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Slideshow: MOCA North Miami 15th Anniversary Celebration


A New Caravaggio Joins the Canon as X-Ray Investigation Vindicates a Disputed Medusa Head

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A New Caravaggio Joins the Canon as X-Ray Investigation Vindicates a Disputed Medusa Head
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Legend has it that, after slaying Medusa, Perseus attached her head to his shield in order to turn his enemies to stone. Her decapitated, snake-covered head, dripping with blood, was such an over-the-top image that Caravaggio apparently painted it twice. One version hangs in Florence's Uffizi Museum, and the second, in a private collection, has just been identified as a Caravaggio by a team of researchers who applied x-ray technology to the painting.

Mina Gregori, one of the specialists who examined the painting, announced the team's conclusions on Friday, Le Journal des Arts reports. The painting, called the "Medusa Murtola" because poet Gaspare Murtola wrote about it during Caravaggio's time, is slightly smaller than the Uffizi version, and was thought to be the work of an imitator. But x-rays revealed preparatory drawings, corrections, and variations, indicating that it is "a creation and not a copy," according to Gregori. In fact, it is thought to predate the Uffizi Medusa by one or two years. Italian collector Ermanno Zoffili purchased the work twenty years ago, but, unfortunately, died just three days before the researchers' public announcement.

When a painting of Saint Augustine in a private British collection was identified as a Caravaggio last June, the attribution was met with some skepticism, since the quiet nature of the religious portrait was thought to be out-of-step with the artist's energetic style . The same cannot be said of the dramatic Medusa. In fact, the Italian newspaper Blitz Quotidiano speculated that Caravaggio's patron Cardinal del Monte may have been so struck by the first version that he commissioned another one and offered it as a gift to Ferdinand de' Medici. Caravaggio liked severed heads, painting "Judith Beheading Holofernes," "Salome with the Head of John the Baptist," and "David with the Head of Goliath" — the last two with the artist's own features on the decapitated heads.

by Kate Deimling, ARTINFO France,Old Masters/Renaissance,Old Masters/Renaissance

In Five: Kristen Wiig Pairs With Oscar Winners, Wes Anderson Makes Andersonesque Ads, and More Performing Arts News

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In Five: Kristen Wiig Pairs With Oscar Winners, Wes Anderson Makes Andersonesque Ads, and More Performing Arts News
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1. Kristen Wiig is slated to star in an action-comedy from Oscar-winning “Descendants” writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. [Vulture]

2. Wes Anderson made what might be the two best car commercials ever. [/Film]

3. s/s/s, Sufjan Stevens’s new band with Serengeti and Son Lux, plan an EP, “Beak & Claw,” that will feature Auto-Tune. [Vulture]

4. Some of XXL magazine’s choices for their “Freshman Class” of up-and-coming rappers have, predictably, puzzled Twitter pundits. [Hollywood Prospectus/Grantland]

5. Cee Lo Green has sold a memoir to be released next year. [NME]

Previously: Erykah Badu, Lucy Liu, Odd Future, Heavy D, Estelle

Tax Fight: European Union Demands That Germany End Its Special Treatment of Art... or Pay the Price

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Tax Fight: European Union Demands That Germany End Its Special Treatment of Art... or Pay the Price
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Art in Germany may be about to get more expensive.

In Brussels on Monday the EU Commission told Germany it was high time to raise its tax on art. For decades, German collectors and gallerists have benefited from a significantly reduced value added tax (VAT) on artworks and collectibles. At seven percent of purchase price, the tax is nearly three times below the conventional VAT of 19 percent for goods and services across the nation. It is also less than half the mandatory 15 percent VAT required by the EU.

Such targeted use of lowered tax rates are sometimes allowed, but only when a specific permit has been granted by the commission. Since there has never been such an agreement, Germany will be brought before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg should the government not agree to the higher rate, facing possible fines.

German culture minister Bernd Neumann decried the commission’s demands on Tuesday, claiming that the tax hike could put enormous strain on the cultural sector, which is already performing poorly due to the financial crisis. A raised tax, Neumann suggested, would cause further pressure on the welfare system, doubling the adverse effects of the measure.

While photographs, screen prints, and even light art are not included in the current tax break, the German art market would likely still take a blow. Museums, whose acquisition budgets have been drawn down to almost non-existent levels, would be even less able to acquire works through philanthropic gifts, especially from corporate collections, which require the payment of VAT for the work’s market price.

Moreover, Neumann questioned why the commission had singled out Germany’s tax practices now. “Until today, the reduced rate was kept in silent agreement. Apparently, now the EU Commission has singlehandedly ended it.” Still, Neumann is holding out hope that a proper agreement, like the permits held by other countries for lowered taxes on certain sectors, could be reached between Germany and the EU.

 

 

Slideshow: See photos from the 2012 Whitney Biennial Opening Party

VIDEO: Four Emerging Stars of the 2012 Whitney Biennial Explain Their Aesthetic Visions

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VIDEO: Four Emerging Stars of the 2012 Whitney Biennial Explain Their Aesthetic Visions
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The 2012 Whitney Biennial has the usual professional polish (see our review here), but behind the immaculately arranged galleries lurks a messier, more human reality. What really makes this year’s exhibition is not the curatorial concept, but the excitement of the artists themselves. In a series of original AI Interview videos, ARTINFO spoke to a few of the emerging artists who make the biennial what it is, asking them to explain their contributions to the exhibition.

Wu Tsang, a transgender performance, installation, and video artist, has been highlighted by numerous critics and curators for his pieces exploring the boundaries of personal identity. Michael Robinson repurposes found video clips from the annals of pop culture into new hybrids that lend an element of surreal strangeness and humor to the familiar. LaToya Ruby Frazier casts a critical eye on Levi’s use of her hard-pressed Pennsylvania hometown in its recent ad campaign. Finally, in her performance on the fifth floor, Greek performance artist Georgia Sagri offers a Situationist-inspired reflection on what constitutes labor in the Internet age.

Meet them all, and see their work in the museum, below.

1. Wu Tsang

2. Michael Robinson

3. LaToya Ruby Frazier

4. Georgia Sagri

For a wider look at the 2012 Whitney Biennial, see our photo tour and highlight picks

Parker Posey and Coco Fusco Packed the Whitney's VIP Biennial Opening, as Teamsters Protested Outside

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Parker Posey and Coco Fusco Packed the Whitney's VIP Biennial Opening, as Teamsters Protested Outside
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Last night’s VIP reception of the 2012 Whitney Biennial was an interdisciplinarily classy affair, studded from stars from the art, music, and film worlds. Biennial artist Dawn Kasper, who — in a tour de force of durational Performo-Sculpture — installed herself and all her personal belongings in the museum, chatted with lookalike DJ duo Andrew & Andrew, both outfitted in hipster standard issue gingham and tweed. Coco Fusco kept scholarly company with academics Columbia prof (and Pacific Standard Time curator) Kellie Jones and ethnomusicologist Guthrie Ramsey. Former of R.E.M front man Michael Stipe was enthralled by Lutz Bacher's pipe organ. Hailing from the parallel universe of film were funnylady Parker Posey and indie darling Paul Dano. Werner Herzog was spotted reading his own wall text. 

Sartorial choices ran the gamut from chic to absurd. Posey looked chic in a draped cocktail dress. Biennial artist LaToya Ruby Frazier was dressed to the nines in blue sequins. Provocotrice Georgia Sagri wore the flesh-colored jacket with nipple appliques from her performance to the event. Chuck Close wore a top hat. 

While art world luminaries and hangers-on rang in the WhiBi with champagne and bons mots, some dozen protesters demonstrated outside, inveighing against the Sotheby’s cooperate sponsorship of the show. The protestors — a joint coalition of various activist groups including Occupy MuseumsOccupy Sotheby’s, OWS’s Arts & Labor working group, and the Teamsters — chanted the slogan, “Shame on Sotheby’s, No Justice, No Peace!” and spoke to partygoers about economic inequality in the art world. 

To see pictures of the Whitney's VIP opening, click on the slide show.

 
Array

Salvatore Ferragamo Backs Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition, Gets Louvre Fashion Show

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Salvatore Ferragamo Backs Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition, Gets Louvre Fashion Show
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The Virgin and Child with St. Anne

Leonardo da Vinci’s relationship with fashion became evident in January when Florentine fashion house Gherardini produced one of the polymath’s nearly-forgotten handbag designs. Now Italian fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo is helping to support the work of the Renaissance artist by sponsoring a spring exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

On view from March 29 through June 25, the exhibition will mark the restoration of Leonardo’s circa 1510 oil-on-wood masterpiece  “The Virgin and Child With Saint Anne.” It will bring together pieces related to the seminal painting, which Leonardo vigorously worked on until his death in 1519, leaving it unfinished. The show will also display compositional sketches and landscape studies by Leonardo, along with newer tributes to the artist by Max ErnstEugène Delacroix, and Edgar Degas.

“Endless creativity, an innovative aesthetic, artisanal roots, and groundbreaking research have always characterized the Italian genius, as embodied by Leonardo da Vinci, that we have always appreciated,” said company chairman Ferruccio Ferragamoaccording to WWD. “These values [date] back to my father and have always inspired our work and the reality of our company.”

Ferragamo will celebrate its role in sponsoring the exhibition by presenting its 2012 runway show on June 12 inside the French institution — a first for any fashion label. The runway will span almost 400 feet, beneath the arches of the Denon peristyle that surrounds the Louvre, reports WWD.

The endeavor seems to be a win-win situation for Ferragamo. The brand gets to be associated with the original Renaissance Man, and the large contribution more than likely resulted in the Louvre allowing Ferragamo to hold a fashion show there.

 

by Ann Binlot,Museums, Fashion,Museums, Fashion

Sotheby's Reports $5.8 Billion in Sales for 2011 — Marking Its Second-Best Year Ever

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Sotheby's Reports $5.8 Billion in Sales for 2011 — Marking Its Second-Best Year Ever
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Sotheby's Auction

Publicly traded auction house Sotheby's (NYSE: BID) released its year-end results Wednesday, revealing that 2011 was the second-best year ever for the company, despite a string of woes including the ongoing art handler lockout and a 26 percent slump in fourth quarter profits (net income was $71.5 million compared to 2010's $96.2 million in Q4). Below is a selected breakdown of the report, and a few details from the afternoon earnings conference call with the company's CEO William Ruprecht and CFO William Sheridan.

Total Consolidated Sales from 2011: $5.8 billion

That number includes all auction house business, including private sales. The figure puts the auction house roughly $100 million (or, a handful of great Picasso consignments, or 40 percent of a Cezanne "Card Players") ahead of its main competitor, Christie's, which reported revenues of $5.7 billion earlier this month.

Private Sales: $814.6 million

It's a continuing trend that the auction houses are moving sales to the back room (and thereby competing with galleries for private clients). Sheridan claimed on Wednesday's call that the trend is motivated by a desire to be relevant to clients 365 days a year, rather than only on set auction days. There is, of course, the added advantage that private sale prices are, well, private.

Full-Year Revenues: $831.8 million

Though $5.8 billion passed through the auction house, much of that was money transferred from buyer to seller. This is the real number that the auction house cares about — how much money the company actually brought in.

Net Income 2011: $171.4 million

That's a $10.5 million increase from 2010. It also tells us that it costs about $700 million per year to run a global auction business. Additionally, the auction house posted $2.46 diluted earnings per share, an increase of 5 percent from 2010 (when it was $2.34).

Average Commission Margin: 16 percent (down from 18 percent in 2010)

Two things contribute to a lower commission margin (the average cut of every sale the auction house gets): the first is competition: When Sotheby's drops commission fees to keep sellers from taking their wares to other auction houses. The second is higher sale prices. Buyer's premiums are charged on a sliding scale, so when a hammer price inches above $1 million the rate the buyer is charged drops significantly from 20 percent down to 12. Therefore, if the auction house is selling a lot of work above $1 million its average commission margin is going to go down. There is, of course, no way to break out the two factors as to how they contributed to the decreased margin.

Consolidated Sales in Asia: $1 billion

This is the first time the auction house has hit the 10-figure benchmark in Asia as business in the East continues to boom. On the earnings call, Sotheby's management noted that the company is continuing to invest in Asia, and will open new premises in Hong Kong soon. In terms of the percentage of high and ultra high-net-worth-individuals who avail themselves of Sotheby's services around the world, the company is "underpenetrated" in China (it was not mentioned, but that fact likely has something to do with the strong Chinese auction houses that operate on the mainland).

 
by Shane Ferro,Market News,Market News

Daphne Guinness to Auction Wardrobe at Christie's to Benefit the Isabella Blow Foundation

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Daphne Guinness to Auction Wardrobe at Christie's to Benefit the Isabella Blow Foundation
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Daphne Guinness

Those who long to own a piece of heiress/muse/artist/designer Daphne Guinness’s enviable wardrobe now have their chance. Guinness will auction off 100 items from her closet this summer at Christie’s for “The Daphne Guinness Collection: Sold to Benefit the Isabella Blow Foundation.” The pieces, which include designs by Alexander McQueen, Chanel, Balenciaga, and others will go on sale at a June 27 auction at Christie’s South Kensington in London. The items will also be exhibited to the public June 23-27.

The mission of the Isabella Blow Foundation, established in late 2011 in Blow's memory, is to support burgeoning talent at the intersection of art and fashion. A percentage of funds generated by the organization will go to mental health charities. Blow — who was a British fashion editor credited with discovering McQueen — suffered from severe bouts of depression, attempting suicide several times before she killed herself by drinking weed killer in 2007 at age 48.

Fashion collectors are almost certain to scramble to purchase a pair of Guinness’s teetering 10-inch heels or one of her elaborate couture creations, many of which were displayed in a show at the Museum at FIT last fall. In a February appearance on “The Charlie Rose Show,” Guinness announced she will exhibit Blow’s wardrobe (which she purchased after her friend’s death) online and at London fashion school Central Saint Martins. 

Related:

Daphne Guinness Unveils Her Staggering Collection of Avant-Garde Fashion at FIT

Anarchic Portrait of Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow Debuts at London's National Portrait Gallery

A Night With Isabella Blow: See Stefan Brggemann's Intimate Photos of the Tragic Fashion Icon

 

 

A Guiding Light: Catherine Yass's "Lighthouse" Shines at New York's Galerie Lelong

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A Guiding Light: Catherine Yass's "Lighthouse" Shines at New York's Galerie Lelong
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With the diligence of a seasoned stalker, Catherine Yass uses her camera to capture the Royal Sovereign lighthouse—a unique structure perched above the English Channel—from every angle. The resulting 12-minute, 42-second film takes an aesthetic, rather than a documentary, approach. This nearly silent work—there’s an underlying hum on the soundtrack, and the occasional gurgle of water near the end—does little to explain the lighthouse’s history, its current use, or its mechanics. Instead, Yass visually interrogates it, documenting her singular subject down low and up high; the film itself was made by shooting from a boat, a helicopter, and underwater, with the help of scuba teams. (In a side gallery are accompanying light-box installations, in which Yass used two different photographic exposures of the lighthouse and blue-colored filters.) At intervals, the camera swoops down to focus momentarily on the roiling ocean and then back up to the lighthouse—but upside down this time, as if suspended from space. The effect is marvelous, akin to the perspective skewering of certain of Gerhard Richter’s seascapes; as for Yass’s tactic of obsessively prodding her inanimate subject, it is somewhat reminiscent of Steve McQueen’s documentation of the statue of Liberty in 2009’s Static.

The work succeeds due to the high production quality and cinematography that renders the bizarre architecture of the lighthouse as if it were a sculptural object worthy of such deliberate attention; it’s a beautiful, at times unnerving, document that goes well beyond any “now we’re right side up, now we’re upside down” chicanery. When the camera goes beneath the water’s surface, it’s barely able to capture the massive column that supports the lighthouse; the film becomes a swirl of disruption and water bubbles, an abstraction and obfuscation. Perhaps it’s the underlying irony of Yass’s film: If a lighthouse’s purpose is to safely guide ships, here the viewer instead ends up lost, barely able to see.

Catherine Yass's "Lighthouse" is on view at Galerie Lelong on 528 West 16th Street through March 17, 2012.

This article will appear in the April 2012 issue of Modern Painters magazine.

 

 

 

Slideshow: Highlights from Vintage Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction at Heritage

Mies van der Rohe’s Restored Tugendhat Villa, A Bauhaus Icon and One-Time Nazi Outpost, Reopens to the Public

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Mies van der Rohe’s Restored Tugendhat Villa, A Bauhaus Icon and One-Time Nazi Outpost, Reopens to the Public
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After a Nazi occupation, a stint as a stable for the Russian Army's horses, and a two-year, $9 million renovation, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Bauhaus masterpiece, the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, has been restored to its original shining, minimalist glory, and is now ready for the public.

The minimalist gem has had a long and tumultuous history, having served almost as a model, in miniature, of the events that shaped the Czech Republic. Van der Rohe built the house in 1930 for Jewish industrialists Fritz and Grete Tugendhat. The wealthy couple gave van der Rohe the freedom to exercise his “less is more” aesthetic: a simple and clean white exterior, and a flat roof supported by an iron framework rather than walls, which allowed him to wrap the exterior in glass. The vast, 2,691-square-foot interior, is interrupted by very few wass and filled instead with natural light streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out towards Brno castle.  It's filled with furniture designed by van der Rohe, and features a beautiful honey-coloured onyx wall that changes from orange to dark red as the setting sun moves across it.

Unfortunately the Tugendhats were only able to live in that Bauhaus paradise for eight years before having to flee the country during World War II. The Tugendhats never returned to their home, which passed through the hands of the Nazis, who used it as Gestapo headquarters, and then later the Red Army, which used it as a horse stable. It later served as a dance school, a rehabilitation center, and the venue for 1992 negotiations between Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar, the Czech and Slovak prime ministers, respectively, before UNESCO added the buildng to its list of World Heritage sites in 2001.

The resulting disrepair has been corrected over a two-year process involving $9 million and a few strokes of good luck. An original bathtub that had gone missing in the 1940s was found in a home nearby, while the original German company that provided the floor's white linoleum in the '3os was tapped for the project once again. An estimated 80 percent of van der Rohe's original villa remains, making it one of his most authentic remaining works in Europe. Villa Tugendhat opens to the public on March 6.

Q&A: “Carrie, the Musical” Director Stafford Arima on Camp, Blood, and Telekinesis

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Q&A: “Carrie, the Musical” Director Stafford Arima on Camp, Blood, and Telekinesis
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“Blood or no blood?” This was the question facing Stafford Arima, director of the off-Broadway revival of the 1988 musical “Carrie.” In his best-selling 1974 novel, Stephen King left it up to the reader’s imagine. Brian DiPalma’s film classic, which came two years later and starred Sissy Spacek as the bullied telekinetic teen, there was plenty of blood — both menstrual and porcine. And, in 1988, the  lavish Broadway musical adaptation from London’s National Theatre (!) bathed its final prom scenes in buckets of red goo. The show quickly folded. The creators — librettist Lawrence Cohen and songwriters Dean Pitchford and Michael Gore — were so bloodied by the experience that they would never allow anyone revive it, despite numerous entreaties.  That is, until Stafford Arima (“Altar Boyz”) came calling. The Canadian-born director had seen the Broadway musical when he was 19 and had never forgotten the audience’s response. “I felt like I was at La Scala,” he says of the frenzied reaction, which included both booing and cheering as the curtain fell. He figured less would be more. His impressionistic production of “Carrie, the Musical”  opens on Thursday, March 1  at New York’s Lucille Lortel Theatre, and there will not be blood — or campy histrionics, for that matter. “Our ‘Carrie’ is totally reinvented,” he says of the new production, which stars Molly Ransom as Carrie and Marin Mazzie as her abusive, Bible-spouting mother Margaret.  

Given the iconic nature of the material, how did you meet the challenge of audience expectations or preconceptions, especially regarding the prom scene?
People have such a sense of ownership — King fans, DiPalma fans, fans of the 1988 musical — and it extends to all aspects of the story, but most specifically they come in wanting to see blood. I wanted that scene to be centered on what must it be like to be totally humiliated, to have your dreams shattered in that one horrific moment. What people really want from that scene is not necessarily blood but a visceral, heart-catching moment and I, along with our design team,  tried to deliver that theatrically with a representation that was abstracted, internal and expressionistic but, hopefully, just as horrific. I wanted that moment to have as much power as it did in the novel and the film.

Carrie’s telekinetic powers are represented with more subtlety as well. Is that just the limitations of stage?
No, it’s a choice. In our version,  Carrie having her period, that drop of blood, sets off her discovery and growing awareness of her telekinetic powers. It awakens her spirit  to understanding herself as a woman, her relationship to other women, her mother and other men. She’s been a sheltered woman for most of her seventeen years and now she starts to understand other aspects of life and living, that boys aren’t dangerous, love can exist and it’s possible to challenge authority. Combining this psychological development with telekinesis is a lot more fun than just prom dresses flying in the air.

Do you believe in telekinesis?
I don’t know if I believe in telekinesis per se, but I’m open to the fact that such a phenomenon could exist. I come from a background that is very open to all the possibilities of human creativity and I don’t think we’ve begun to tap into those hidden depths of physical, mental and spiritual powers.

Were you bullied in high school back in Toronto?
Not bullied but made fun of because I was a theater geek, I was heavy and not a sports person.  My parents were both Canadian-born, my mother is Chinese and my father Japanese, but I wasn’t made fun for being Asian, apart from that “Ching-Chong” stuff. I think it’s gotten worse now because of social media and the passive-aggressive, anonymous way it allows you to harass. Just look at the news reports. I think young people have a new sense of entitlement and that includes the right to bully.

What specific quality were looking for in casting Carrie?
There’s an innate sensitivity to Molly, an innocence and humbleness to this girl so unlike the kind of Broadway chutzpah, pizazz-y diva you see in so many others. We saw it the minute she walked into the room for her audition.  A naturalness that would allow the audience to identify with her and join in on the journey.  

And Marin Mazzie as Margaret?
We needed someone who had the vocal prowess and acting chops who could believably create a flawed woman who nonetheless loved her daughter deeply and wanted to protect her.  You could think of her as loon, a crazy bat, but we certainly didn’t see her in that light and we wanted somebody who could come on that stage and people wouldn’t automatically think, “Here comes the villain, an evil witch in a black robe, swinging a cross.” Marin can convey a complex reality and still could seem like a woman who works at a laudromat, shops at Whole Foods,  reads the Good Book as a means of survival and teaching.

In a 2008 speech, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum maintained that Satan was targeting the United States for corruption.  That sounds very Margaret-like.
He calls it Satan, I call it fear. Fear is gripping the world — Democrats, Republicans, gays, straights, the rich, the poor. Fear of the unknown, fear of those who are different. I don’t personally attach a religiosity to my way of being but it’s clear that there are members of the political class using it to garner votes. Stephen King in 1974 created a work that was so prescient, foreshadowing so many things that are so relevant, perhaps more so now than then. With this show, we’re continue to ask those questions: When did we become so fearful of being different? When did that become so terrible? When did that become a sin?

Slideshow: 10 Things We Liked at the 2012 Brucennial


10 Artworks That Caught Our Eye at the Anarchic 2012 Brucennial Kickoff

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10 Artworks That Caught Our Eye at the Anarchic 2012 Brucennial Kickoff
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If you were lucky enough to get into the opening of free-wheeling artist collective Bruce High Quality Foundation’s Brucennial last night before the line got too long, the reward was a greeting from co-curator and Bruce representative Vito Schnabel, four floors of art from over 300 artists, garbage cans of ice and PBR, and a collection of liquor bottles nestled among hay bales. The party was the real point, but the art on the walls, floor, and various temporary screens presented a messy vision of an artistic zeitgeist far more genial than the Whitney Biennial’s strict curatorial vision.

The explosion that is the 2012 Brucennial isn’t quite as pointed as 2010's edition, which was dubbed “Miseducation” and synergized nicely with the art world's recessionary tribal moment, running alongside the X-Initiative’s own experiment in pop-up aesthetic community. Instead of reading as a protest against the structural economic barriers of the art world, this year’s Brucennial has the air of a movie sequel: expected, professionally executed, and not quite as electric as the original (never mind that the Bruces had been doing the alternative biennial thing for years before it caught fire in 2010).

The deftly arranged salon-style hanging was brimming with energy, but not all of it was a great viewing experience. In evidence was a lot of painting, some messy sculptural works, and a bit of light conceptual play. The lack of wall texts made it a little difficult to tell who did what (part of the charm, and part of why our woozy pictures of the works we liked at the event contain many anonymous entries). A Damien Hirst spot painting nestled among much messier works, but its presence wasn’t so much critical or ironic as just out of place, like an uncle at a teenager’s birthday party. Later on in the evening, a young artist perched on the shoulders of a compatriot and signed her name under the immaculately framed grid of colorful dots. 

As ARTINFO exited the doors, the crowd outside pushed at the barricades and chanted at the security guards: “Let the artists in!” It was a fine symbol of the Bruces' definite transformation from cool outsiders to cool insiders.

Click our slide show for 10 works and moments we liked at the 2012 Brucennial. 

Amid Italy's Budget Crisis, An Embattled Curator Threatens to Destroy His Museum's Art to Save It

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Amid Italy's Budget Crisis, An Embattled Curator Threatens to Destroy His Museum's Art to Save It
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Antonio Manfredi is a man desperate for attention. Last winter, with the woes of the financial crisis weighing heavily on Italy’s cultural sector, he sent an open letter to German chancellor Angela Merkel, in which he wrote that the cash-strapped museum he founded in southern Italy was in danger and in need of "cultural asylum." This past Sunday, he took things a step further: He and his staff burned a photocopy of a work of art in front of reporters, and announced plans to destroy one work from the permanent collection every day, beginning in mid-April, if funding for the museum did not improve.

For the past seven years, Manfredi has been director of the Contemporary Art Museum of Casoria (CAM) in his hometown outside of Naples. His stated hope has been that the museum, which he describes as a "garrison" for young and under-represented artists, might do something to reverse the sense of political and cultural isolation characteristic of life in southern Italy. It has been a lean operation from the start, but as that support from local government and private donations has begun to dry up given Italy's ongoing economic crisis, Manfredi has taken increasingly extreme measures to draw attention to his museum's plight. He hasn’t been shy about exploiting Naples’s characterization as a longtime home, victim, and enabler of organized crime to whip up support — though the veracity of his spectacular claims are up for debate.

Certainly, the influence of the mafia in the region isn't pure fabrication, and CAM has taken its share of heat becuase of it. In 2009, a lifesize effigy of an African figure was left impaled over the gates of the museum following an exhibition of art that dealt frankly with prostitution, a trade occupied locally almost entirely by African immigrants and controlled by the mafia. According to the Independent, security cameras have been stolen and the museum has faced attempted break-ins as well, occurences that Manfredi has blamed on the mafia.

Last year, he was invited by Vittorio Sgarbi, the curator of the Italian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, to install his work “May Be,” a series of portraits of fugutives with well-known ties to the Camorra and the 'Ndrangheta, criminal fellowships that predominate in the areas around Naples and Bari. By Manfredi's account, the reaction exhibitions like “May Be” has triggered a backlash that has put extra pressure on his museum's finances. He claims to have received phone calls from men using Camorra-style slang and making oblique threats. “It bothered them that I was exhibiting this kind of art,” he told ARTINFO, asserting that private sponsors have since been intimidated into rescinding their support. When asked which businesses had backed out, Manfredi was coy. “I have 10 businesses on the tip of my tongue, but if I gave you their names, then I might disappear.”

After a story about the art burning ran in the newspaper La Repubblica, ARTINFO decided to look into the extent to which CAM’s financial woes were the direct result of mafia involvement. Luisa Marro, who manages the cultural sector for the local government in Casoria, credits Manfredi for his efforts, saying that he has worked largely alone and has “never received anything special” from her administration. Prevailing attitudes in southern Italy, especially in a time of fiscal crisis, make fundraising for a young contemporary art museum particularly difficult. She nevertheless insisted that his references to organized crime in La Repubblica were largely metaphorical, reflecting the embattled nature of the museum. “When you change something, it has to be by force," she said. The cultural obstinancy of locals "is very 'Camorra' behavior. 'Camorra' is a way of thinking.”

Like Marro, Sgarbi was eager to credit Manfredi for his work, but was dismissive of suggestions that the museum’s problems had anything to do with organized crime. "It's useful to help demonstrate that we're dealing with something important, but I doubt that the Camorra is preoccupied with what Manfredi says about people who work for them, or the shows that he puts up," he said.

"In certain ways, CAM is a way of fighting back for Neapolitan artists," Sgarbi told ARTINFO, contrasting it with another institution, the Donna Regina, a more cosmopolitan contemporary art museum in Naples, which "involves itself with the real Mafia — the international art market." By and large, however, the challenges either museum faces are the same. "Italy is living in a time of crisis such that even the Donna Regina, and other public museums, are having serious difficulties. There isn’t a lot of interest in culture."

 

 

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Will the “Harry Potter” Radcliffe-Watson-Grint Trio Sustain Their Success?

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Will the “Harry Potter” Radcliffe-Watson-Grint Trio Sustain Their Success?
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When Daniel Radcliffe hosted “Saturday Night Life” in January, the obligatory Hogwarts sketch had him as a 28-year-old Harry Potter who, skulking around the school, reveals that he has been unable to move on from his Voldemort-conquering days. Equally unable to leave the past, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley (played by SNL regulars) had become teachers, “So it’s not weird,” said Hermione. Harry observed to a group of incoming students that school gives you “the best days of your life,” but ironically told Draco Malfoy, now a “boring” visiting parent, that “you can’t keep living in the past.”

There was a salutary warning in the sketch for Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, three stars in their early twenties whose glory days may be behind them. As if to refute that, however, the Hammer company’s “The Woman in Black,” starring Radcliffe as a widowed lawyer hired to handle the affairs of an estate in a haunted English village, has just become Britain’s most successful horror movie of the last twenty years (possibly ever). It has earned  £14.6 million ($23.15 million) in its first three weeks of release in the UK and $50.1 million in the US in 26 days, which if not spectacular is excellent for a British import.

Indebted to Hammer’s horror legacy, 1961’s “The Innocents,” adapted from Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” and 1973’s “The Wicker Man,” “The Woman in Black” is traditional Gothic fare. Casting the erstwhile Potter as a grieving interloper pitted against a vengeful female ghost made perfect sense, facilitating as it did Radcliffe’s trademark intensity and worried look. Without impressing Ben Brantley of The New York Times, Radcliffe also just came off a successful run as the singing, dancing corporate climber J. Pierrepont Finch in the Broadway revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

During a 2007 production hiatus in the Potter series, Radcliffe appeared in the Australian bomb “December Boys” and in the British TV movie “My Boy Jack,” in which he was self-destructively stoical as the son of Rudyard Kipling, sacrificed on the Western Front by his father’s jingoism in 1915. He will next play Allen Ginsberg in “Kill Your Darlings,” John Krokidas’s New York indie about the poet’s arrival in New York and the 1944 manslaughter of David Kammerer by Beat friend Lucien Carr, whom Kammerer had stalked.

Krokidas has apparently asked Radcliffe not to shave his pubic hair before filming, indicating that the ghost of Harry Potter will be firmly laid to rest (along with James Franco’s Ginsberg from “Howl”). Playing Ginsberg should test Radcliffe in other ways, revealing the extent of his range. Hollywood leading man status may be far off but there’s no indication from Radcliffe that he aspires to it. As he told the BBC last year, “I”ve had success in films and all that, you know, but the challenge is now the longevity of it and that’s what I am pursuing.”

The news this week that Emma Watson is to topline Sofia Coppola’s next film “Bling Ring” should meanwhile confound some die-hard fans of Hermione Granger. Watson will in all probability play Alexis Neiers, the “Pretty Wild” reality star who served 30 days of a six-month sentence for her part in the burglaries of movie stars’ Hollywood homes in 2008-09. Neiers and her mostly teen accomplices stole an estimated $3 million-worth of jewelry and designer clothing from the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Rachel Bilson.

Coppola’s movie, pregnant with possibilities for psychological inquiry and the exploration of issues like star envy and social inferiority, is a rich opportunity for Watson. There are reserves of anger and defensiveness in her unsmiling screen persona as she showed as Hermione. The handsomely made children’s “Ballet Shoes” (2007), her sole inter-Harry Potter film, allowed her to be little more than a ladylike aspirant, but she was superbly bitter as the wardrobe assistant cruelly dumped by the Monroe-obsessed production gopher in “My Week with Marilyn.”

Since then Watson has acted in the  “Catcher in the Rye”-influenced high-school movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and has been cast in Potter director David Yates’s “Your Voice in My Head,” a low-budget psychological drama adapted by the writer Emma Forrest from her memoir, which recounted her self-destructive behavior. Watson is also attached to Guillermo del Toro’s  “The Beauty and the Beast” redo (and has Oxford undergraduate studies to fit in). There are signs here of dramatic ambition and genuine stretching.

Rupert Grint made four films away from the Potter series: The ill-advised flatulence comedy “Thunderpants” (2002); the coming-of-age (with help of a superannuated diva) comedy-drama “Driving Lessons” (2006); the Irish teens-on-a-spree drama “Cherrybomb” (2008); and “Wild Target” (2010), a comedy in which he played hitman Bill Nighy’s assistant. They all failed, though Grint got respectable reviews for “Driving Lessons” and “Cherrybomb.”

Grint is homelier than Radcliffe and fellow Potter alumni Tom Felton (who played Malfoy) and, for God sakes, Robert Pattinson (Diggory), and a ginger nut to boot. (Not that that stopped my middle-school-age daughter and her friends bombarding him with fan mail when it was learned his family home is a few miles from where we’d be staying during the holidays.) However, his blokeish appeal, which manifested itself in Ron’s copious “bloodys,” should stand him in good stead as a character lead and one would bet on him eventually becoming a top British TV star.

In the immediate future, he has a plum part as a British RAF gunner in the Norwegian anti-war drama “Into the White,” directed by Peter Naess for Zentropa. Set in 1940, it’s based on a true story about a Luftwaffe plane brought down by a British fighter that was forced to crash-land. The three German and two British survivors were forced to winter together in the same Grotli hunting cabin where they had to overcome their nationalist antagonisms.

Grint will also star in “Cross Country,” which on paper sounds like a conventional twentysomethings-in-the-woods horror story, and, more intriguing, “Eddie the Eagle.” In this he’ll play Eddie Edwards, the British skier whose disastrous performance at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics led to him becoming a British folk hero. In the UK, of course, over-achievement is vulgar – so the Harry Potter trio should watch their steps.

Below: Rupert Grint in "Into the White"

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