NEW YORK — Stephanie Roach, director of the FLAG Art Foundation, was a few minutes late to meet me at the champagne bar, our agreed-upon meeting place on the Armory Show’s VIP preview day. “It’s crowded!” she wrote in a text message by way of warning. By “crowded,” she meant filled with people she knows — and there are a lot of those. As the director of the New York contemporary art foundation founded by MSD Capital managing partner Glenn Fuhrman, Roach is tasked with mounting three to five curated shows a year at FLAG’s project space on 25th street. During her five and a half years at the foundation, Roach has worked with galleries, artists, and museums from across the country, organizing shows that range from the political (Jane Hammond’s “Fallen,” an ongoing installation that collects handmade leaves inscribed with the name of a soldier killed in Iraq) to the playful (an exhibition called “Size DOES Matter” curated by Shaquille O’Neal). “There tends to be some pretense around seeing art, and we want FLAG to be an exciting space for viewers to see high-quality shows. We want to make it accessible to a diverse audience,” she said.

Art fair week is a workweek for Roach, as it is for any curator. “When I go to a fair, I’m always looking to see if there is an artist that is doing something different, or an artist we’ve been following that has new work. I look at the fair as an opportunity to see what’s out there, even if it is more in a commercial context than what we do,” she said. Looking at an artwork, Roach tends to get very close (looking at an object-filled Nick Cave wall piece at Jack Shainman Gallery, her nose almost touched its glittering leaves). “I like to see craftsmanship,” she explained. “I know some people prefer to look at work from far away, but I like to see where all the lines begin and end.”

Throughout the week, ARTINFO shadowed Roach at various stops along her itinerary to get a sense of what the barrage of events is like for a curator on the job. Here, in her voice, is her diary of events from the first few days of Armory Week:

Wednesday

10:30 - I met with Performa to iron out the details of a benefit auction that we’re hosting at FLAG in May, and then did some reading around the Web — Ed Winkleman’s blog, Artlog, and a few other places — about the fairs and other events taking place this week.

2:30 - On my way up to the Piers, I asked the cab to take Eighth Avenue so I could see Josephine Meckseper’s Public Art Fund work on the way up. She installed working oil pumps right near Times Square, and the installation looks amazing. We had a solo show with her last February.

2:45 - I made it to the main fair, which was already buzzing with people. Immediately, I bumped into the Warhol Foundation director Joel Wachs, who seemed to echo the sentiments of many at the fair by quoting Jenny Holzer: “Protect me from what I want.” Artist Patricia Cronin recommended that I see the Holzer works at Spruth Magers. Then I ran into Paddle8’s Andrea Hill, and we walked through Marianne Boesky’s booth together, enjoying Anthony Pearson’s sculptures. We also saw an interesting installation and detailed drawings by Eric Yahnker at Ambach & Rice.

3:30 - Continuing my walk, I visited the “solo projects lounge,” where emerging galleries mounted solo booths. Dario Escobar at Josee Bienvenu and Jennifer Dalton at Winkleman Gallery were some of my favorites. Jennifer had a solo show at FLAG in Summer 2010. I loved her candy piece at the Armory — it mounted a cube full of candy on a pedestal, and visitors could use tongs to reach in and grab a piece. The wrappers had messages like, “I think money corrupts except when I have some,” “Art is a gift but working for free is exhausting, ” and “I hate elitism but I distrust mainstream tastes.” There was a fourth, too, but we couldn’t find it.

4:00 - Dropped by the Ingleby Gallery booth. We have a solo exhibition of their artist, Richard Forster, on at FLAG right now. Their booth looks wonderful. I particularly liked the work of Harland Miller, whose watercolor of a book cover stating “You Can Rely on Me, I’ll Always Let You Down” is not only witty but has workmanship, and reminds me a bit of Steve Wolfe.

4:10 - I bumped into Jewish Museum director Claudia Gould, who told me that the Mona Hatoum at Continua and Nick Cave at Jack Shainman were not to be missed. We’re working on an exhibition focusing on floor works at FLAG, and I was interested to see Mona’s pieces, since she has done some Carl Andre-esque floor sculptures in the past.

4:30 - I checked out work by Anthony Goicolea at Galeria Senda from Barcelona, where I used to work six years ago. Ron Mandos in Amsterdam had more work by Goicolea — complex drawings on mylar combining nature and anatomy that are both haunting and engaging.  

5:15 - Thankfully, I leave the Armory just as it started to get swarmed by fairgoers.

6:00 - I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania's winter salon, which is a discussion held every year for members of the board and donors. (I joined as a student board member, a position Claudia Gould revived while she worked there and I was still in college.) This year, we discussed the Whitney Biennial at the apartment of a private collection on the Upper East Side. I loved talking to senior curator Ingrid Schaffner, and also listening to how forthright the discussion was. One of the collectors said, “I didn't really understand some of the works in the biennial,” and they had a real dialogue about why. The collection focuses on photography, and they have some great works by Cindy Sherman, Rineke Dijkstra, and Elizabeth Peyton.

7:00 - I stopped by ADAA, which was nice and quiet, so I could absorb the work. Then I met my friend Daniel Lechner, who works at Cheim & Read, for dinner at Monkey Bar.

10:00 - The two of us headed to MoMA’s Armory Week kickoff party. There was a fun art chic group of people, and walking through the contemporary section, I particularly enjoyed the Felix Gonzalez-Torres "Placebo" candy work. By the end of this week, my purse will be filled with candies! The pineapple flavor is delicious, and reminds me of borrowing “Untitled” (Rossmore II), 1991, for FLAG’s show “Floating a Boulder: Works by Jim Hodges and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” To manifest the work at FLAG, Jim and I worked with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and ended up “commissioning” brand new candy to be made for the piece. We sampled a variety of green apple candies and eventually ended up ordering original pieces from a place in Texas, taking the color from one candy, the shape from another, and the flavor from another. It was such an exciting experience.

Thursday

10:30 a.m. - I went to the press preview of Moving Image, for which I served on the curatorial committee. There’s real range of emerging and established artists in the fair, but I was particularly struck by specific works that addressed the female experience. Kate Gilmore’s “Built to Burst” depicted a woman smashing vases of paint wearing a dress, which succeeded in creating tension between her appearance and unexpectedly aggressive actions. Alex Prager’s “Despair” showed a prototypical 1950s woman dealing with an emotional breakdown, with the lead played by Bryce Dallas Howard. I also appreciated Martha Wilson’s “I have become my own worst fear/deformation,” which dealt with issues of vanity.

12 p.m. - I returned to FLAG’s offices to work out logistics for our event on Saturday. We’re hosting the Coolhaus ice cream truck from 2 to 4 p.m. outside the gallery, giving away free ice cream to weary fairgoers and FLAG viewers.

12:30 - I recapped what I’d seen at the fair with FLAG’s assistant director Rebecca Streiman. We talked about which artists might be interesting to pursue for future exhibitions, particularly our summer exhibition of floor works.

2:30 - Did a walk through of the Independent fair. I like it because the vibe is very fluid, it’s got great “spaces” rather than booths, and there is so much natural light. I’m looking carefully for artists who might be of interest for the floor show. Matthew Darbyshire had great freestanding totems at Herald Street. 

 4-5:45 - Finished up remaining emails, then ran home to change. Good thing I live close by!

7:00 - Stopped by the Grey Area party to support my friend Manish Vora, the genius behind Artlog and Grey Area. I love the concept of their VIP badges. Have a great conversation with Panni Malekzadeh, who made one of the badges, about what she’s working on and her upcoming solo show.

8:30 - Went with friends to the Jewish Museum preview of the Kehinde Wiley show and its Wind Up dance party. Kehinde’s series "The World Stage: Israel" are beautiful, ornate and fascinating to see them along side Judaica from the museum’s collection.

10:00 - Grabbed a late bite at ABV on the Upper East Side. 

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Style, and Performing Arts, March 5 - 9, 2012:

ART

— It's Armory Week in New York City! Did you notice? Julia Halperin reported from the fair, where the Armory Show's Contemporary section opened with strong sales, especially amongst the biggest exhibitors. In the Armory Show's other Modern section, Judd Tully noticed that despite slower traffic than on the Contemporary side, the booths were enlivened by inspired choices and first-rate pieces.

— At the week's other major fair, the classy ADAA's Art Show, Shane Ferro reported slow-but-steady sales, with several booths selling out on the first day.

— With so many collectors in New York, Julia Halperin took a look at 10 of the most conspicuous characters you might pass in the art fair aisles, from Basma Al-Sulaiman to John Waters.

— With so much emphasis on female artists among this year's  fairs, Shane Ferro asked 5 experts — including artist Sarah Sze and ADAA executive director Linda Blumberg — for their thoughts on the market for works by women.

— ARTINFO also had reports from the smaller Armory Week fairs, including Independent, Volta, Scope, and Moving Image.

DESIGN & FASHION

— Collectors may be Armory Week's power players, but at the fair's vernissage the most stylish were the artists. We snapped photographs of the most eccentrically dressed.

— Ann Binlot followed the fashionable crowd from the piers to MoMA, for the museum's benefit and official Armory Show party, which included a set by Neon Indian.

— The upcoming Frieze New York stole a bit of the spotlight when it unveiled designs for its wavy Randall's Island pavilion designed by New York architects Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu.

— Janelle Zara reported from Japan Society, where outspoken Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas lectured on Japan's Metabolist architecture movement.

— Online purveyor of artist-designed objects Grey Area launched its first brick-and-mortar showroom in SoHo this week with a series of artful VIP badges by artists including Hank Willis Thomas and Dustin Yellin.

PERFORMING ARTS

— ARTINFO film correspondent J. Hoberman says Disney's quarter-billion-dollar Cowboy and Indians on Mars boondoggle "John Carter" isn't as disastrous as some had hoped.

— Scarlett Johannson — whose current arm candy is an avid art collector — has been cast as shower stabbing victim Janet Leigh in the upcoming backlot drama "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho."

— Members of the horrorcore hip-hop collective Odd Future continue to confuse with their crazy videos. The latest is NY (Ed Flander)'s Lynchian clip for the song "Rella."

— If we survive Armory Week, there's season 2 of "Game of Thrones" to look forward to; this week a new trailer whetted our appetite with glimpses of the medieval fantasy show's increasingly epic action.

— American indie-auteur Paul Thomas Anderson's mid-century period piece "The Master" — starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Laura Dern, Amy Adams and more — is rumored to be getting released in October and also rumored to be a thinly disguised riff on Scientology.

This week, ARTINFO went everywhere. Over the course of Armory Week in New York City, we reported from all the fairs anyone could want to see, including the Armory Show (both Contemporary and Modern), the ADAA Art Show, Independent, Moving Image, Scope, and Volta. We even made it to Fountain. It was a lot to see. But never fear, if you didn't manage to make it to all of them during this marathon of art events, we've got you covered. 

To see highlights from all of NYC's Armory Week fairs, click on the slide show.

WHAT: Catherine Opie’s “High School Football”

WHEN: March 10-April 14, Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.



WHERE: Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th St., New York



WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: Catherine Opie’s collection of photographs currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash is not a recent body of work, but the series – images of teenage football warriors and their battlefields – finds new life in its first showing in New York.

Known for her work as a social documentarian and portrait photographer, Opie shot the series between 2007 and 2009. Here she manages to capture, yet again, a uniquely American niche community, this time turning her attention to the widespread phenomenon of competitive high school football programs and their dedicated participants.

The scenes in her sharpened Technicolor stadium landscapes are not to be confused stylistically with the snapshots that populate the pages of the sports section. The series is an anthropological investigation of a community that spans each region of the country, from the volcanic valleys of Hawaii to the bleachers on the humid banks of the Bayou.

She poses her subjects, post-practice and glowing with youthful testosterone, on the widely varying football fields of American high schools, or captures them sweating in their uniforms, tackling the opposition mid-game. Her talent for revealing the individual qualities of her subjects amidst the larger collective identity of the teams can be seen most clearly in the portraits of players in this series. 

Click on the slide show to see images from Catherine Opie’s “High School Football.”

This is the first of a four-part series from Art+Auction magazine in which key art-market players weigh in on the future of the field. 

Given how frequently the word uncertainty comes up in discussions of all things financial these days, it is surprising that a panel of market experts would find consensus of any kind, and even more unexpected that they would coalesce around an essentially buoyant outlook. Yet confidence is the most common attitude struck in the following pages.

Auction specialists and private dealers see room for virtually limitless sales records, as long as top-notch material remains at hand. Gallerists believe that passion is still the animating force, the bedrock for dealers and their best customers alike. For others, new opportunities abound in emerging territories, from the Middle East and Southeast Asia to the digital realm and the nascent art-fund industry. To paraphrase one veteran, maybe most of us who got involved with the art business are just optimists by nature.

Of course, notes of caution sound in the following pages as well. Southern European governments risk stifling the art trade — or driving it underground — with onerous luxury taxes. China is at a crossroads, and its players will need to commit to higher standards of professionalism if its markets are to continue to grow. And more than one expert here believes there are too many fairs.

Taken together, these sketches from varied corners of the art world depict two coexisting planes. In the foreground, garnering the headlines, is the arena where those who buy for love and investors who buy for security converge in pursuit of the best. In the background is a larger field of players endeavoring to expand the art world outward rather than upward, by reaching new audiences in new ways. Both groups seem pretty happy about where they are right now.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS

I’m optimistic. More and more often art is looked at as something that gives great pleasure hanging on your walls but also as a good asset class—a good place to put some of your money. Collectors are looking for great works. What I saw this past year was that clients are price sensitive and quality sensitive, but the higher you go, the more quality sensitive they are. If you show somebody something really amazing, then price is not so much an issue, but if the quality is not A-plus, it needs to have the right price, at least in the private market.

At the lower end, you might see peaks in certain artists and periods. But that can be from one or two individuals who can change a whole market for a period of time. They might compete for a few pictures to fill the gaps in their collections. After that, nobody else is there to follow suit, so the prices have to be reevaluated. Knowledge of who buys and why is key.

Similarly, sometimes at auction you’ll see competition and prices achieved that you would not achieve privately, but that’s not a reflection of an entire market. There was that Delvaux that made a huge one-off price [Paul Delvaux’s Les Cariatides, 1946, sold at Sotheby’s New York for an artist-record $9 million last May]. But this was the result of two Russian phone bidders who knew who they were up against and just decided to compete. If you don’t know that and just see the price, you think Delvaux’s overall market is doing very well, but that’s not necessarily the case.

The people I’m dealing with are looking for the classic pictures and I’m not necessarily seeing major shifts in that taste. Surre-alism is slowly becoming more desirable, but it’s not everything in Surrealism; it’s still the pretty side of it. In Magritte’s market, for instance, everyone wants a blue sky, but that’s not all there is to Magritte. He has much deeper and more complex language, especially in the early paintings from the late ’20s to mid ’30s. That period is so fascinating and rich in meaning and iconography, yet the early period is still totally undervalued and misunderstood. That might change in the next 5 or 10 years.

— Emmanuel Di Donna, a former worldwide vice chairman at Sotheby’s, is a partner in Blain | Di Donna, which opened last year at the Carlyle hotel in New York.

MAKE IT MODERN

There is one message from the market that is crystal-clear: It’s not about Impressionism or contemporary, it’s about modern and postwar. Last year we saw a celebration of the 20th century.

Anything of quality from that period made a record price, whether it was Picasso, Max Ernst, or any modern movement, it just went crazy. There’s a real focus on modernity and anything that’s modern among international buyers, whether they are from the more mature markets like Europe and America or the newer markets such as Russia, the Middle East, and Asia. There is world-record potential every time works from the major movements of the 20th century are offered.

I am not sure if the interest comes at the expense of the art of the past decade, but it’s perhaps at the expense of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, although Cézanne, as the father of modernity, is going strong. The Impressionist market is more difficult to judge because quite frankly there has been a decrease in the quality of the works available. You can’t judge a market by its secondary material.

On the European side, there’s economic uncertainty, which means that unless there’s an estate or a real motivation to sell, it’s hard to get people to consign major works. They feel their money is better vested in a painting rather than in cash right now. There is less opportunistic selling than there was in 2007 and 2008. The caution is not because of the prices realized, but more about what to do with the money, so people are holding on to what they have.

Still, even second-tier 20th-century works—say later Léger, not from the 1910s or ’20s, and Chagall from later years—are fetching high prices. Today there is a developed, homogeneous, international market geared toward the modern. The success of every sale now comes down to five or eight quality works and whether these works are modern enough. If they’re not, you’re in trouble. If they are, you have a great sale.

—Thomas Seydoux became chairman, Impressionist and modern Art, at Christie’s in January, after two years as international head of the department. He is based in London.

CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

I saw the market declines in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, but I don’t see anything like that at the moment. In Europe, 2011 was a very good year. We saw many new, younger collectors arrive, looking not only for young artists but also for established ones.

Art as an investment is becoming more important here. Those collec-tors go mostly toward blue-chip works and the “hot list.”  That is a bit silly, because just as with the stock market, going in the same direction as everyone else is profitable in the beginning, but not in the long run.

Looking ahead, I don’t believe that under normal circumstances the euro crisis would affect the market, but the tax situation in countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece will affect it in 2012. Italy raised its sales tax on art to 21 percent, which is scandalous. And the authorities are looking to step up enforcement.

 Art fairs are also making things increasingly difficult. The impor-tant argument remains that the fairs cater to busy collectors. But the expense is crazy. Thirty-five years ago, a booth at Art Basel was SF12,000; today it’s SF120,000. How can smaller and younger galleries afford a fair like Art Basel Miami Beach?

—Karsten Greve has galleries in Cologne, Paris, and St. Moritz.

THE ELUSIVE COLLECTOR

The whole system of the art business has become unforgiving and can be a brutal place, so what I am looking forward to is growing the global web of relationships that we have been putting together—linking artists, collectors, and museums. That’s why we’re always in search of the people who are still really passionate about art. That may sound corny but in fact, the reason this all works is because there are collectors who need to be the owners of a particular work of art, they are old-fashioned people who can’t stop themselves from buying something because they’re in love with it. Not so many years ago, the alternative—the hunter, the investor, the speculator—didn’t exist.

It’s the search for faithful art collectors and connoisseurs that drives our expansion. The goal with the new locations is to be able to plug into more places. You’ve got to be around the corner from them in order to be part of the mix. You have to remember the whole art world is about the collector and the artist. The rest of us are arrayed around those two actors.

—Marc Glimcher is president of the Pace Gallery, founded over 50 years ago by his father Arne. The firm, which operates four spaces in New York and one in Beijing, will add a London gallery this year.

Fashion month finally ended March 7 in Paris, capping a marathon of shows in the United States and Europe. Once again, art appeared throughout the catwalks: Manish Arora and Jean Paul Gaultier looked to graffiti and street art, while Karl Lagerfeld referenced an exhibition of Czech Cubism he saw in Prague. Dries Van Noten digitally printed Japanese, Korean, and Chinese costumes from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum all over his ensembles, and Kenzo’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim recruited graphic designer Juan Gatti to create a whimsical fruit print. Here, we bring you a selection of Paris Fashion Week’s art-inspired looks.

Click on the slide show above to see Paris Fashion Week’s art-inspired looks.

– USPS Censors Cattelan's Dildo Art: Italian provocateur Maurizio Cattelan may have "retired" from art-making, but he can't stop stirring things up! A VICE magazine cover designed by the artist (with his "Toilet Paper" magazine collaborator Pierpaolo Ferrari) was apparently deemed too hot to deliver: "Due to the United States Postal Service's disgusting and ambiguous censorship policy, we were forced to obscure the very realistic-looking fake penis that graces the March issue’s cover," writes VICE. The agency required the magazine to place a sticker — which reads "DILDO" — over the offending object, and the mag's editors now gleefully claim to have documented DILDO stickers cropping up all over New York. (Click here to see Cattelan's full spread in the magazine.) [VICE]

– "It's My Saatchi Gallery, Basically": Damien Hirst has detailed plans for a giant public gallery he will open in South London in 2014 to house his personal collection, which features more than 2,000 artworks. "It's basically Bacon and beyond," said the artist of his holdings, which also include work by Jeff Koons, Sarah Lucas, and Banksy, among others. The space, formerly a theater carpentry workshop that is described as being close to the Whitechapel in scale, will be designed by architect Caruso St John. [Guardian]

– Bardot Beau's Bounty Bound for the Block: The collection of the German multi-millionaire, former bobsleigh champion, and Brigitte Bardot's ex-husband, Gunter Sachs will go to auction at Sotheby's in New York on May 22 and 23. Among other things, Sachs (who committed suicide last spring) commissioned his friend Andy Warhol to make Bardot's portrait, and later bought one the Pop artist's last self-portraits, "Fright Wig" (1986), which is expected to fetch between $3 and $4.7 million. [Bloomberg]

– London Gets a New Art Fair: Launched by the original founders of Art HK, Art13 London aims to showcase the best in international modern and contemporary art. Stephanie Dieckvoss, formerly of Serpentine Gallery and Art HK, will direct the fair, which debuts in London next March. [Press Release]

– Dallas Art Museum Gets New Deputy: The new director of the Dallas Museum of Art is staffing up: Recently appointed head Maxwell Anderson has named Robert Stein, his former colleague at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, as the DMA's new deputy director. Stein currently serves as the deputy director for research, technology, and engagement at the IMA. [Press Release] 

– Texas-Sized Art Fraud: A couple in Dallas has pleaded guilty to defrauding another Texan couple of $3 million in a 2004 scheme that involved purportedly loaning artworks to European museums and instead purchasing art with with the victims' money, which they used as collateral for a $300,000 loan from the Art Capital Group. [Glasstire] 

– Public Art Gets a New Purpose: The city of New Orleans has selected a sculpture that will be reproduced around the city to mark evacuation spots, or places where people can gather to be transported out of town in case of a mandatory evacuation. The sculpture, by Massachusetts artist Douglas Kornfeld, features the outline of a human form with a single arm raised. [LAT] 

– Word on the Street: Jeff Koons is said to be beginning construction on a new mega-mansion with his architect Richard Olcott. The project, which might just rival the palatial New York residence of his dealer, Larry Gagosian, will connect two East 67th Street buildings to create a 21,500-square-foot home. [NYP]

– Hell, Yes!: Michigan's Open Concept Gallery recently acquired a rainbow-hued text sculpture by Ugo Rondinone similar to one that hung on the New Museum's facade that read "Hell, Yes." Because it doesn't have sufficient funds to transport and insure "Big Mind Sky" (2007), however, the gallery has turned to popular microfunding site Kickstarter to raise the remaining money. [HuffPo] 

– Smithsonian Shines Light on Jefferson's Slaves: A new exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art titled "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty" looks at the lives of the 607 slaves Thomas Jefferson owned during his lifetime. "Considering that there are those who have problems with this exhibition in 2012," said the Smithsonian's Rex Ellis, "I'd say that 15 years ago, it would have been pretty difficult to do something like this." [NPR]

– Copycat Banksy?: "Banksy on Advertising," a four-paragraph, manifesto-like quote attributed to the street artist that has gone viral on Twitter and Tumblr, turns out to have borrowed heavily from writer Sean Tejaratchi's essay "Death, Phones, Scissors." "My goal is to set the record straight online," said Tejaratchi. But perhaps Banksy's actions shouldn't come as a surprise — he once did, after all, take credit for Picasso's famous line, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." [Gawker] 

– Angel Sculptures Get Their Own Guardian Angel: An Ohio makeup artist has become a sort of patron saint for religious statues left behind. When a Catholic church closes, Lou McClung gathers its neglected religious statues and restores them to their former ethereal state. [NYT]

– Santa Barbara Museum Gets Endowed Directorship: The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation has pledged $5.5 million to endow the museum's director position, currently held by Larry Feinberg. [LAT]

– RIP Comics Artist Moebius: The French artist Jean Giraud, better known by the signature on his fantasy and sci-fi comics, Moebius, died at 73 after a prolonged battle with cancer. Giraud helped launch the legendary comic monthly "Heavy Metal" in 1975, and contributed designs to seminal sci-fi films like "Alien," "Tron," and "The Fifth Element." [LAT]  

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

A Curator's Diary: Armory Week With FLAG Director Stephanie Roach

VIDEO: Theaster Gates on Inserting an Inner-City Schoolroom Into the Armory Show's "Magical" Atmosphere

The Expert Eye: 8 Collectible Artworks From This Week's NYC Art Fairs

Watching From the Sidelines: See Catherine Opie's Raw Portraits of Teenage Football Players

Meet Iranian Street Art Duo Icy and Sot

But is it Relational Aesthetics? Jeremy Deller on His Hayward Gallery Retrospective

Name: Darren Bader

Occupation: Not sure

City/Neighborhood: New York, N.Y.

What project are you working on now?  

Figuring out my next project.

Your show at MoMA PS1, titled “Images,” features live cats, French pastries, adoptable iguanas, and salad. How did you select this group of objects? 

They were all highly appealing as sculpture.

The proceeds from your show go toward animal shelters and environmentalist causes. Do you consider this exhibition to be a form of activism?

No. Active activism would take on a different form I think. The exhibition was/is about sculpture and how to achieve it. What appears as activism is just a means to an end: sculpture. The success of the end is compromised by the means. But I think I like this, too. I am a big animal rights and environmental advocate (too often in private).

Visitors are able to adopt the animals featured in your exhibitions. Have you ever taken to one of the animals so much that you adopted it yourself?

I wish. My apartment is very small. Once I upsize, adoptions begin. 

In your experience, what are the perks and challenges of working with live animals?

Perks are the general joy and/or wonder of seeing a living being that’s not human. And then learning to engage with it “on its own terms.” Hopefully a natural, mutual affection (love) ensues. Challenges are always the ethical ones. It’s hard being human.

What is the future of the readymade?

The readymade had and has no future.

Jerry Saltz termed your work, “late-late-late post-Conceptual Relational Aesthetics.” Agree or disagree?  

Totally into it either way.

What’s the last show that you saw?

 Antoine Catala at 47 Canal.

What’s the last show that surprised you? Why?  

Same show. Antoine has a unique approach. I like that I like it, as well as liking the ‘art’ and ‘art objects’ it encompasses.  

What’s your favorite place to see art?

I have a big place in my heart for the Met.

Do you make a living off your art?

Somehow and usually.

What’s the most indispensable item in your studio? 

Laptop.

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?

 Everywhere except the places I’m not looking. Such a drag!

Do you collect anything?

Books, and weird stuff that people give me.

What’s the last artwork you purchased?

The only work I’ve ever purchased was a photograph by Dan Asher.

What’s the first artwork you ever sold?

My will.

What’s the weirdest thing you ever saw happen in a museum or gallery?

Fuck, I’m so bad at this stuff. No memories. 

What’s your art-world pet peeve?

Bad art. 

What’s your favorite post-gallery watering hole or restaurant?

Bacaro is around the corner from me and they have lots of red wine. I go there.

Do you have a gallery/museum-going routine?

Whenever I can. Which is less frequently nowadays. Not thrilled about that.

Know any good jokes?

One.  

What’s the last great book you read?

“The Ambassadors” by Henry James

What work of art do you wish you owned?

Oh no, hard question. I don’t know, probably some late 15th-century Italian portrait.

What would you do to get it?

Become a lot of people.

What international art destination do you most want to visit?

The Arena Chapel probably. 

When the 340-ton boulder that will be the centerpiece of Michael Heizer’s "Levitating Mass" rolled up in front of the Los Angeles County Museum at 4 am on Saturday morning, completing a logistically momentous 11-day, 105-mile journey from the quarry of its birth, truck horns blared and cheers erupted from the hundreds of people who’d waited through the night to greet it. The piece, which is due to be completed in late spring or early summer, is the most recent — and by far the heaviest — of several monumental works to be installed at the museum since the arrival of Michael Govan as director in 2006. The last five years have seen the installation of Chris Burden’s "Urban Light" at the Wilshire Boulevard entrance to the museum; Richard Serra’s "Band" on the ground floor of the Broad building; Barbara Kruger’s "Untitled (Shafted)" in that building’s three-story elevator shaft; and Tony Smith’s Smoke in the atrium of Ahmanson building. Developed in tandem with Renzo Piano’s comprehensive redesign of the museum’s 20 acre campus (still ongoing), the works point to the ambitious scale of Govan’s vision for the museum and its campus.

The day before the boulder’s arrival, ARTINFO Los Angeles spoke to Govan about how "Levitating Mass" figures into this vision.

What role do you see these big, iconic sculptures playing in shaping the institutional identity of the museum?

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between art and architecture in the making of place, metaphorically and practically. It’s a very ancient tradition. When we worked with Chris Burden to create "Urban Light," I took the glass off Renzo Piano’s planned entrance, pushed it back and put "Urban Light" out front. We’re making an image, a sense of place, a statement. My dream was that the images of the museum that would be in the guide books would be art works, not buildings.

I have an immense fascination with architectonic artworks. I think that they can engage the public in a different way. People don’t have to drive by and immediately say, “Oh, that’s an artwork.” They see 202 street lamps lit up [in "Urban Light"] and then start to think about that, and of course the more you think the more you get out of it. There are 202 19th-century street lamps; they were public art before there was public art; they’re installed in the form of a temple or an arcade. There are so many layers of meaning. And I think the Mike Heizer project works in the same way. When he proposed it, I knew it was the perfect. We had this big space on 6th Street, the park side of the campus, and I loved the idea of being able to exploit that sense of space that you get in the west — the desert, openness, flatness. You can see the sky everywhere there. Try that in New York City.

How do you see these big works balancing against the museum's other functions — the galleries and other collections, for instance?

One line of thinking since I got here has been about trying to leverage the outdoors in a way that would be meaningful — not just a big plot of grass with what I call plop sculpture. These sculptures work really well because they blur the line of where the museum is inside or outside. I do want to blur these lines more and we will further over time. In ancient times, a lot of art was outside. It’s a relatively modern idea that you make interior spaces and bring in paintings and frames. I don’t think of what we’re doing as very radical, it’s actually trying to channel some of the more fundamental ideas about art that are contained in our collections, since we have art from every time and place.

What have you made of the popular response to the rock, in the media and on the streets?

Mike Heizer and I knew that you weren’t going to move a 340-ton object without being noticed. We knew it was something complicated and interesting. But I don’t think anybody imagined that Bixby Knowles [a neighborhood in Long Beach where a celebration was held for the rock on the afternoon of March 7] would be attracting 15,000 people.

I thought it  would be more controversial than it is. It seems mostly that when people get close to it, they’re just fascinated. Not many of those people have the big picture, but they are definitely going to coming to LACMA to see the piece.

What do you say to people who say it’s an extravagance?

I actually enjoy that question, because there’s a very direct answer. Museums spend a lot more money than this on art all the time, often buying objects from other countries where the money goes away. Even that is justifiable. But the great thing about this piece is it’s like a WPA project in a tough economy. We’re putting artisans to work. An artist and concrete workers and steel workers and truckers and engineers and architects — we’re putting all these people to work. How much did the Getty just spend on their Turner painting? A lot more. It’s easy to respond that not only is it a justifiable expense — it’s what museums do — but it’s a building project, so it’s funneling all that money to a diverse group of people. Also it will bring people to LACMA for a long time who will spend money. So it’s a great benefit to the economy that’s going to pay back a lot more than it’s spent, which you can’t say directly of every painting you acquire.

It goes back to your original question of the motivation for doing these things. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that the museum has a role not only to show art but to facilitate the making of art. Maybe that’s my Dia experience. There’s no reason that a metropolitan museum of our scale can’t also be working with artists to facilitate the creation of art as well as acquiring finished objects to hang on the wall.

1. The Westboro Baptist Church objected to Radiohead’s Topeka, Kansas show last night, calling the band “freak monkeys with mediocre tunes.” [Radiohead at Ease via Pitchfork]

2. Seth MacFarlane showed the opening minutes of his first movie, “Ted,” which stars Mark Wahlberg as a man with a live, trouble-making teddy bear. [Inside Movies/EW]

3. Atari Teenage Riot frontman Alec Singer has given the money he earned licensing a song for a Sony ad to FreeAnons, an organization that provides legal aid to Anonymous hackers. [Pitchfork]

4. Read about all of this year’s network TV pilots. [THR]

5. For an interview with Rolling Stone, Fred Durst eschewed his slangy mode of hysterical appropriation and euphemistically described Limp Bizkit’s music as having an “urban element.” [RS via Daily Swarm]
Related: The ’90s Revival No One Asked for: Why Limp Bizkit and Rap-Rock Still Matter

Previously: Grimes, “Frat House,” “Ender’s Game,” GZA, and Soulja Boy

Jean Giraud, best known by his pen name Moebius, died on Saturday after a long illness, Le Monde reports. He was 73. The French illustrator created comics set in the American West and was especially admired for his wildly inventive science fiction and fantasy worlds.

After studying at Paris’s Ecole des Arts Appliqués, Giraud published his first comics in several children’s magazines during the mid-1950s. In 1963, he created the character Mike “Blueberry” Donovan, a hard-boiled American lieutenant, who appeared in the comic “Fort Navajo,” which was co-created by Giraud and Jean-Michel Charlier. Giraud signed this series “Gir,” a pen name that he continued to use for Blueberry throughout his career. The character was based on French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, though Moebius told Le Monde Magazine in 2010 that he also drew inspiration from Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Keith Richards when developing Blueberry, and he also cited directors Sam Peckinpah and John Ford as influences for his “movies on paper.”

In December 1974, Giraud co-founded the French comics magazine Métal Hurlant, whose American version, Heavy Metal, was launched in 1977. For his science fiction and fantasy work, he took the pen name Moebius from the Moebius strip, a twisted circular shape described by German mathematician August Ferdinand Moebius. Moebius debuted the character Arzach in the pages of Métal Hurlant, creating a story without words, in which the hero rides a pterodactyl-like creature through alien landscapes that evoke dreams and the subconscious.

While Blueberry and Arzach remain his most famous creations, Moebius worked on a number of different publications and projects, collaborating with Stan Lee in 1988 and 1989 on issues of the Silver Surfer and contributing storyboards and design elements to science fiction films including “Alien,” “Willow,” and “Tron.”

In 2010, Paris’s Cartier Foundation showed a retrospective of Moebius’s work. “My drawings are not about dreams during sleep over which no one has any control,” the artist told ARTINFO France at the time. “They are lucid dreams in which everything can appear: childhood memories, fleeting moods, anger, laziness. It’s very hard to identify exactly what is at work in these dreamworlds. While science fiction is based on prediction, I have progressively abandoned this notion to create hybrid drawings in the borderland of dreams.” 

Click on the slide show to see work by French comic book artist Moebius.

In a perfect union of two creative online uploading services, the 3-D printing marketplace Shapeways and the social audio-sharing site SoundCloud have created the Vibe, your favorite sound in phone case format. The hipper-than-hip modern-day marriage (unveiled at SXSW, no less), uses a 15-second audio clip of your choice and 3-D printing technology (which you can read about here) to create a one-of-a-kind case in black or white plastic. Get sentimental and use your baby’s first word, maybe — it'll be like the wallet photo of the future. 

In the early morning hours of Armory Week on Friday (normal morning hours for finance-types, just-waking-up hours for the rest of the art world) the Art Investment Council took over the media lounge of Pier 94, hosting a series of discussions pertaining to the art market. The besuited crowd that showed up to to hear the Wall Street Journal's Kelly Crow moderate a discussion on art funds was large, though not nearly as colorful as those who gathered in the room previous afternoon to see Björk and Ragnar Kjartansson take on the subject of coolness — illustrating the vast disparity in the way in which different audiences interact with art at fairs. 

The panel include fund managers Bruce Wilcox and Prajit Dutta, the latter of whom is also an economics professor at Columbia, Jeff Rabin of ArtVest Partners, who worked to created a fund that eventually got killed during the financial crisis while he was employed in financial services at Christie's, and Reuters finance blogger Felix Salmon, who has stated quite plainly that art funds "have strong claim to being the most ridiculous asset class in the world, no one should ever invest in them, and they invariably fail."                          

The group took on the controversial topic with pizazz. Theoretically, art funds are a way of capitalizing on the art market's tremendous growth (historically over the last last decade), but as Salmon points out (frequently) on his widely cited blog, they are extremely risky investment vehicles. After a boom in the mid-aughts, there aren't many funds still in operation post-2008. ArtVest puts the amount of invested assets at around $1 billion globally, which is not terribly large in investment terms (it's four Qatari Cezannes, for those counting). Those investment vehicles that actually complete their funding rounds, buy artworks, sell them, and return a profit to their investors are particularly rare (on either side of the economic crisis).

Though Salmon was outnumbered, he held his own, pointing out that most art funds fail, and the success-imbued makeup of the panel probably had more to do with survivor bias than the fundamental strengths of the industry. There were, however, some decent counterpoints to his doomsaying. While Salmon argued that art funds are "an animal that doesn't serve any obvious purpose," Wilcox came back with the point that neither, really, does gold. Touché.

The panel ended up compiling a sort of list of how to vet an art fund during the due diligence process as a potential investor. The following is a list of questions that the panel came up with:

— Who is the manager? What is his (or her) background? How much of his or her own capital is invested in the fund? Is he or she advising on art purchases outside of the fund? If so, make sure the best artworks are going into the funds, not into the hands of his or her private clients.

— What kind of art is the fund buying — is it reasonably priced enough that a return is probable? If it is in a particular section of the market (Chinese porcelain, Indian painters, etc.), is there reason to believe that the market is experiencing secular growth? Are the works good representatives of the artist's work? Is the fund's portfolio diversified?

— What's the fund's previous record? What's the track record like in bad years? Lastly, if the fund is reporting returns to you, make sure you know how much art is still in the portfolio waiting to be sold (if only two of 20 works have been sold, the rate of return doesn't mean much).

But really, the highlight of the discussion came at the end, from an audience member who reminded everyone that the larger art world still doesn't understand what art funds do, nor the huge risk associated with "investing" in art, and unintentionally showed how kooky the art market has become. Why would you buy into an art fund, she asked, when you could just buy at auction and flip it six months later for twice the price? (This had something to do with a small Gerhard Richter a friend had sold, or something). The answer is, quite plainly: If you think it's that easy, you shouldn't be risking your money doing either thing.

Overall, what was the takeaway of the panel? If you are going to gamble on art funds, at least do your homework and make sure you know how to play the game (and how to count the cards). 

A bindle — a cloth or blanket tied to a stick and the Depression-era travel accessory of choice for migrant workers — isn’t usually associated with luxury luggage brands. But for Miami-born, Detroit-based artist Hernan Bas, the bag became the subject of his new installation, “A Traveler,” produced in collaboration with Louis Vuitton. The exhibit is on display through November at the brand’s Aventura Mall location in Miami. For the show, Bas – who also has a Lehmann Maupin exhibition opening in New York on March 15 – took fabric and leather covered with the iconic Louis Vuitton monogram and quatrefoil, along with the brand’s signature checkered print, and tied the edges of the material around branches to create a pouch. Bas’s creations surround a screen projecting his film of a male model wandering through the woods, carrying one of the bindles and a bottle of Moët (which shares Louis Vuitton’s parent company LVMH). ARTINFO caught up with the artist, who talked about working with Louis Vuitton, living in Detroit, and how Baudelaire influenced his upcoming Lehmann Maupin show.

Did Louis Vuitton give you free reign over the project?

Frankly, yes. The first proposal I sent out was accepted with enthusiasm and I was never actually approached with any restrictions.

What made you think of bindles?

When I began the project I initially studied the history of Vuitton as a brand and as a cultural entity, and one notion kept coming to the surface: the art of travel. Trying to think of how my own work could marry into that world led me to consider the question of how a character in one of my paintings would travel. Hence the bindle – I’ve painted these sort of “runaways” before and years ago even photographed myself lounging around in fields with my own bindle.

What message are you trying to convey through the bindles? Is it a form of social commentary?

The message is purposefully ambiguous, that said there are some obvious implications of luxury versus utilitarian objects, but these weren’t my concerns when conceiving the project. I simply wanted to place or elevate even the roughest form of travel to a luxury level. My character travels with a Louis Vuitton bindle and prefers a bottle of Moët to a flask. This is a character, an invented one and not meant to be much more than a simple gesture, a line in a poem.

What were Louis Vuitton’s thoughts on your concept?

The overall response seemed to be that the history of Louis Vuitton tied into the project in unexpected and exciting ways. The father of Vuitton himself walked on foot to Paris to start his career, although no one mentioned him carrying a bindle on the trip.

How did the experience compare to creating the work for your upcoming Lehmann Maupin show, “Occult Contemporary?”

Producing the project for Louis Vuitton was a much more collaborative effort than my day-to-day efforts in the studio. While I produced the works on my own (with the exception of the video), I was still aware that my working with these materials made it an instant collaboration with the identity and history of a brand with a legacy and artistic image of its own. It was a bit of a friendly “monkey on one’s shoulder” – of course a very stylish monkey.  

“Occult Contemporary” is based on the Baudelaire quote, “The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.” How did you come across it and why did you decide to conceptualize a show around it? 

I approached the images in this show as portraying the devil as a sympathetic character. Through my research on so called “devil’s pacts” I found over and over again that it was the devil, not mankind, that was tricked or fooled in the end. The devil would follow through on his end of the deal and it was always man that weaseled out of the contract, and I just thought, he’s just trying to do his job and we keep ripping him off! On a broader level, the title of the show refers to the Baudelaire quote more directly. “Occult Contemporary” is a play on the term Adult Contemporary, a genre equivalent to elevator music. For me it is a moment culturally in which the devil could easily hide in plain sight, the occult more than ever is a lighthearted affair, children go to witches schools, vampires in high school, psychic children and ghost hunting all over the television. While I love the proliferation of all things supernatural there is a longing for those things to have the power to frighten and posses they way they could a century ago.  

You’re originally from Miami. Why did you move to Detroit?

Real estate would be the frontrunner, but I also find something very unique about this city – it is a bit wild. There is a certain energy around living potentially on the edge of collapse or recovery. It is also a great place if you crave some degree of isolation.   

How is the environment in Detroit for an artist compared to other places?

Everyone keeps saying it’s “the new Berlin,” and I can imagine that is due to the spaces artists can afford as compared to most other major cities. There are things happening here, but honestly, I don’t partake in much of the scene, as it wasn’t my reason for coming here. The DIA though is an amazing museum and I’m really happy I have somewhere to go if the itch to see great works starts to bug me.  

Click on the slide show to see images of Hernan Bas’s “A Traveler,” on view through November at Louis Vuitton Aventura Mall in Miami.

This is the second of a four-part series from Art+Auction magazine in which key art-market players weigh in on the future of the field. 
 

Looking back at the past few years, I think what we saw this time was a small correction in the art markets. There was a 12-month dip around 2009. But there was not a slump of five or more years as when the Japanese bubble burst in 1991. We were saved because now the markets are much more globalized. The danger now will be if there is a shock to the Chinese economy, because so many of the markets are being driven by them at this point, at the high end as well as the midmarket level.

But I do not see signs of such a setback in the data. The wealth in China is growing more quickly now than in the U.S. and Russia combined. Throughout Asia, but especially in China, the number of high-net-worth individuals is continuing to grow and the amount of money available to each is also increasing. More and more of that is being invested in so-called emotional assets: artworks, but also wine, jewelry, watches, and cars.

There was fear that we might be entering a bubble again, but I don’t think so. The midmarket segment, from $50,000 to $1 million, might get punished a bit in the next couple of seasons. But the real expensive pieces will hold value. Up through 2008 I predicted India would have a similar boom. But I didn’t realize how much of the Indian market was being driven by Westerners speculating. This is the advantage in China: They are buying back their own culture. And it is not just a fad; they will be buying that back for a long time.

—Roman Kraeussl is associate professor of finance at VU University Amsterdam, and the author of Art+Auction’s Databank column.

BUILDING NEW BRIDGES

The art world no longer has just two or three global centers. China might be the market locomotive right now, but there is interesting art in every country. Go to Vietnam, go to Cambodia—it’s like China 15 years ago. In 10 years the most interesting scene will be Burma.

In the past six months, at least two dozen collectors and curators have called me and asked for addresses of artists’ studios in Indonesia. I am sure that very soon some of the big Western galleries will be doing shows of Indonesian artists.

The biggest difference between Indonesia and more developed markets like China and India is not the strength of the art but the strength of the infrastructure—the galleries and museums. And that development is happening in various places. We see some Asian galleries opening other branches: ShangART and Tomio Koyama Gallery are both opening in Singapore. A national gallery is also under construction there and will open next year. And the Singaporean government is trying to encourage big collectors to open private museums.

While Indonesia is the scene on the brink, the market that is undeniably growing the fastest is China. It still may not be growing as quickly as we think, but the potential is huge. With Chinese collectors, and with almost all Asian collectors, the trajectory is the same: First they buy local artists, then they buy Western. That’s why it’s important to build up the bridges between these art scenes, to promote Chinese buying Japanese artists, Indians buying Indonesian artists, and so on.

—Lorenzo Rudolf is CEO and director of Art Stage Singapore, which debuted in 2011. He previously helmed Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, and SH Contemporary in Shanghai.

BEYOND THE OBVIOUS

It’s business as usual, as far as we’re concerned. 2009 was a surprisingly good year for us. We were able to buy some things we might not have chosen to buy or couldn’t afford previously. So was early 2010. As the market has regained momentum, we’ve had to exercise more caution, especially now, because Wall Street has taken notice and there are people coming into the market on a strictly speculative basis.

You can see areas of activity where you need to be very careful; an artist may be having a ‘moment’ that may not have anything to do with the long-term merits of the work. But these surges shouldn’t scare anyone from the market; you simply have to be aware of them.

There are a number of people who are buying based on market dynamics, buying artists that the market favors. We try consciously to buy independently of this dynamic, even though sometimes our interests overlap with what’s happening. The truth is that the market homogenizes the art world. It becomes such a narrow place, especially if you’re only playing in that narrow realm of the auction world, with 20 or 30 artists who come up every season. Occasionally you can get wonderful deals at auction, but you are more often likely to pay a premium when you buy there.

It’s much more interesting as a process of learning and discovery to go out and find work that may not be on everyone’s radar screen, because it hasn’t been predigested.

My clients want a financial perspective on what they’re buying. They want to understand why they’re paying what they’re paying and to make sure it’s consistent with other works by the artist—or to make the decision knowledgeably if they choose to pay more. While it’s not an investment mentality, it’s certainly a financially prudent mentality, and that has become more the case since the market crashed in 2008. Everyone wants more information now.

—Mary Hoeveler is a New York–based private art adviser focused on contemporary art. Previously she was managing director at Citigroup Art Advisory Service.

INVESTMENT GRADE

In the not too distant past, people argued vociferously about whether art should be considered an asset class or if it was meant primarily for connoisseurship and personal enjoyment. Over the past five years people have finally accepted that it can actually be both. That change in attitude has been concurrent with tremendous worldwide wealth creation over the past 15 years. As a result, more people than ever are looking to invest in tangible assets—certainly in the United States, though Asian economies and European ones have always viewed tangible assets as a store of wealth. The investment potential of art will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Regarding art funds, one of the most talked-about art investment vehicles, we are seeing and will continue to see a steady climb in the number of funds coming to market. Based on our numbers and data, we estimate the global art-fund industry is somewhere in the $1 billion range, with Asian funds accounting for approximately one-third of that total. That’s up significantly over the past five years. I think what will be key is that people are able to do the due diligence on the existing funds, and feel comfortable with the way they are managed—the time frame, the conflict issues, preferential return, fee structures, and the adviser group that is working on these particular funds. An important issue when valuing art funds: How they charge their fees? Do they mark-to-market assets based on appraised value or do they hold all the assets in the fund at the cost of acquisition when assessing fees?

Art funds are distinct from private investment partnerships, which are generally groups of individuals who have pooled resources to invest in art or other assets. Private investment partnerships are also on the rise, but as there is no public documentation, it is hard to get a real sense of how much money is invested in these vehicles.

—Jeff Rabin, with Michael Plummer, co-founded Artvest Partners, an art advisory firm that provides investment advice on the art market. The two previously worked at Christie’s in financial services.

– Guggenheim Gets a Frown in Helsinki: A survey published in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has revealed that a whopping 75 percent of Helsinki's inhabitants are against the construction of a new Guggenheim in their city. The project, which would cost an estimated €140 million ($184 million) to build and require more than €14.5 million ($19 million) running costs per year, is seen as inappropriate by the practical Finns, considering the city's economic situation. Helsinki has until the end of April to announce an official decision. [Journal des Arts]

– "He Who Seeks, Finds": The ongoing search for Leonardo da Vinci's lost fresco "The Battle of Anghiari," supposedly hidden beneath Giorgio Vasari's "The Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana" in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, has intensified. Drilling holes in the later wall painting, researchers have identified pigments similar to those used by Leonardo for the "Mona Lisa." Researchers are now seeking permission to drill more holes into the center of Vasari's work. Teasing the scientists' curiosity, Vasari included in his piece the image of a soldier holding a banner stating, "He who seeks, finds." [Guardian]

– Cunningham Could Dance On in France: Though the Merce Cunningham Dance Company disbanded on December 31 following its founder's death in 2009, it may re-emerge in France if company veteran Robert Swinston's application to be the director of the Centre National de Danse is accepted. He plans to bring on two more Cunningham vets and enter a partnership with the legendary choreographer's trust to continue teaching his method and adapting his work. [NYT]

– Huguette Clark's Jewels Go to Auction: When the reclusive heiress died last spring at 104, she revealed to the world an extensive collection of Renoirs and Monets. Though those artworks are to be displayed publically, according to her will, her jewelry collection will be auctioned off at Christie's New York on April 17. The diamond rings and emerald bracelets were reportedly locked away in Clark's bank vault for more than 80 years. [MSNBC] 

– Is Spiral Jetty Supposed to be Dirty?: Some Utah residents believe that Robert Smithson's work of land art, which has been threatened by past and potential oil experimentation as well as the accumulation of trash, may have been intended to get a bit dirty. "He [Smithson] wanted to show that art could end up healing the Earth that's already been pulverized," said a local art historian. [Salt Lake Tribune via A1] 

– The Case of the Wildensteins and Missing Impressionist Works: A major painting by Berthe Morisot is missing from her exhibition at the Marmottan Monet museum because it is currently in police custody after being seized last year from a vault owned by the embattled Wildenstein art-dealing family. Morisot's great-grandson has high hopes that the Wildensteins might lead him to four other missing works by Manet, his great-great uncle, and Jean-Baptiste Corot, Morisot's teacher, worth a total of €45 million. [Bloomberg] 

– First Women of Brooklyn: Next month, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum will give out its inaugural First Awards — in the form of a glass sculpture by Judy Chicago — to 15 women who are leaders in their respective fields, including Toni Morrison, Connie Chung, and Sandra Day O'Connor. [NYT]

– Florida Forger in California Court: Alleged art forger Matthew Taylor — who stands accused of defrauding $2 million from a Los Angeles art collector by touching up works by unknown artists and passing them off as masterpieces by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock — pleaded not guilty in California federal court yesterday. The Florida resident is said to have created false labeling to convince the collector that his wares were once in the collection of major museums, including the Guggenheim. [HuffPo] 

– Art Dubai Reboots: The art fair has been repackaged as the central event in an ambitious and multi-pronged initiative called Art Week, which encompasses a broad program of cultural events in the Gulf this month. Among these offerings is a new fair, Design Days Dubai, that seeks to tap into Middle Eastern tastes for limited-edition furniture. [FT via AMM]

– British Artists Rally Against Homelessness: Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin, Gillian Wearing, Sir Anthony Caro, and Jonathan Yeo have all given new works to be sold at Christie's on May 3, with proceeds going to the charity for Crisis, a charity that fights homelessness. "I believe that sculpture can powerfully evoke the nameless, the voiceless and the placeless," said Gormley. [Guardian]

– Little Shop of Lotuses: A space in San Francisco's Civic Center plaza vacated last month by Chinese artist Zhang Huan's enormous Buddha sculpture will sprout another large-scale public artwork this spring. Korean artist Choi Jeon Hwa's "Breathing Flower," a monumental red lotus flower with motorized petals, will take root on May 18, coinciding with the artist's exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. [HuffPo]

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

"Try That in New York City": Michael Govan on What Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" Brings to LACMA

25 Questions for Conceptual Sculptor Darren Bader

Experts Predict Art Market Trends, Part 1: Emmanuel Di Donna, Thomas Seydoux, Karsten Greve, Marc Glimcher

French Comic Book Legend Moebius, Creator of Western and Fantasy Icons, Is Dead at Age 73

How to Play the Art Fund Game: A Few Lessons From the Armory Show's Contentious Art Finance Panel

Meet Birdhead, China's Hottest Photographic Duo

Linda Emond has been an “actor’s actor” and a critical darling  since she made her New York stage debut, in 1996, in Leslie Ayvazian’s “Nine Armenians.” Role after challenging role followed for the New Jersey-born actress, including Craig Lucas’s “The Dying Gaul” and a Tony-nominated turn in Yasmina Reza’s “Life x 3.” But it was her hour-long monologue in Tony Kushner’s “Homebody/Kabul” in 2003, where she played a London housewife tragically obsessed with Afghanistan, which garnered everybody’s attention, including that of Mike Nichols. When the director started making a list of actors for his new Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman,” there was only one he would  consider for Linda, the patient, overwhelmed wife in Arthur Miller’s domestic tragedy.

“I knew that if I ever did a production of ‘Death of a Salesman,’ it would have to be Linda — there is no greater actress,” says Nichols, who has worked with more than a few, including Meryl Streep. When Emond got the call from Nichols, she was in the midst of preparing for her role as the dutiful, if torn, lesbian daughter of a bitter Brooklyn Socialist in Kushner’s “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures.” At 41, Emond says that it has been both “exhilarating and frightening” to try to scale “Death,” which seems to grow “deeper, wider and more demanding” as the cast — which includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Willy, and Andrew Garfield as Biff — dive into it. “It’s big and Greek,” says Emond, “even if you are saying lines while standing in a little kitchen.”

Has Nichols been intimidating to work with?
I’ve always been in awe of the man’s career and the breadth of work that he’s done. One of my favorite routines has always been the Elaine May-Mike Nichols sketch where they’re at the Emmys and she presents a mock award for mediocrity. I’m paraphrasing, but when she announces Mike’s name, you can never forget the over-the-moon expression on his face as he runs down the aisle. Couple that with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate” and talk about daunting! But, on a personal level, I’ve known Mike through Tony [Kushner] for years and all that fades in the background. He’s just this lovely, supportive, and generous man.

I heard the first weeks of rehearsal were tough.
Mike does not comparmentalize his honesty. He’s candid about everything — his personal life, his deep and larger feelings about the world — and therefore, indeed, he was very honest about his insecurities. But not in a debilitating way. I mean, you don’t want to walk in as the biggest ego in the room, yet you have to hold onto your ego, so that you can be as honest and open and human as you can. Mike’s insecurity is sort of charming. “That was an awful note I gave you, just awful,” [he would say], and many times it wasn’t awful at all.  Facing a play like this, it’s not pleasant where you have to go, but it’s deeply rewarding, and Mike helps you get there.

What’s the hardest part of preparing for a role like this?
You have to be prepared to fail.  You have to make mistake after mistake after mistake and that can be embarrassing. But that’s how you grow. Mike would just kick our butts! He wanted us to fail. To not be afraid of failing. To get past that.

What can you draw from your own life in creating Linda?
I just had a blackout! That’s probably a protective measure because I’m still working on her and continue to do so. I will say that I’ve been very moved by how misguided these people can be, how damaged and lost and yet heroic at times. How beautiful they are in simply being human. I don’t think you can look at this family and say, “That’s them, not me.” It’s a great reminder that we’re all fallible human beings with our weakness, delusions and foibles.

The play was written in 1949, and Willy treats Linda dismissively, if not cruelly, at times. You can feel the audience flinch when he tells her to “shut up.” Is it difficult to play these scenes now?
Linda’s a woman of her own time, no question about that. Her dreams could be nothing other than his dreams. But I take it in the moment. One person’s dismissive is another person’s “I don’t really care.” Linda recognizes Willy’s sudden desire to be involved again and to be really engaged with his sons’s lives so she immediately forgives him. It’s understandable that she would acquiesce because she is as excited as he is, and hopes that this will make him not grab the rubber pipe that is down in the basement and do something terrible [to himself]. Miller once told Elia Kazan [the original director of “Death of a Salesman”], “This is one tough lady.” She’d have to be to be with Willy. That doesn’t mean that certain people don’t accept certain things in the name of love. This is a couple that truly loves each other.

Was there a line or scene in the play that provided a “eureka” moment?
Have you read Miller’s stage directions at the beginning? “Linda, his wife, has stirred in her bed … Most often jovial … ” Jovial? Really? “ … she has developed an iron repression of her exceptions to Willy’s behavior — she more than loves him, she admires him … ” I just followed the guy. In there, I don’t see a lot of feelings of abuse.

Has being in the play made you more forgiving of yourself?
I’m harder on myself than anybody else, that’s for sure, but I’m a fairly forgiving person. I think I’m more affected when Willy admits to feeling “temporary.” We are temporary. It’s the core of our existence. That spurs to me to make better and better choices in my life and that’s something that this play has affirmed … My dresser likes to say, “Spoiler alert. Its called ‘Death of a Salesman.’ And when Willy gives away his money and says, “Take all of it. I don’t need it anymore,” you can hear people gasp in the audience almost every night. “Oh, no!” That just shows the desire to live and live and live. And somehow make it through.

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