Chinese contemporary, while a superb early work by Zhou Chunya, “Sheepshearing” (1981), set a new artist record when it was hammered after a bout of spirited bidding for a total price (including buyer’s premium) of RMB 30.45 million ($4.785 million). On the other hand, Cai Guo Qiang, who has also had mixed results in Hong Kong, failed to meet the expectations of his consignor when his 2003 work “Light Cycle Explosion Project for Central Park” was bought in at RMB 54 million ($8.486 million) against an undisclosed estimate. More than one observer in Beijing suspected that the consignor had hoped to set a new record for Chinese contemporary art, held currently by Zhang Xiaogang’s “Forever Lasting Love” (1988), which sold this spring at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $10 million. It was a fool’s errand in this cooling market.

5. MORE SAFEGUARDS INSTALLED AGAINST DEADBEAT BUYERS

Eyebrows were raised this spring when Christie’s and Sotheby’s Hong Kong imposed bidding deposits on high-value lots to discourage impecunious showoffs. But no one noticed that Guardian had already moved that way last fall, and the policy is fast becoming the standard at all the leading Beijing houses, where the heady temptations of hot money and hammer fever are well understood.

6. THE BIG BOYS DOUBLE DOWN ON FIRST-CLASS LUXURY

It’s obvious that the leading Beijing auction houses see China’s undistinguished, fly-by-night salesrooms as a threat to their brand. The big names are putting some distance between themselves and the herd, and we can expect to see more of this brand differentiation as the market matures.

Hungry? You better be, because Thursday kicks off the first event in a wintry season of marathon eating and relatives overstaying their welcome. It’s time again to stock up for the colder months, and grandma’s not the only one planning a Thanksgiving feast. ARTINFO has carefully sifted through the canon of classic and contemporary art to bring you ten over-the-top food-related artworks to accompany your binge eating on Turkey Day.

Start out the main course by digging into an anthropomorphic arrangement of Archimboldo vegetables — we chose his "Autumn" (1573) as particularly "Thanksgiving-y" — or a rack of ribs from that contemporary wizard of gluttony, food artist Jennifer Rubbell, who made her name with massive piles of meat for an installation at Performa, almost exactly two years ago. For less, er, traditional fare, how about performance artist Xavier Cha, who presented herself along with piles of vegatables in a giant cornucopia at Taxter & Spengemann gallery a couple of years ago?

For dessert, contemporary art is particularly rich in options. Choose from a fine selection of Wayne Thiebald's creamy, dreamy pies, or if you’re really feeling gluttonous, Claes Oldenberg’s larger-than-life slice of cake. Looking for something more decadent still? Why not curl up alongside some of the langorous nudes on a big fluffy cloud of cotton candy in Will Cotton's "Consuming Folly, or bite into one of Marina Abramovic's dark chocolate lips covered in edible gold, produced in collaboration with the pastry chefs at San Ambroeus to celebrate her recent MoMA retrospective.

As a pure allegory of culinary excess, look out for Terry Richardson’s photos of model Lindsey Wixson inhaling spaghetti or Cosimo Cavallaro’s room of dripping cheese. And as for the classics, Willem Claeszoon Heda's 
"Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie" (1631), with its oozing berries and toppled goblets, proves that "your eyes were bigger than your stomach" must have a Dutch translation as well.

No matter the season, these ten artworks are a feast for your eyes — loosen your belts, adjust your glasses, and enjoy.

To see ARTINFO selection of ten over-the-top food artworks for Thanksgiving, click on the slide show.

Nader Sadek’s 2011 sculpture-and-performance piece “Baptism in Black” staged a Satanic ritual that desecrated the artist’s uniquely fabricated bust of Hosni Mubarak. Performed in the politically charged White Tower in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the end of September, Sadek’s piece channeled and connected the unrest fueling both Arab revolutions and Eurozone crises. Accompanied by Thessaloniki death metal outfit Genna Apo Kolo (Anal Birth) and a chorus of 30 local metal fans, Sadek carried out a black mass over a monochromatic white bust of Mubarak fabricated out of one of the artist’s signature, petroleum-based compounds. The ritual crescendoed with the artist drowning the bust in another one of these signature compounds — this time a shiny, onyx-colored, viscous liquid.

“Baptism in Black” links the Egyptian government’s persecution of heavy metal music and culture to the 2011 uprising that overthrew Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship. The Satanic allusions recall the 1996 mass arrest of heavy metal music fans in Egypt, which the state justified on the grounds that heavy metal fans are Satan worshippers. From amongst the arrested and tortured fans arose two activists who had a prominent role in the build up to and unfolding of the Egyptian revolution of February 2011, intensifying the activities of human rights and civil society organizations both on the ground and in social media. Playing on the paranoid fantasies of the Egyptian government, Sadek's piece in turn imagines that Satanic curses led to the eventual downfall of the Egyptian president. “Baptism in Black” initiates the former dictator into spiritual banishment.

The final products of this performance-event consisted of the "drowned Mubarak bust" and an experimental audio collage capturing Thessaloniki metal fans growling in the streets, aurally signaling their occupation of public space.

Nader Sadek is a Cairo-born multimedia artist based in New York who explores the intersectino of heavy metal culture with political discourse. “Baptism in Black” was performed in Thessaloniki, Greece on September 30, 2011,  and was commissioned and funded by the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and its workshop. Most recently, Sadek conceived the experimental heavy metal album “In the Flesh,” which was recently showcased at Santos Party House in New York. 

Jason Frydman is assistant professor of English at Brooklyn College.

I participated in an audition on November 7th for performance artist Marina Abramovic’s production for the annual gala of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. I auditioned because I wanted to participate in the project of an artist whose work I have followed with interest for many years and because it was affiliated with MOCA, an institution that I have a connection with as a Los Angeles-based artist. Out of approximately 800 applicants, I was one of two hundred selected to audition. Ultimately, I was offered the role of one of six nude females to re-enact Abramovic's signature work, "Nude with Skeleton" (2002), at the center of tables with seats priced at up to $100,000 each. For reasons I detail here — reasons that I strongly believe need to be made public — I turned it down.

I am writing to address three main points: One, to add my voice to the discourse around this event as an artist who was critical of the experience and decided to walk away, a voice which I feel has been absent thus far in the LA Times and New York Times coverage; two, to clarify my identity as the informant about the conditions being asked of artists and make clear why I chose, up till now, to be anonymous in regards to my email to Yvonne Rainer; and three, to prompt a shift of thinking of cultural workers to consider, when either accepting or rejecting work of any kind, the short- and long-term impact of our personal choices on the entire field. Each point is to support my overriding interest in organizing and forming a union that secures labor standards and fair wages for fine and performing artists in Los Angeles and beyond.

I refused to participate as a performer because what I anticipated would be a few hours of creative labor, a meal, and the chance to network with like-minded colleagues turned out to be an unfairly remunerated job. I was expected to lie naked and speechless on a slowly rotating table, starting from before guests arrived and lasting until after they left (a total of nearly four hours). I was expected to ignore (by staying in what Abramovic refers to as "performance mode") any potential physical or verbal harassment while performing. I was expected to commit to fifteen hours of rehearsal time, and sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement stating that if I spoke to anyone about what happened in the audition I was liable for being sued by Bounce Events, Marketing, Inc., the event’s producer, for a sum of $1 million dollars plus attorney fees.

I was to be paid $150. During the audition, there was no mention of safeguards, signs, or signals for performers in distress, and when I asked about what protection would be provided I was told it could not be guaranteed. What I experienced as an auditionee for this work was extremely problematic, exploitative, and potentially abusive.

I am a professional dancer and choreographer with 16 years of experience working in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a professional artist working towards earning a middle class living in Los Angeles, I am outraged that there are no official or even unofficial standard practice measures for working conditions, compensation, and benefits for artists and performers, or for relations between creator, performer, presenting venue and production company in regard to such highly respected and professionalized individuals and institutions such as Abramovic and MOCA. In Europe I produced over a dozen performance works involving casts up to 15 to 20 artists. When I hired dancers, I was obliged to follow a national union pay scale agreement based on each artist’s number of years of experience. In Canada, where I recently performed a work by another artist, I was paid $350 for one performance that lasted 15 minutes, not including rehearsal time that was supported by another fee for up to 35 hours, in accordance with the standards set by CARFAC (Canadian Artists Representation/Le Front Des Artistes Canadiens) established in 1968.

If my call for labor standards for artists seems out of bounds, think of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG, established 1933), the American Federation of Musicians (AFM, founded 1896), or the umbrella organization the Associated Actors and Artistes of America (the 4A’s, founded in 1919), which hold the film, theater and music industries to regulatory and best practice standards for commercial working artists and entertainers. If there is any group of cultural workers that deserves basic standards of labor, it is us performers working in museums, whose medium is our own bodies and deserve humane treatment and respect. Artists of all disciplines deserve fair and equal treatment and can organize if we care enough to put the effort into it. I would rather be the face of the outspoken artist then the silenced, slowly rotating head (or, worse, "centerpiece") at the table. I want a voice, loud and clear.

Abramovic’s call for artists was, as the LA Times quoted, for “strong, silent types.” I am certainly strong but I am not comfortable with silence in this situation. I refuse to be a silent artist regarding issues that affect my livelihood and the culture of my practice. There are issues too important to be silenced and I just happen to be the one to speak out, to break that silence. I spoke out in response to ethics, not artistic material or content, and I know that I am not the only one who feels the way I do.

I rejected the offer to work with Abramovic and MOCA — to participate in perpetuating unethical, exploitative and discriminatory labor practices — with my community in mind. It has moved me to work towards the establishment of ethical standards, labor rights and equal pay for artists, especially dancers, who tend to be some of the lowest paid artists.

The time has come for artists in Los Angeles and elsewhere to unite, organize, and work toward changing the degenerate discrepancies between the wealthy and powerful funders of art and the artists, mainly poor, who are at its service and are expected to provide so-called avant-garde, prescient content or "entertainment," as is increasingly the case — what is nonetheless merchandise in the service of money. We must do this not because of what happened at MOCA but in response to a greater need (painfully demonstrated by the events at MOCA) for equity and justice for cultural workers.

I am not judging my colleagues who accepted their roles in this work and I, too, am vulnerable to the cult of charisma surrounding celebrity artists. I am judging, rather, the current social, cultural, and economic conditions that have rendered the exploitation of cultural workers commonplace, natural, and even horrifically banal, whether its perpetrated by entities such as MOCA and Abramovic or self-imposed by the artists themselves.

I want to suggest another mode of thinking: When we, as artists, accept or reject work, when we participate in the making of a work, even (or perhaps especially) when it is not our own, we contribute to the establishment of standards and precedents for our cohort and all who will come after us.

To conclude, I am grateful to Rainer for utilizing her position (without a request from me) of cultural authority and respect to make these issues public for the sake of launching a debate that has been overlooked for too long. Jeffrey Deitch, director of MOCA, was quoted in the LA Times as saying, in response to receiving my anonymous email and Rainer’s letter, “Art is about dialogue.” While I agree, Deitch’s idea of dialogue here is only a palliative. It obscures a situation of injustice in which both artist and institution have proven irresponsible in their unwillingness to recognize that art is not immune to ethical standards. Let’s have a new discourse that begins on this thought.

Sara Wookey is an artist, choreographer, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. Her Web site is www.sarawookey.com.

In Brussels today, the European Commission proposed the world’s largest-ever cultural funding program under the title Creative Europe. The initiative, which would disperse a projected €1.8 billion ($2.4 billion) between 2014 and 2020, represents a 35 percent increase in European Union expenditures on culture, and is part of a larger Pan-European goal to stimulate the economy through cultural enterprise. Representing an average 4.5 percent of the region’s GDP, culture and media have drawn great attention on the aging continent as a robust sector in which they can prosper. This marks a stark ideological gap between the E.U.’s policymakers and the United States congress and prospective U.S. presidential candidates like Mitt Romney who propose to slash federal funding for the arts to balance the budget and improve the economy.

While approximately half of the funds will be allocated to the film industry, €500 million ($670 million) will be targeted directly toward promoting the visual and performing arts, with an estimated 300,000 artists to receive funding of some kind for cultural projects across the continent. The remainder of the budget would be provided as collateral against loans totaling up to an additional €1 billion ($1.4 million) for “small operators” across mediums.

Androulla Vassiliou, the EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism, and Youth, said in a statement: “This investment will help tens of thousands… to reach new audiences in Europe and beyond; without this support, it would be difficult or impossible for them to break into new markets.” She emphasized the program’s focus on diversity and expanding Europe’s cultural horizons beyond its cosmopolitan hubs.

The announcement comes after Bernd Neumann spoke last week in Berlin of Germany’s commitment to cultural progress, allocating an additional €50 million ($68 million) to the country’s domestic culture funds, a 5.1 percent increase over the previous year.

Normally, if one were to ask whether it’s possible to successfully create art by smearing your own blood on a gallery wall, and to evade coming off like a desperate emo teenager, I would respond with an unequivocal “absolutely not.” Blood is one of those materials that you not only want to avoid hanging out with, but also, in an art context, it comes with the most exaggerated eye rolls and “what-the-hell-were-they-thinking”s imaginable. Yet, in his latest exhibition British artist Jack Strange reveals a trick or two to convince us that bloodbathing a white cube, among other head-shakers, may in fact be a right step in considering the art of the present. Jack Strange’s second solo show at Tanya Bonakdar, “Deep Down,” peregrinates through various media. The show coheres by way of an overarching curiosity for the slippery human consciousness, and the all-too-common instances in which we as people project our image onto dumb objects and animals in order to better understand ourselves. Beginning with the aforementioned over-the-top cloudy smear of his own blood (replete with HA HA HA’s inscribed in pencil), the show meanders through overly slick Neo-Dada assemblages of fruit pits suspended in vitrines fitted with earbuds, to cutesy cross-sectioned vegetables seemingly springing off the wall, and perhaps even less predictably, a curiously dry sound installation that may have well as been made in the 60’s. Strange also dabbles with some “new media,” encasing an iPod Touch in a ceiling-hung plastic bag, which houses another plastic bag filled with water. The works, titled “All Fish,” “All Sharks,” etc., play cartoon aquatic animals on the encased iPods, the animations originally created for an e-card. The e-card animation is then programmed to utter its stream of consciousness, “left, right, slow, sinking, drowning, swimming, right…” With weird convoluted pits appearing like brains with invisible heads wearing headphones (titles ranging from “Blues Avocado” to “Pop Plum” and “Electric Olive”) and vegetable tops joyfully frolicking off the wall and into somewhere as sanguine as Dora the Explorer’s kitchen, Strange delights in obliquely articulating the ineffable through images and objects, specifically combining natural flora with manmade elements. Evincing Strange’s tenacity to uncover the inner workings of our minds, his sound installation “Staring into Seeing” directs its listener to sit knees-forward to the wall and fix their eyes upon its whiteness, training them to not waver or blink in the slightest. It is as if Strange has created an oddly fascist manual to train his viewers to view his or other people’s art with a most ideal comportment—their attention fully fixed on the object. Another interpretation would be that Strange desires to illustrate the impossibility of viewing art in the space of the white cube gallery (whose neutrality and sanctity have been long-challenged), calling attention to the myriad distractions preventing the viewer from the simple task of focusing on a plain white wall.

Just in time to benefit from the Marilyn Monroe mania surrounding the new Michelle Williams film “My Week With Marilyn” — and, to a lesser extent, the recent Milk Gallery exhibition “Picturing Marilyn” — the new tome “Norman Mailer, Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe” fuses text from Norman Mailer’s historic 1973 biography of the actress with Bert Stern’s photographs from a 1962 Vogue magazine shoot six weeks before her untimely death.

Lawrence Schiller, a collaborator with Mailer on several projects, came up with the idea for the 278-page book, the visual focus being Stern’s three-day photo shoot with Monroe at the Bel Air Hotel. Never before had Monroe allowed a photographer to have such intimate access to her, allowing for stunning, cup-runneth-over-with-beauty images. The images show a sexy Monroe — some images under the sheets, others of the actress topless, along with more classic photographs of the actress.

With a starting price of $1,000, this piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia doesn't come cheap. But the combination of Mailer’s text and Stern’s photographs allows for an inside look into the complex and tragic sex symbol who still holds sway over the cultural zeitgeist almost 50 years after her death.

Click on the photo gallery above to see a selection of Bert Stern’s images from “Norman Mailer, Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe,” available at taschen.com.

WHAT: “Kindred Spirits: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art”

WHEN: Through January 14, Tuesday-Friday 10AM-6PM, Saturday 11AM-6PM

WHERE: Peter Blum Soho, 99 Wooster St., New York

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: Peter Blum’s current exhibition, “Kindred Spirits: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art,” focuses on a single subject, which could be touchy, but is handled with good taste: how modern artists found inspiration in the American landscape and Native American arts and crafts. The show pairs works from the Apache, Arapaho, Hopi, and Sioux tribes, among others, with the modern works of Max Ernst, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollack, Bruce Nauman, and others.

For instance, Ernst’s bleeding burnt sienna sunset "Arizona Rouge" is paired with a deep and arresting red and black diamond patterned Navajo (Diné) wool serape. Ansel Adams and Paul Strand capture the Southwest skies at moonrise and high noon, documenting the architecture and isolation of homesteads in the wide plains. Josef Albers’s minimal “Homage to the Square” seems inspired by the color palate of indigenous pottery. The substantial cohort of artists who positioned themselves in the American Southwest — or perhaps just looked to the artwork of the continent’s original inhabitants for inspiration — found inspiration in this county’s real old masters. 

To see images from "Kindred Spirits: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art," click on the slide show.