– Do the Dishes: A U.S. marshal marched into the offices of public art organization Creative Time to retrieve a set of dinner plates that once belonged to Saddam Hussein. The New York organization had purchased them on eBay on behalf of artist Michael Rakowitz, who used them in a culinary-political performance piece at the Park Avenue Autumn restaurant. The plates were taken out of the country illegally, according to officials, but yesterday were returned to the Iraqi prime minister, who was visiting the president in Washington, D.C. [NYT]

– Ai Takes Second Place: Chinese dissident artist and former detainee Ai Weiwei was chosen as one of the runners-up for TIME magazine's Person of the Year, an award that ended up going to "the protester" (with a cover design by Shepard Fairey). Also under consideration: Kate Middleton and Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan. [Daily Mail] 

– Susan Sarandon Supports Sotheby’s Teamsters: The actress appeared outside Sotheby’s Manhattan headquarters earlier this fall and was photographed with a placard reading, “Stop the War on Workers.” The auction house’s art handlers have been locked out since August. According to Bloomberg, the labor dispute has cost the company some $2.4 million.  [Bloomberg]

– Stanford University Chooses Architect for Anderson Collection: Following a donation of contemporary American art earlier this year, Stanford University has announced plans for a $30.5 million museum, with New York City's Ennead Architects designing the space. The museum will house the Anderson Collection, which includes major works by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. [LAT]

– Berlin's Gemäldegalerie to House Modern Art: A stone's throw from the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Gemäldegalerie, which is currently dedicated to old masters,  is to become a museum devoted to art of the 20th century. The transformation is partly spurred by a gift from collectors Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch including works by Magritte, Pollock, and Ernst, and valued at €120 million ($156 million). [TAN]

– In Bed with Saatchi: Beginning next January, the Saatchi Gallery will provide three exhibitions to London's Hyatt Regency, creating a "cultural playground" for guests. A limited edition "Saatchi Gallery suite" hung with a selection of works from the collection will also be available from February to April. [ITCM] 

– Public Art Project Terminated: Artist Fred Wilson’s sculpture of a freed slave holding a flag representing the African Diaspora was officially withdrawn Tuesday as public art intended for installation in downtown Indianapolis. “The biased, late-19th-century image of an African-American in no way honored the progress of African-Americans in Indianapolis and the United States," said the president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation. Modern Art Notes interviewed Wilson after the announcement. [Indy Star]

– National Arts Club Battles Ex-President: The National Arts Club is planning a countersuit against O. Aldon James Jr., the club’s eccentric former president, who sought an injunction against the board to stop his expulsion from the club. James has been accused of commingling the detritus of his hoarding habit with the site’s fine art and antiques, “attracting vermin and creating fire hazards.” [NYT]

– How Painters Trick You: Scientific American explores what makes photorealistic paintings work. The trick? The eye perceives colors in relation to one another, and we focus more on figurative subjects than abstract. [Scientific American] 

– Iraq Museum Deals With Looters, Directly: The Slemani Museum in northern Iraq is offering cash to looters for the return of stolen items of historical and artistic value. Stuart Gibson, director of the UNESCO Sulaimaniya Museum, has called the unusual move “difficult” and “very courageous.” [CNN]

– Art Student Sues Over Sexist Abuse: A graduate art student claims Washington University refused to award her a degree after she complained that her advisor insisted that her artwork consist of “blood, guts, and pussy.” She is suing the university for punitive damages for violation of the Missouri Human Rights Act. [Courthouse News]

– A Look at the Fussy Side of Ingmar Bergman: A sale of letters written by the Swedish filmmaker at a Stockholm auction reveals a string of squabbles his housekeeper, Anita Hagloef. Apparently the director of “Fanny and Alexander” was peeved by “boring cheese.” A more cheerful note thanks Hagloef for “scaring away ghosts.” [Telegraph]

– Shortlist for the Guerlain Contemporary Drawing Prize: Marcel Dzama, Marc Bauer, and Jorinde Voigt have been selected for next year's €15,000 ($19,500) award. The winner will be announced in March, during the Salon du Dessin in Paris. The winner's drawings will be donated to the Centre Pompidou. [Connaissance des Arts]

– Come One, Come All: Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International, an artist-initiated political movement, is planning to join the Occupy Wall Street march this Sunday, December 18, in support of immigrant rights.

The Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art opened a year ago to shed a long-awaited spotlight on Arab contemporary creation. Piloted by Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the daughter of Doha's emir, the institution has now given its first-ever solo show to Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, from whom the museum has commissioned 17 new works to augment its mini-retrospective.

A daring choice? "What's great about this show is that we really get a fresh perspective from one point of view, of the Arab world through Cai's eyes — historically, but also as an imagined journey," said Mathaf director Wassan al Khudhairi during a tour of the exhibition on Wednesday.

The strength of the exhibition, titled "Saraab" after the Arab word for "mirage," resides in Cai decision to stay clear of declarations and instead forge links — both literal and atmospheric — between Doha and his hometown of Quanzhou. Between the artist’s spectrally spectacular explosions in the desert, installations of boats rocking on the waves of a foggy sea, and cast of falcons attacking — or perhaps gently carrying — a camel, the overall impression and tone of the exhibition is far more delicate than the sum of its most striking parts.

"Saraab" opened on December 5 with a familiar bang on a deserted field near Mathaf, where a few hundred onlookers gathered to admire 10 explosions and the eerily ink-like blotches they left behind — at one point with a black pyramid appearing in the sky. Cai has made a trademark of gunpowder, and, far from the artist's monumental Beijing Olympics fireworks, the Doha performance, titled “Black Ceremony,” became part of his more sober and measured "Black" series. The blasts are reprised on video on the upper levels of Mathaf and the trend runs through the exhibition, which mostly eschews vivid colors in favor of nuances of tan and brown. An obvious reference to the desert, these hues also evoke a haze, seeming to wrap Arab icons ("99 Horses") or a 17^th-century nautical chart hinting at the Maritime Silk Road ("Route") in suspended time and space.

That effect is fully explored in a foggy room where a traditional Chinese fishing boat and two Qatari "houri" boats, borrowed from the National Museum, rock in the fake waves of a green water pool, relaxed and — despite the inherent travel theme — going nowhere. That installation is called "Endless" and very appropriately sits in the middle of studies of past and present.

Outside and inside the entrance to the museum, Cai has placed 62 large rocks, brought from Quanzhou and inscribed with Arabic lines from the Qur'an — "All enjoyments in this life are illusionary" or "To die in a foreign land is to die a martyr" — that the artist appropriated from the tombstones of Arab émigrés in Guangzhou. Reviving the old trade paths that sent Chinese porcelain Westward and Arab spices Eastward, the artist also has an imposing tableau of 480 panels of Chinese-made porcelain inscribed with the Arab character for "Fragile" — written in the locally-applied gunpowder script that adorns most of his works at Mathaf.

Cai gathered some 200 volunteers to help him create the new works — with scores of schoolchildren gawking at the explosive black powder — before spending some 50 days installing the show, his longest-ever stretch. Local artists will soon be invited to react to the exhibition. "The way he works is very much in line with how Mathaf wants to present exhibitions, to create connections with the community and getting them engaged with a transparent process," said Wassan al Khudhairi. "There is much more ownership of the final result."

This sense of ownership is reinforced by Cai's commitment to thinking locally: he sourced fabrics from Doha's souks to create the ghostly stencils of "Memories," and sought inspiration in Arab miniature paintings and the illumination and ornaments that are traditionally placed around script. For the new video work "Al Shaqab," the artist filmed the daily goings-on of the Emir's prestigious horse breeding facility, from semen tapping and analysis to mane trimming and trot training.

The most cryptic new work at Mathaf is also one of the most visually arresting. "Flying Together" suggests that the life-sized replica of a camel (in styrofoam, resin, and sheep hide) is being benignly carried by the 27 fake falcons — though their rapacious expressions could hint otherwise. In his take on two of the Arab world's most important symbols, Cai leaves everything open, down to the nature of the question asked.

Among the older works upstairs, the artist has elected to show a handful of oil-on-canvas paintings, a medium omitted from his 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim. Cai usually shies away from showing those works, the curators noted, but he was happy to make an exception in a part of the world where venerable art is still synonymous with painting. The paintings, the most colorful of the show, depict Cai's own memories of his explosion events.

Though willfully ambiguous, "Saraab" follows through on its conception of forging a bond between China and the Arab world, through shared feeling and whispered dialogue. Cai is a shrewd observer, seeing Doha as an ever-moldable, unfinished mirage, drawing on a cultural heritage that spans wide but remains intriguingly out of focus. The very tied-together and subtly coherent show could then become a headache for Mathaf when the museum must choose which works it will want to add to its permanent collection, now some 6,300 pieces strong. Nothing has been decided yet, said Wassan al Khudhairi.

In less than five years, Zabludowicz Collection — Anita and Poju Zabludowicz's private art foundation in a former North London Methodist church — has become a flagship for emerging young talents. Best known for its large group exhibitions curated with and around works from the collection, Zabludowicz Collection will widen its scope from next January with the inauguration of Zabludowicz Collection Invites, a new program of solo shows dedicated to U.K.-based artists not yet working with a commercial gallery.

"With the previous organization, we would have an opening in March and then none until July, so I felt that we weren't really optimizing the building, nor the energy we have," said exhibition curator Ellen Mara De Wachter, who is spearheading the project. "I felt it would be really great to operate on a different speed, and seize the opportunity to work with artists at a really crucial stage of their career, before they get involved with gallery representation and the market."

"While our main program is really premised on artworks that are already in the collection, this is not," she continued. "This is premised on artists who we think are really interesting, and would benefit very much from this platform." The new program will operate as an independent project space, complete with its own visual identity — not as a complement to the main strand of exhibitions. "I see them initially as separate things," De Wachter said, "but I think conversations will arise." The strict U.K. focus "has to do with wanting to work very closely with the artists," she added. "It's about working together, not just showcasing."

Zabludowicz Collection Invites will start with multimedia artist and performer Benedict Drew, followed by Anthony Green, Hannah Perry, Lucy Woodhouse, and John Summers. Each of the invited artists will be given a production budget, a fee, and the assistance of the curatorial and technical team. With the Zabludowiczs are said to acquire about 100 new artworks every year, it would be easy to imagine the program as a breeding ground — and Drew's piece is already set as a commission for the collection — but De Wachter made it clear that it would not necessarily be the rule. "There's not an overt commitment," she said, "but there is an interest."

The foundation will be open throughout the year for the new program, as opposed to just during the exhibitions (although it has always been available for viewing anytime by appointment). "I think this will change the demographic and the way that the space is used," said De Wachter, "making it more like an art center."

Next year will be a big one for the Zabludowicz Collection: in the summer the Finnish outpost of the foundation will formally open on the island of Sarvisalo, one hour east of Helsinki. The team is also increasingly active in New York City, most recently with their "An Echo Button" project, showcasing works by Ed Atkins, Haroon Mirza, and James Richard in Times Square during the last Performa. Could De Wachter imagine Zabludowicz Collection Invites extended to Finland and the U.S.? "It's not something we've discussed in these exact terms, but the way we work allows for this kind of circulation and fluidity between our different operations," she answered. "Sarvisalo is a residency project, so that's the least likely crossover, but possibly New York."

Wednesday evening's Elizabeth Taylor haute couture auction marked the second evening in a row that perfectly-coiffed women in heavy furs filed into the large salesroom at Christie's Rockefeller Center headquarters to genteely skirmish for pieces of the Hollywood legend's estate. The 67-lot sale of vintage fashion came to a grand total of $2.6 million, with 100 percent of the offerings sold — a rare event known as a "white-glove sale," appropriately enough. The total was mostly driven by motivated bidders online and over the phones coming from all over the United States, Europe, and Asia.

The stylish sale came on the heels of Tuesday evening's blockbuster $115.9 million auction of Taylor's most prized jewelry — also 100 percent sold — and the impressive $21.3 million day sale of the remainder of the jewelry collection, when a 15-minute bidding war resulted in the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton wedding bands selling for just over $1 million on a $4,000-6,000 estimate. The total for the three sales thus far comes to $139.8 million, and the estate is not finished yet, with three more auctions unfolding over the next two days plus the ongoing online auction on the auction house's Web site. Pre-sale estimates listed by Christie's have been meaningless over the last two days as deep-pocketed fans scramble to own something — anything — that bears the Taylor provenance.

As the evening began, Christie's announced that the Irene Sharaff-designed yellow chiffon wedding dress hearalded as the evening's most valuable offering — from the first of Taylor's two marriages to Burton, her "Cleopatra" co-star — would not be for sale. Instead, the estate decided to donate it to a major American institution, which was not named. The second wedding dress from her Burton marriages, a Gina Fratini gown worn when she married Burton in Botswana in 1975, sold for $62,500 to a phone bidder (est. $10,000-12,000).

​With the wedding dress off the table, the top lot at the fashion auction was not a wearable item at all, but a lithograph from Andy Warhol's famed "Liz" series. "Liz (Feldman and Schellmann II.7)," which features the actress's face with bright blue eyes against a red background, was one of an edition of 300 and personally addressed from Warhol "to elizabeth with much love." Though the estimate was $30,000-50,000, the hammer didn't come down until the price was more than 10 times that figure, when an Asian buyer on the phone finally won the print for $662,500 after a drawn-out war with a determined bidder sitting in the front row.

After the lithograph, the most expensive item of the evening was a Christian Dior evening gown and matching bag from the designer's 1968 spring-summer collection. Taylor wore the gown to the annual ball put on by Guy de Rothschild and his wife at their country home in France. Bids instantly jumped over the $4,000-6,000 estimate, and eventually the dress was purchased over the phone by an unnamed American museum for $362,500.

One of the only successful bidders sitting in front of the auctioneer was a determined woman in the second row sporting a black felt hat. She battled with bidders on the phone and online, eventually winning a Gianfranco Ferre lavender embroidered silk trouser suit — which came with matching shoes, hat, and Prada handbag — for $40,000. Buttonholed after the sale, the buyer identified herself only as "Karen from Texas," telling ARTINFO that it was an impulse purchase — she just happened to be in town and decided to come to both evening auctions after viewing the sale preview on Sunday.

Though the frenzy in the saleroom was more demure Wednesday than at the packed jewelry auction on Tuesday, it was far from unexciting. At one point near the end, four hours into the bidding, someone in a group near the front of the mostly empty room decided to ignore New York's draconian ban on smoking indoors and lit up a cigarette, taking at least one drag before being forced to put it out.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association typically sprang a few surprises when it announced its Golden Globes nominations from the Beverly Hilton early this morning. Although many of the movie nominations were predictable, there were notable omissions.

“The Tree of Life,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” were all overlooked by the HFPA, which traditionally abjures the "difficult." The snubbing of “Tinker Tailor”’s Gary Oldman in the Best Actor, Drama category is impossible to fathom. “Bridesmaids”’ Melissa McCarthy was bizarrely passed over as a Best Supporting Actress nominee, though that movie’s lead, Kristen Wiig, was nominated in the Best Actress, Comedy or Musical slot.

So, too, was Michelle Williams for her turn as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” which, however, is neither a comedy or a musical, but a psychological drama, albeit a light one. This means Williams is kept apart from her main rival for the Best Actress Oscar, Meryl Streep (“The Iron Lady”), nominated for the Best Actress, Drama Globe.

“The Artist,” nominated for six awards, consolidated its position at this year’s awards favorite, despite having been shunted aside by two of the critics’ groups on Sunday. The primarily silent French movie is firm favorite now for the Best Picture Oscar. The HFPA nominated it in the Musical or Comedy category along with “50/50,” “Bridesmaids,” “Midnight in Paris,” and the genre-hopping “My Week With Marilyn.”

The nominees for the Best Drama Globe are “The Descendants,” “The Help,” “Hugo,” “Ides of March,” “Moneyball,” and “War Horse.” Of these, “The Descendants” and “Help” each won five nominations, the latter accruing three for actors — Viola Davis (Best Actress, Drama), Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain (both for Best Supporting Actress, Motion Picture).

Davis and Streep are up against Glenn Close (“Albert Nobbs”), Rooney Mara (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), and Tilda Swinton (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”). Nothing, then, for Kirsten Dunst, who gives a career performance in “Melancholia.”

Along with Wiig and Williams, the Best Comedy or Musical nominees are Charlize Theron (“Young Adult”), Jodie Foster, and Kate Winslet (both for “Carnage”). Winslet was also nominated as Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture for her performance in the HBO mini “Mildred Pierce.”

Spencer and Chastain will compete with Shailene Woodley (“The Descendants”), Janet McTeer (“Albert Nobbs”), and Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”).

Ryan Gosling, though overlooked for “Drive,” is a Globe nominee for both the Best Actor, Drama (“The Ides of March”) and Best Actor, Comedy or Musical (“Crazy Stupid Love”). The other Best Actor, Drama nominees are George Clooney (“The Descendants”), Brad Pitt (“Moneyball”), Michael Fassbender (“Shame”), and Leonardo DiCaprio (“J. Edgar”). The other Best Actor, Comedy or Musical Nominees are Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”), Brenda Gleeson (“The Guard”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“50/50”), and Owen Wilson (“Midnight in Paris”).

The Supporting Actor nominees are odds-on favorite Albert Brooks (“Drive”), Kenneth Branagh (“My Week With Marilyn”), Jonah Hill (“Moneyball”), Viggo Mortensen (“A Dangerous Method”), and Christopher Plummer (“Beginners”).

The nominated directors are Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”), George Clooney (“The Ides of March”), Michael Hazanavicius (“The Artist”), Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”), and Martin Scorsese (“Hugo”). Steven Spielberg thus drew a blank for “War Horse” and “The Adventures of Tintin.” "Midnight" is looking good for Oscar nominations now.

In the Best Foreign Language Film Category, first-time feature director Angelina Jolie (“In the Land of Blood and Honey”) finds herself competing with such established auteurs as Pedro Almodóvar (“The Skin I Live In”), Zhang Yimou (“The Flowers of War”), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“The Kid on a Bike). The highly regarded Iranian film “A Separation,” directed by Asghar Farhadi, completes the group. Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” was filmed in English so it wouldn’t have qualified for this section, but its absence from the Globe nominations is consistent with its poor perfomance in the awards season so far.

The HFPA made a more radical sweep with its television nominations. Competing against returnee “Boardwalk Empire,” Best Drama nominees “Game of Thrones,” “Homeland,” “American Horror Story,” and “Boss” enter the Globe race for the first time. All are cable shows.

“Glee” returns as a Best Comedy or Musical nominee (though not one of its actor nominees from last year will be competing). The other nominees are “Enlightened,” “Episodes,” “Modern Family,” and “The New Girl.”

The Best Miniseries or Motion Picture prize is likely to go to Brit favorite “Downton Abbey,” or “Mildred Pierce.” Also in the frame, though, are “The Hour,” “Cinema Verite,” and “Too Big To Fail.”

The Golden Globe Awards will be televised by NBC on January 15. The HFPA's Globe nominations invariably guarantee a starry turnout for the big show and, based on this year's choices, the host Ricky Gervais will have a glittering array of talent to ridicule—perhaps even Madonna, whose first film as director, “W.E.,” has been nominated for Best Score. The nomination for a Globe nominee most likely to be taunted by Gervais is Michael Fassbender, whose character in “Shame” is a sex addict.

Good news: we’re in the final stretch of “Work of Art,” that perplexing practice in game-show-ifying the art world. And it looks like Bravo’s turning up the heat on our dear contestants — we’ve seen our fair share of crying in the past eight episodes, but nothing like the waterworks that came bursting through the pipes last night. It was major milestone, the defining second-to-last installment that decided who would make it to the final three and who would be sent packing so painfully close to the finish line. Also, as a pre-Christmas gift to us and other equally weary viewers, Bravo gave us the miracle of double elimination, which neatly killed two gawky fledgling art birds with one stone.

After being whisked away to the foreign land of Cold Springs, New York, a place Young Sun has never heard of but can only assume has something to do with spa treatments, the contestants were charged with the assignment of finding a resident of this small upstate town who would be willing to have their portrait done by a young artist accompanied by a mysterious entourage of cameramen. It involved a lot of knocking on doors and feigning interest in the wares being sold by unsuspecting shop owners. Let’s see what worked and what didn’t.

THE WINNER

Kymia's “Bob and Barbara First Date, 1980” is so visually off-putting at first that actual-artist guest judge Richard Phillips described his initial reaction as “throwing up inside.” But totally in a good way. After meeting Bob and Barbara, a spunky little pair of bauble-shop owners, Kymia paints a garish portrait of their first date, a trip to the ice skating rink so wildly colorful it’s bouncing off its black background. The painted Bob and Barbara have each got an extra arm or two to clutch the little pieces of kitsch they make a living peddling, from stuffed animals to... some things that will go on unidentified. “When I first saw this, I thought 'Oh, she gave us a cartoon,'" TV art maven China Chow mused, “but then I met them, and they were cartoons!” So Kymia goes on to the winner's circle, but will she take home the grand prize? She's certainly got it in her, but a reliable source says she was recently spotted waiting tables in Brooklyn. We can only wait and see. 

THE LOSERS

With tears in her eyes, China Chow dismissed resident heartthrobs Lola and Dusty. “I’m really sad,” Lola managed to utter between sobs. Well, we are too. This double elimination felt like a double heartbreak. The judges actually seemed to like Dusty’s work — "Sweet Mairead," an M&M collage of an equally sweet little girl from Cold Springs, the only person this shy elementary school teacher could immediately connect to, perhaps because he so misses his one-year-old daughter. Phillips said he dug the way the M&Ms were falling off, piece by piece (we can hear them dropping in the episode, and during the gallery show, China doesn't appear to be alarmed by the possibility of the little girl picking them up and eating them off the floor). But then the fierce competitor who lies dormant inside Lola finally awoke with a vengeance, making a last-ditch effort at sabotaging her rival.

Uh, hello... “What you really like about the piece isn't intentional!" she helpfully offered. Throwing salt in Dusty’s game in the efforts to save yourself? Not cool, Lola. Low blow. Dusty got serious points for having a strong visual connection between material and subject, and judge Jerry Saltz even said he saw love in the piece. Ultimately it was too gimmicky for their tastes — the terms “paint-by-number” and “legos” were tossed around — and Dusty packed his things and headed back to Arkansas, a land far removed from the trials and tribulations of reality TV.

THIS EPISODE'S DELIGHTFUL NONSENSICAL TITLE BY LOLA

“Dear Dennis and Tommy, You are the Secret Historians of Cold Spring, New York,” was yet another assortment of disparate pieces thrown up on the wall — some enlarged pieces of currency displayed in a pyramid, and the odd choice of a handwritten letter from Lola to her subjects, two rare coin collectors — Her continued efforts to “touch every base in every way every where” just didn’t “gel” with Bill Powers. Jerry called that repetitive practice “obfuscating” and sent her home. Or straight into the arms of the Sucklord waiting in the wings? We can only imagine.

So, that brings the final three to Kymia, Sarah J (honey, we wanted to let you know — “inflammable” actually means “flammable"), and Young Sun, whose work is starting to become a real bore. Stay tuned, kids. We announce the grand prize survivor winner next week!

– Louvre Teams Up with Nintendo: The Paris museum has teamed up with the Japanese video game giant to replace its traditional audioguides with 3D game consoles. Nintendo is supplying 5,000 of the latest-generation consoles, which offer 3D vision without the need for special glasses. Visitors can use them to locate themselves within the museum and choose themed itineraries. “Digital development has become a strategic issue for museums,” said Louvre director Henri Loyrette. [AFP] 

– Swizz Beatz to Open Art Gallery: The rapper and producer, who for years has been pushing art appreciation in hip-hop, plans to open his own art space to showcase the artists he has discovered on his international travels. “I feel like I found the new Warhol in Japan, the new Murakami in Hong Kong — not to compare their work so much but as far as thinking outside of the box. I found a couple of sick artists in Africa, in Mexico too,” he said. Earlier this year, Beatz, a visual artist and art collector himself, also snagged the rights to produce Jean Michel Basquiat apparel and footwear, and counts MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch and gallerist Tony Shafrazi as mentors. [Life + Times] 

– John Elderfield Joins Art.sy: The widely respected chief curator emeritus at MoMA, who organized this year’s de Kooning retrospective, is the latest boldface art-world name to join Art.sy, the art search engine backed by Dasha Zhukova, Larry Gagosian, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Elderfield will continue to organize shows, but will also work as a senior advisor to Art.sy, assisting it on art-historical matters and getting museums excited about making parts of their collections accessible on the site. Art.sy is poised to launch this spring. [NYT] 

– Meet the L.A. Artist Behind the Obamas’ Holiday Card: The first family employed California artist and illustrator Mark Matuszak to design its holiday card, a warmly lit scene of first dog Bo lying in front of the fireplace in the White House library. It is the first White House holiday card to be completely digitally designed. [LAT] 

– Banksy's Catholic Church-Inspired Christmas Gift:  Britain's best-loved street artist has installed the piece "Cardinal Sin," a response to the paedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church, at Liverpool's Walker Gallery. Hanging, per the artist's instructions, with the museum's Old Masters collection, the work features the classical bust of a religious figure, its face sawn off and replaced by bathroom tiles resembling pixels. [BBC] 

– An Art Center for Malevich's Grave: Aleksander Matveyev, a physicist who has been researching the Russian Supremitist artist for decades, and German fund manager Jochen Wermuth have teamed up to create a Malevich Foundation on the newly-rediscovered original spot of the artist's grave. [TAN] 

– Frick Collection Gets an Updated Space: New York's venerable Frick Collection has expanded, transforming an outdoor colonnade into an indoor exhibition space called the Portico Gallery. Ken Johnson describes the addition as "subtly noninvasive," and notes that the gallery's initial show of porcelain sculpture features a selection of "lovely and curious objects" drawn from the Western race to copy the Chinese material, which has now become commonplace. [NYT]

– Paris Museum Gets Charlotte Bronte: The French Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits has bought a miniature manuscript, the second issue of Young Men's Magazine written by Charlotte Bronte when she was 14, for a staggering £690,850 ($1,070,776), more than three times its lower pre-sale estimate of £200,000 ($309,988). Andrew McCarthy, the director of the Bronte Parsonage museum, which owns four of the six copies of the magazine and hoped to acquire the manuscript, said he was "very disappointed." [BBC] 

– Rotten Present for Oscar Niemeyer's Birthday: The legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who celebrated his 104th birthday yesterday, will have his name removed from his latest creation, a cultural center in the northern Spanish city of Avilés. The incoming government is accusing the center's board of mismanaging public money and the whole center is set to close only nine months after its inauguration. [Guardian] 

– Controversial Maya Lin Project Approved: Despite objections from a group of vocal opponents, the city council of Newport, R.I., voted to approve the use of a small park for a permanent installation designed by Maya Lin to honor the heiress Doris Duke. [NYT]

– Cindy Sherman Awarded 2012 Roswitha Haftmann Prize: The CHF 150,000 ($159,459) award is given every year to a living artist who has created an oeuvre of outstanding quality. Filmmaker Harun Farocki received a CHF 75,000 ($79,729) "special prize." [Art Daily] 

– Is it Possible to Buy Class?: Kim Kardashian was among those scooping up Liz Taylor’s sparkly belongings at this week’s Christie’s sales. The reality star paid $64,000 for a set of three Lorraine Schwartz bangles made out of diamond and jade, over a high estimate of $8,000. [ITA]

Name: Byron Kim
Age: 50
Occupation: Artist
City: Brooklyn

What project are you working on now?
I want to make some small oil paintings about something I’m looking at or about painting or both.

At first glance, your paintings seem to engage with color field painters like Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, and Agnes Martin. But while your "Synecdoche series" resembles Ellsworth Kelly color blocks, it's actually a document of various tones of human flesh. The "Dark" paintings, meanwhile, look like Reinhardt's Black Paintings, but they're really figurative representations of the night sky. What is it about this kind of false abstraction, or gap between literalism and abstraction, that appeals to you?
I love a good abstract painting, but I’m often not interested in what people talk about when they talk about abstraction, so I prefer to apply my own content.

For your new show, you painted the night skies from memory to produce blackish-blue monochromes. Why from memory?
I don’t know how to paint a canvas which is in the light while looking at a sky which is in the dark.  My eyes and brain can’t manage it.

You are often deemed a conceptual artist, most likely due to your diaristic approach to working, as when you painted the sky every Sunday for ten years. But you once quipped, “I’m a painter until 2:00 in the afternoon when the daylight in my studio is so blinding that I become a conceptual artist.” What did you mean by that?
For about 20 years I’ve had large west-facing windows.  I’ve never bothered to get proper shades.  I’m a morning person. By the time the sun shines too intensely, it’s time for me to stop staring and come up with some ideas.

The absence of stars in your skyscapes may not even be noticeable to New Yorkers, who are used to unstarry nights thanks to the city's pollution. As a Brooklynite, do you miss these celestial lights or do you like to keep things monochromatic?
I miss the celestial lights.  If people ever forget about Vija Celmins’ work, I’d like to give it a shot.

What is the future of the monochrome?
Bleak.

What's your favorite place to see art?
The Met.

What's the most indispensable item in your studio?
Presently, it’s Golden Matte Fluid Acrylic, Paynes Gray.

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?
Walking around Brooklyn, looking at things, and thinking of people. 

Do you collect anything?
Playing cards on the street.

What's the last artwork you purchased?
A drawing by Elana Herzog.

What's the first artwork you ever sold?
Not sure, but it was probably something I called a “Belly Painting.”

What's your art-world pet peeve?
Openings.

What's your favorite post-gallery watering hole or restaurant?
The Half King. Kofoo. Gam Mee Ok.

What's the last great book you read?
Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, Tom Perrotta; The Leftovers

What international art destination do you most want to visit?
Spiral Jetty.

What under-appreciated artist, gallery, or work do you think people should know about?
Brian Tolle’s “Irish Hunger Memorial” in Battery Park City.

Who's your favorite living artist?
On Kawara, Robert Irwin, Vija Celmins, Robert Gober

What are your hobbies?
I could use a hobby.

NEW YORK— When a dinner of venison topped with date and tahini sauce was served on plates taken from Saddam Hussein's private collection at Park Avenue Autumn for Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz's project "Spoils," the assorted art-world diners didn't bat an eye — but now New York City's Iraqi mission has, turning Rakowitz's piece into an international incident. The controversy, exploding on the eve of the U.S.'s supposed withdrawal from Iraq, has had reverberations touching the artist, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and president Obama himself. As Iraqi artifacts, the plates have been confiscated by the Iraqi mission after a cease-and-desist letter was sent to the restaurant, and were presented by Obama to the Prime Minister on Wednesday. 

Creative Time president Anne Pasternak, whose organization sponsored the work, wasn't exactly surprised at the dramatic turn of events — "we were thrilled" to get the cease-and-desist letter, she told ARTINFO. "It’s not the first time real life and art have come into contact with one another." But the artist had a different reaction. ARTINFO spoke to Rakowitz and got the full story of how the confiscation occurred, the details of the artist's trip to the Iraqi mission to film the handover of the plates, and why Saddam Hussein's plates are kind of like a used baseball bat from Yankee Stadium. 

When did first find out that the plates were going to be confiscated from Park Avenue Autumn?

Actually, I found out on Thanksgiving, but the cease-and-desist letter was sent to the restaurant, and it was forwarded on to me. The letter was addressed to the ownership group of Park Avenue Autumn, and it wasn’t clear to me at first where the cease-and-desist had originated. A lawyer had written it, of course, and it indicated that the State Department would be following up, and there were several people CCed in the correspondence from the UN and the State Department. After the holidays, it became clear that the language had gone from being a cease-and-desist to being a demand for the surrender of the Iraqi plates that belonged to Saddam Hussein — which was the exact word they used, “surrender.”

What followed was, I think, just an agreement from us to turn over the plates, which was something that I thought was immediately a very powerful ending to the work, and I thought it was kind of perfect. I saw these events in the frame of the project itself, not as something that stopped it. The cease-and-desist came two days before the project was supposed to end anyway, but it’s these kind of events that I think allow for the work to register in different ways.

The project certainly became a lot more public once the confiscation happened and major media outlets reported on it.

It went a lot more public, and also became a part of a conversation that involves people in power who are making critical decisions in this conflict. I think that it also relates to earlier work that I had done that’s still ongoing, dealing with the looting of the Iraq Museum — the repatriation of those items that are found in other countries, where artifacts have ended up being sold in the black market. You always end up with these repatriation ceremonies.

A big part of this work was about seeing those plates for sale on eBay and being a little bit surprised that they were for sale, but also recognizing the fact that they don’t carry with them the same immediate cachet that something like a 4,000-year-old votive statue from ancient Iraq would carry. But at the same time, the questions about its provenance and how it was acquired was a big part of the storytelling of the work.

Like the fact that you initially found the plates on eBay, put on sale by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi refugees.

Exactly. And eBay was one of the places where one of those ancient artifacts [from the Iraq museum] were first found, and eBay was very quick to shut down those auctions. Some of the Mesopotamian artifacts that were looted from Iraq museums and archeological sites have briefly shown up on eBay, and they still show up at places like auction houses across the world, which is one of the ways that archeologists have tracked them down.

But in this case, these kinds of, for lack of a better word, “war trophies” have been sold for the last eight years. It’s weird that my project was the thing that shut them down in the end. The sellers on eBay are no longer listing these pieces of flatware for sale as a result of all this.

Was your project what pushed them over the edge? You made the sales a lot more visible as a result of the "Spoils" piece.

Yeah. I think so, because it was fairly often that you could find these things for sale. There’s not a lot of it out there, but there’s enough that every week you’d see a couple of these items posted. And so, you know, the emails got more and more interesting at the beginning of December, where the State Department indicated that they would want to pick up the works from Creative Time at a certain point, that they needed an expert to come down and authenticate them, and that they wouldn’t likely be able to access an expert until after the New Year.

When I got in touch with Creative Time about it, I thought, well, this is the most amazing ending to the work, and I’d really love to be there for the repatriation ceremony, and if it’s possible, to document it as being a big part of the work. They thought it was a good idea, and they checked. Legally, it didn’t seem like there was going to be any problem, but we all thought this was something that’d happen a few weeks from now. And I just happened to be in New York for a family visit over the past few days, and was CCed on an email where the State Department said that they wanted this pick-up to happen immediately, as soon as possible.

I delayed my flight, and went into Creative Time Tuesday morning, and two U.S. marshals had shown up to pick up the work.

So it was a surprise that it happened so quickly, because they said it probably wouldn’t be until after the New Year?

Yes. And the next surprise was when I asked where they were going to go next, and figured it was going to be in storage for a while until it was authenticated and everything that they wanted to do had happened, but it turned out that they said that they were heading up to 79th Street to the Iraqi Mission and to the UN. When I asked if I could also go, they said, “Well, you can’t ride with us.”

So we saw them off, waved goodbye, ran upstairs to Creative Time, got our coats and the three of us piled into a cab and headed up to the Iraqi Mission. It was surreal. We walked into the front doors, and there were photographs of all these artifacts from the Iraq Museum, some of which were feared to have gone missing in the aftermath of the looting. That was right behind the foyer. Then, to our left, the first office, the ambassador’s office. We walked by, and it was like the perfect scene. The plates are all laid out on the table and in the office there’s an Iraqi flag, and the diplomats are all standing around, and the two marshals are standing there, and the marshals turn to us when they saw that we arrived and said, “So you made it.”

Then they shut the door, and one of the guys working for the embassy asked us to fill out something, and brought us into a waiting area, and we waited for an hour and a half. They gave us tea. Their china was Lenox, so it wasn’t very interesting. Then I suddenly realized that when you go to embassies and places like this, you’re technically standing on the soil of the country that’s represented, so I got a kick out of the fact that I was the first person in my family to go back to Iraq since 1946.

Then they invited us into the office, and let us film the situation. I guess the Deputy Ambassador introduced himself and thanked us for cooperating. He said the plates would go on exhibit in a museum in Iraq, which I thought was really fantastic, because the things that I’ve been saying for the last couple of days to people who’ve asked me — all these symbols of the Saddam regime have been destroyed with reckless abandon by either the United States forces or Iraqis themselves, and the fact that they wanted these items back shows a little bit of the reversal of that trend, which I think is really important.

The earlier process is sort of iconoclastic, attempting to destroy the remnants of Saddam-era history.

Well, it’s not so iconoclastic any more, and it’s not necessarily that I have some huge problem with iconoclasm. What I have a problem with, what I think is dangerous, is when cities and countries and places basically create systematic erasure of the traces of problems or failures. It’s important to keep those traces alive. Otherwise, amnesia ensues.

That was really important, that they were taking ownership of this part of their history. When I asked them where the order had some from, because I thought the Iraqi mission had said they were going to do it later, they said, “No. This order came directly from Washington,” and that it had come up from the Iraqi prime minister [Nouri al-Maliki] who was in town on Monday in Washington, meeting with Obama. So Maliki ordered the plates to be sent to his staff, and he brought them home on his private plane to Iraq.

The timing is impeccable. The news reports today are all about the troops going home, the plates are coming back; there’s some weird exchange there. But also the Times just ran a headline about 20 minutes ago that said that the Iraq war was officially declared over, and this time it’s not just a Yes Men project.

It was really amazing, and really something I’m still processing. Because I do these projects in public space, but also in things that circulate among the audience. The work is supposed to operate as an open system, where there’s a narrative that gets built from the beginning. The end, sometimes, isn’t really the end. But I never saw this coming.

It sounds like your project got the most significant people connected to the piece directly involved — you put the plates in a restaurant, and now they’re in the hands of the Iraqi prime minister.

I know. It’s so weird, but there’s something that’s really important in there, that culture can play a role in these discussions, and can also create new relationships and new politics.

Do you consider the plates looted artifacts, as the U.S. State Department apparently does, or are they something different?

I think maybe saying “looted artifact” is a little too simplistic. Were these taken? They were taken under circumstances that followed the invasion, that are pretty rotten circumstances, where people are living in a city that’s being decimated by bombs, and in the midst of this, they’re running to these symbols of the political power in their country that have been vacated.

It’s no myth that the Hussein regime was repressive and murderous, and that’s not meant in any way as a statement that justifies the U.S. presence there, or the invasion, but what happens in the aftermath with people moving into those buildings and taking those plates?

If you open up the front of the first couple of pages of those booklets [from the “Spoils” Creative Time project] there’s a photograph that shows two images of one of the Hussein statues being pulled down, that was from April 9, 2003, and then another photograph of a similar statue in the Iraqi city of Qurna where a man has climbed up the pedestal, standing where Saddam stood, and imitating that stance. That, for me, is very much a kind of illustration of what that plate is in the project, when it comes to the Iraqis taking these things, it’s almost like the dispersal of power, or of the symbols of power.

Like a taking back of the authority that Saddam Hussein’s regime had.  

Yeah. A little bit of repossession, a little bit of roleplay — the ability to just level the moment of judgment, whether it’s good or evil, where we can just say “power.”

And in the taking of the plates, the thing to remember is that a lot of the people who took these plates are using them in their homes! It’s become some of the daily dishware. In the case of the American soldiers who bought them, they bought them as these objects that were offered to them for sale by Iraqis, so I wouldn’t necessarily implicate the American soldiers for buying these things, because war trophies have been part of the transaction of war since the beginning of time. It’s a pretty vulgar thing, and it’s something that makes me queasy even, but I don’t want to play games here and say that this is the first time that this has happened. Anyone who has a grandfather who served in the Second World War undoubtedly has something.

It’s not quite the same thing, though. It’s coming from the Iraqis, the victims of the violence, rather than the victors. 

Right. And the folks who provided us with the plates, the two sources, one was an American soldier, who ended up serving in the division that apprehended Hussein from the spider hole, but then the other was an Iraqi refugee living in Michigan. In the case of the American soldier, he’s become like an expert on Iraq’s military and their history, basically through objects, so he tried to preserve as much as he could.

In the case of the refugee, it wasn’t like you would think, that the possession of the plates would be like an act of revenge. For this guy, the story is very special. His father was a high-ranking military officer in Iraq during the Saddam era, and was eventually given an ambassadorial position. After the U.S. invasion, his father was killed in the sectarian violence that followed, and so this guy became a refugee in Jordan. Then he appealed to the U.S. for refugee status, and ended up here. He collects these plates because it reminds him of the dinners that he used to attend when he was a kid, which were state dinners. For him, he said that it prevents him from losing his memory of those times.

So they’re not trophies for him, they’re more like totems, embodying peaceful memories instead of violent ones.

To say they’re looted artifacts is tricky. Any of these artifacts you look at in archeological context always have some trace of violence behind them. If you look at a fragmented votive statue from Babylon, there’s always a chance that it’s lost something because it was under layers of earth before it was excavated, but the likely reason is because invading armies used to lop off the hand and the heads of a lot of those figures as a way to render the image less potent.

You brought up the word iconoclasm before; this kind of iconoclasm comes with the experience of war. So you could say that these are looted artifacts or things that are acquired through questionable transactions, but I think even the soldiers were under the impression that this was legal, because they were sold these objects on military bases at the invitation of the AAFES [the Army Airforce Exchange Service], which sets up bazaars for soldiers, and those flea markets invited these vendors.

It seems like the plates have taken on a new meaning now that they’ve been re-appropriated by these new, powerful people — the Iraqi mission, the prime minister, and even president Obama. Now the plates are an illegal spoil of war that’s being repatriated, but they weren’t to begin with.

No, they weren't, but I also have to be clear that when I first look at objects like this I look at them through the lens of the past project I told you about with the Iraq museum, but then I also look at them as a collector, collecting baseball memorabilia, and Beatles records, and collectibles. There was always something about — “oh hold onto this free bat that they used to give you at Yankee Stadium during free bat day.” My dad used to tell me to keep that bat pristine because it’ll be worth something some day, and lo and behold, the bats from 1979’s bat day are valuable.

It’s not necessarily something where I would sell those things — I can’t bring myself to part with that stuff. But it’s just a way that I see these things, I don’t think of them as just plates, I think about the trace of who used something. If it’s a game-used ball or a game-used jersey, something from a sporting event, it suddenly goes from banal and mundane to sacred or profane.

I’m curious as to how you felt when this happened, when the project turned into such a big controversy. Were you surprised?

I think at the beginning of this project we had a flurry of press that said how disgusting this was, how could I do this, what an insult to the troops. The comments section of articles online were ablaze with these bits of feedback, which again I think are part of the work. I think to look at just the sensational level of the work is not seeing it through or getting into the intricacies of it.

The feeling that I had is if there was going to be a problem, the plates would not have made their way into the U.S. The plates were sent from a military base in Iraq. The boxes all listed what the contents were inside. I could say that I was amazed that we were able to get these things, but first I was amazed that you could get them on eBay. I see auctions getting shut down on eBay all the time, I spend a lot of time there… I figured if these were illegal, they’d be shutting them down. I was surprised we could find those things to begin with, but once I asked the soldier if it was legal and he said it was, it was clear to me that once we started to receive material, that yeah, wow, surprisingly it is legal.

I didn’t expect what happened, and I was surprised, but at the same time, certainly willing to accommodate these events as being an essential part of the work.

Is there anything else that has surprised you about this whole situation, or that made you think differently about the work itself?

Not necessarily. I think that the provenance of the materials was always something that was part of the questions and the layers that were in the work, so I don’t think that’s changed, but I guess I’m just really happily surprised that Iraqis want to take possession of these items and that the Iraqi government doesn’t seem to want to follow through with what seemed to be the American program of removing the symbols of the Saddam era.

There’s actually a committee that was put together, and I don’t know if it was a collaborative committee with the Americans and the Iraqis, or if it was just Americans, but it was the committee for the removal of the symbols of the Saddam era. They were responsible for taking down a lot of the statues. They started to take down that crossed swords monument in Baghdad [the Victory Arch]. When they started to take it down in 2007, there was a spike in Sunni-Shiite violence, and so they stopped taking it down. So there’s something about everything that I said before, about them keeping those traces visible and alive…

I think that any kind of amnesia or erasure is a form of repression, and psychologically, we know how unhealthy that is. So that’s maybe one of the readings of the work that I have now that I wouldn’t have unless there was this repossession of the items.

The plates are definitely still loaded symbols for those who have a connection to them.

Right. At one point I turned to the ambassador, or the deputy ambassador, when I was there, and I had printed out an article from the New York Times that I think was from 2009, that was about Bush’s library that he’s building at Southern Methodist University in Texas. One of the artifacts he wants to display there is the gun that was in Saddam Hussein’s possession when they pulled him out of the spider hole. It was given to Bush by U.S. soldiers. It was not a gift of the Iraqi government. And so I said, “Do these laws also extend to this guy?” And then when the deputy ambassador saw it, he just sort of shook his head and said, “That’s Bush, and there are going to be a different laws for Bush.”

It was sort of like, “Yeah. We all know. It’s the same thing.”

A popular mythos of the contemporary art world goes something like this: move to Berlin and your every wish will be answered. You’ll have a studio the size of five Williamsburg warehouses. Your apartment, equally spacious, will overlook a lush park where you and your equally trendy peers will laze away the summer days drinking heffeweizen and prosecco before attending the openings of your countless solo shows in crumbling warehouses, which will make your career skyrocket internationally.

That’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but truly, there are few more fetishized locales among the up-and-coming artist crowd (with Detroit being a new contender). We seem to want to believe that there’s still somewhere that artists and writers, curators, and gallerist hopefuls can live, carefree, just doing what they wish. But according to the first-ever “Kultur und Kreativwirtschaftsindex” (“Cultural and Creative Industries Index”) published on Tuesday, that may no longer be the case.

After spending over two decades as the art world’s dreamland, Berliners and Berlin-transplants are starting to complain. According to the survey of approximately 1,200 artist, freelancers, writers, and other creative professionals, Berlin’s “poor but sexy” status doesn’t live up to its current reality. Ten years ago it may have been fine to get paid €5 for an article, but your apartment was only slightly more than that. Artists who participated in the survey lamented that affordable studio space is shriveling, likely the result of shiny new loft apartments cropping up first in Mitte, but increasingly also in Kreuzberg, even into bordering areas of Neuköln.

Granted, 62 percent of those surveyed still agreed that Berlin is a highly attractive place to live and a great working environment — it’s just that the money isn’t there, meaning there isn’t a native art market. It’s a rather vicious cycle. With galleries — the ones that can survive, that is — making an overwhelming percentage of their income at the international art fairs they attend and to clients abroad, it’s a wonder some haven’t closed their doors in exchange for a P.O. box and a storeroom.

The government is taking notice of the decline, sponsoring this index both to help raise awareness of the realities faced by Berlin’s creative community and to generate initiatives to combat these hardships. They certainly have no small stake in the sectors success, with it ranking between the chemical and automotive industries in terms of yearly capital-generation (€131.4 billion in 2009).

Whether artists will stick it out in Berlin or find greener pastures further east, however, is still up for debate. 

“Do you use-less? Or Are you useless?” Such was the strangely-worded binary posed by Hong Kong's DETOUR 2011 design festival. The project, which just wrapped up at the former Married Police Quarters in the city's Central district, was all about exploring the differentiation outlined in this question. The exhibition showed a group of designers and artists whose work demonstrated the possibility of turning useless objects into useful treasures through conservation and artistic recycling.

Presented by Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design as a parallel event to the Business of Design Week, DETOUR is an annual event with the goal of promoting Hong Kong design talent and positioning the city as a regional creative hub. Since its first edition in 2006, DETOUR has attracted local designers and artists as well as creatives from beyond Hong Kong, drawing participants from Mainland China, Japan, the U.K., and Australia.  

DETOUR 2011’s theme juxtaposed right and wrong and eco-friendly and wasteful through a wealth of exhibitions, installations, performances, workshops, and forums all aimed at stimulating people to think twice about what they buy and the waste they create. “We are pleased to see more and more Hong Kong residents beginning to be interested in design and sustainability,” said Alan Lo, chairman of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design. “This year, DETOUR attracted more than 50,000 visitors, compared with only 17,000 two years ago.”

Not only were the designers’s works dedicated to promoting an eco-friendly lifestyle; the venue itself also proved a perfect example of the “use less” lesson. The space had been abandoned for nine long years before it was first repurposed by DETOUR as a creative workshop venue two years ago.

One of the most striking installations at the venue this year, a custom-built bamboo stage, turned mundane physical materials into an abstract arena of exchange. Reminiscent of those traditionally used for Cantonese opera, this stage served as an exciting backdrop to a seemingly endless succession of live music performances, digital art shows, design presentations, roundtable discussions, and project presentations.

Alongside the events, there were a host of other installations created by featured artists and designers to admire. Here, ARTINFO China presents our six favorite exhibitions from DETOUR 2011.

To see images of our picks from DETOUR 2011, click here or on the slide show.

Last week, British culture minister Ed Vaizey placed a temporary export ban on Edouard Manet's "Mademoiselle Claus" in the hopes that an institution or individual will purchase it and keep it in the country. It won't come cheap, naturally: the buyer will need to come up with £28.4 million ($43.9 million).

In a statement, the department for culture, media and sport says that the export ban "will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the painting in the United Kingdom." The ban is valid through February 7, 2012, with the possibility of extending it for six months if someone expresses "serious intention" of raising the funds necessary to purchase the painting. John Singer Sargent bought the work from Manet's estate after his death, taking it to the U.K. where it has remained ever since. The painting is now part of a private collection. It has not been revealed whether the current owner has already found a foreign buyer — the most likely scenario — or has simply expressed the intention of selling it, the Art Market Monitor reports.

According to the department for culture, media, and sport, "Mademoiselle Claus" was only shown in public once in the last century (at the National Gallery in 1983 for a Manet retrospective on the centenary of his death, according to the Guardian). Manet painted the work, which depicts the violinist Fanny Claus, in preparation for his painting "The Balcony," now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. Inspired by Goya's "Majas on a Balcony," "The Balcony" shocked the public when it was shown at the Paris Salon of 1869. Viewers found it odd, crudely realistic, and in bad taste. (Of course, Manet's reputation has changed dramatically since then: During the Musée d'Orsay's recent Manet show, curator Stéphane Guéguan told ARTINFO France that the artist's style was a kind of "exploded Impressionism.")

In its recommendation to the culture minister, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest referred to the portrait's "outstanding aesthetic importance... and outstanding significance" for French painting. Although the painting is unfinished, committee member Lowell Libson said in a statement that its incomplete state "adds to its interest, revealing the artist's creative process, while emphasizing the haunting beauty of the portrait."

The pricetag of £28.4 million ($43.9 million) is higher than Manet's current auction record, which was set at Sotheby's London in June 2010 when a rare self-portrait by the artist fetched £22.4 million ($33.2 million), after having been estimated between £20-£30 million.  

Renowned architect Rem Koolhaas is viewed as one of the most important theoreticians of his trade. In an interview with SPIEGEL, he discusses soulless cities, the failings of Europe's largest urban redevelopment project in Hamburg and the problems with...

The most-talked-about stories on ARTINFO December 12-16, 2011:

– Janelle Zara told the tale of a pair of skyscrapers designed by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV in Seoul that look remarkably like the Twin Towers in the midst of exploding — a similarity that has shocked many.

– Damien Hirst released the first details about his globe-spanning dot paintings retrospective, planned for Gagosian galleries worldwide in January.

­– Ben Davis explored the state of the contemporary art biennale in our current time of global austerity, traveling through sprawling exhibitions in Yokohama, Dublin, and New Orleans.   

– Kyle Chayka spoke to Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz about the diplomatic brouhaha that has arisin surround his use of Saddam Hussein’s plates in his “Spoils” project for Creative Time.  

­– The art auction market hit a high this week with the marathon Christie’s sale of Liz Taylor’s estate. The auction house took in $115.9 million from the late actress's collected jewelry. 

– We unveiled the seductive photos of the secretive, highly coveted 2011 Pirelli Calendar, which includes work by photographers like Terry Richardson, Richard Avedon, and Herb Ritts. 

– Graham Fuller looked past Michael Fassbender’s starring role in psycho-sex drama “Shame” to check out the work of actress Lucy Walters, who plays an anonymous subway rider cruised by Fassbender's character.

– Architect Steven Holl won 2012’s AIA gold medal. We gathered together some of his major works for a slide show tour.

– Modern Painters interviewed star painter Dana Schutz about her recent work, canvases that she calls “scuzzy” and “contagious.”

– We toured Jeff Wall’s latest large-scale photography in his new solo show at Marian Goodman gallery.

– Works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Pierre Soulages lifted Sotheby’s contemporary art sale in France to a hefty $206 million take. 

– TIME magazine picked “the protester” as their Person of the Year, and chose Shepard Fairey to create a made-to-order iconic cover.

– On the official ending of the war in Iraq, we looked back at 10 important works that took on the conflict, including projects by Jeremy Deller and Nina Berman.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is urgently encouraging me to stick a finger in the hole in the gallery wall to have my finger-print recorded, my pulse added, and the throbbing result transmitted to screens around the walls. The problem is, he needs 10,952 finger-prints – of ever-diminishing scale, down to life-size – to fill the room. On current estimates, it'll take until February! And the show closes on 12^th Feb!

It's all a bit silly; participatory fun for the summer crowds brought into the Museum of Contemporary Art for the city's Sydney International Art Series, which also includes a serious Picasso show from the rival Art Gallery of NSW, on loan from the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

But hang on! Finger-printing is also a Homeland Security issue, with just a hint of Orwell's Big Brother isn't it – not just fun. What plans does the Mexican/Canadian artist have for my finger-prints – or my facial images, my voices, my pulses or anything else he's recorded in this, his first solo show in Australia? For, even in Lozano-Hemmer's more serious works, like Seismoscope 2, there's only the illusion of control offered to participants. In virtually every work, your image or voice will drop off the end of the line at some time, which should alert viewers to their fugitive nature of their contribution. That's the very essence of the recursive algorithms and fractals which the artist and his team of 11 artist/technicians are so comfortable with.

New to the world in Sydney are Voice Array and Tape Recorders, while much else in Recorders was first seen at Manchester Art Gallery a year ago. The former work translates my voice into flashing lights that push previous voices out along a wall, one unlucky player – the 288^th - falling off the end. The latter offers two walls of motorised measuring tapes that climb up the wall when someone stands in front of them. When each reaches its full 3 metre extent, it crashes to the ground.

While the kid in me is having fun here, though, a cumulative account is being made of how long people stay with the artwork – a low-tech version of David Walsh's 'O' machine that counts time and response to each of his artworks at the Museum of Old & New Art in Hobart (where, incidentally, Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Index is in the collection).

“The past and the present are co-existing in the same space”, says the artist seriously. “I enjoy giving the spectator a pre-eminent role, which will hopefully displease the curatorial and critical elites who believe that most visitors are morons. Technology is inevitable; the best we can do is pervert it, and create connective, critical or poetic experiences to make it evident”.

Recorders is on at the MCA in Sydney until 12 February.

In the future, when your smartphone has replaced books, MP3 players, and human interaction, you won’t find watches on that list of casualties. Why? Because they’ve already long-abandoned their raison-d'être — telling time — and kept on ticking. Nooka’s mind-bogglingly inexplicable Zub Zen-H 20 watch is a prime example. Like an abacus, it reads in rows: the top two tell the hours, the third the minutes, and the fourth the seconds — as if you had the time to count all that. It gets points for its attention-getting design and rainbow of available colors. Its water-resistant polyurethane body serves as a vestigial reminder of an object drowning in its own obsolence.