A recent New York Times article in which the author counseled people to mistrust their basic financial instincts struck me at first glance as, well, perverse. The gist of the story was that an investor’s intuition is often wrong.

But it got me thinking about whether the same might be true of those investing in art. Certainly some of the common investing errors presented by the article’s author, John F. Wasik, seem to be committed by art buyers. He warned, for instance, against misreading short-term results as predictive of future market trends, and against changing strategy in reaction to events beyond the market. He also cautioned that investors often get into trouble early on by trading too actively.

In general, these observations apply equally to art markets and financial markets. Sold-out shows are no guarantee of a long and successful artistic career. Recent events have proved that threats to the global economy don’t necessarily depress prices or the demand for art. And we all know collectors who tell stories of early missteps — tales of unwarranted enthusiasm or of the one that got away.

But there are also differences worth noting between buying art and investing elsewhere, such as the importance of hot streaks in an artist’s career. Seldom does a streak turn into a consistently broadening market, of course, but once an artist finds favor among a group of buyers, they will often remain dedicated. And a comparatively small coterie of collectors can support an artist’s prices for years — long after equity traders would have recognized the investment’s diminishing returns, sold their stock, and moved on.

At heart, the phenomenon of collector perseverance is about the emotional attachment that comes with a purchase of art. In Judd Tully’s profile of Jean Pigozzi in this month's issue of ART+AUCTION, the venture capitalist and voracious collector admits, “Financially, I should have focused on China because the market is 100 times bigger than Japan’s….But I think the Japanese are a step ahead into craziness and weirdness.”

I am not going to speculate on the peculiar psychology that leads perfectly rational and intelligent businesspeople to ignore their better financial judgment and follow their desires when it comes to buying art. But the reality is that many of them do just this, and at hefty price points, too.

We all know the merits of sleeping on a big decision. We have all heard how important it is to take time and conduct research before making a commitment. This is the best way to avoid folly when buying art. Hiring an adviser to shape a broad strategy also helps reduce risk. And yet, knowing all this, the strange thing is that a lot of collectors buy an artwork simply because they like it. It’s a distinction that sets art apart. And in the end, that might be a good thing.

Benjamin Genocchio is editor-in-chief of Art + Auction magazine and ARTINFO.com

At the last Paris Fashion Week, See by Chloé created a stir with its invitation-only online catwalk show. No more front row politics here. Buyers and fashion editors watched the fashion house's latest creations on their computers and smartphones, while the production itself was taking place, audience-free, in a Parisian studio. It might seem like a cost-cutting, slightly geeky experiment, but initiatives of this kind might genuinely transform the idea of the "live" experience. Unlike a live television broadcast, web streaming allows for a sophisticated relationship between the show providers and their public, who can not only be invited, but also respond to what they see, share it with like-minded contacts, and even interact directly with the various actors involved. Paradoxically, performers and audience might become closer when physically separated.

Last night Tate jumped on the online live performance bandwagon with the first show in their new series BMW Tate Live. French choreographer and dancer Jérôme Bel performed an adapted version of his 1997 "Shirtology" piece in a locked room at Tate Modern. The door policy was more democratic than at Chloé's, and all web users were invited to enter the "performance room" online. Spectators, at the gallery like anywhere else in the world, watched the performance on a screen. "I did wonder at the beginning whether the artists would think this is a very weird idea," Tate's curator of contemporary art and performance Catherine Wood told ARTINFO UK. "But as soon as we talked to Jérôme, he said: 'It's perfect! I've been rehearsing my dances by Skype.' For him it felt like a natural extension." Over the next three years, BMW Tate Live will commission five performances a year. Pablo Bronstein, Harrell Fletcher, Joan Jonas, and Emily Roysdon are soon to follow Bel in the performance room.

While the web enables endless formatting options, the performances at Tate will be filmed with just one camera, putting the focus on the action rather than on the technology. "How do you graft the purest, concrete space of the white cube to the network through the simplest means?" asked Wood. "It was the idea of the fourth wall of the white cube turned into a camera, and giving it this interface onto the screen. The set up is kind of like some kids performing in their bedroom for their webcam meets Bruce Nauman in the 1960s and 1970s performing for the camera in the studio."

After last night's performance, Bel answered questions on Twitter and Facebook. "The development of technology has transformed people’s approach to art," said Tate director Chris Dercon. "Audiences today expect more interaction, participation, and personalization than ever before. BMW Tate Live will answer this need." It will also, crucially, continue to develop Tate as a global brand with a worldwide audience (that BMW is clearly keen to impress). Many Tate "users" have never set foot in Britain. The figures speak for themselves: last year, while 7,450,000 people visited one of the four Tate galleries, 19,427,000 logged onto the website, and that number is likely to continue to grow with the launch of a new website next year. Watching performers on a screen might not be as rewarding as being able to feel their presence in the room, and, some will argue, can't superseded it, but online live art can be shared by thousands rather than hundreds.

The challenge is to not sacrifice quality for quantity. Does Wood fear that, with this new format, something of the live experience might be lost? "I was more interested in what we would gain, " she answered. "The question of live versus recorded, and the whole thing about how much performance documentation is the work and how much it is a record of the work, is already part of the debate about performance. Those things were already quite blurred with the aesthetic of narcissism in the 1960s. But it's getting so much more blurred now by the way people use their iPhone, and Skype. Live-ness is inherently mediated by technology in the world we live in now. There will always be a place for just a person in a room and a live audience, but I think this is part of the evolution of performance art that we can't ignore."

A version of this article first appeared on ARTINFO UK.

Every Friday ARTINFO video editor Tom Chen, photo editor Micah Schmidt, and performing arts editor Nick Catucci choose five of the most visually engaging music videos from the previous week. Here are descriptions and a slideshow of stills linking to the full clips, plus highlights from each in video supercut. Today ...

A woman digs deep for transcendence in Ceremony’s “Adult.”

Keaton Henson’s “Small Hands” shows a fake forest teeming with life.

Rye Rye vies for gaudiest video of the year with “Boom Boom.”

The shirts come off and joints come out in Chief Keef’s “I Don't Like,” featuring Lil Reese.

In “Bout Dat Wo,” a shirtless Lil B accesorizes with a pink bandana and a shotgun.
 

Previously: Danny Brown, Orbital, Exile, Juicy J, and Vaura

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, March 19-23, 2012:

ART

— With the Armory Show in the past, Julia Halperin dug up the cost of participating in the week's fairs for four galleries, from booth prices and insurance to taxis and food — which one gallery ate to the tune of $2,000.

—The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht ends on Sunday, and Paul Laster reports that sales have been very strong, thanks in part to major works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Peter Paul Rubens, and more.

— Steven Henry Madoff reviews the Museum of Modern Art's retrospective of photographer Cindy Sherman, rhapsodizing: "Each She that Sherman makes is a playful jolt of other-life, floating off like a bubble from her factory of selves."

— Researchers have begun drilling holes into a Giorgio Vasari fresco in Florence because they believe that Leonardo Da Vinci's presumed-destroyed painting "Battle of Anghiari" may be concealed behind it, but their theory may be similarly full of holes.

— Art Dubai opened this week, with Madeleine O'Dea reporting strong sales that confirm the fair's standing as the foremost in the region. It concludes tomorrow.

DESIGN & FASHION

— Ann Binlot previews the Denver Art Museum's "Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective" — which opens on Sunday — the first posthumous exhibition on the impeccable French designer, who died in 2008.

— Like Cindy Sherman before him, Andy Warhol will lend his name and aesthetic to a new line of costmetics, "Nars Andy Warhol," a limited-edition collaboration between makeup giant NARS and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

— Speaking of art and style cross-over products, Terence Koh has collaborated with Italian fashion house Peutery to produce a jacket with a milk-like texture, while industrial designer Karim Rashid opted for a more painterly effect.

— Ann Binlot reports that the Victoria & Albert Museum is planning an exhibition of film costumes for the fall that will include outfits worn by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz," Kate Winslet in "Titanic," and more.

— After speaking to its lead designer last month, Janelle Zara reported that the underground park planned for New York's Lower East Side, the Low Line, will be the subject of a new exhibition at the Mark Miller Gallery opening April 1.

PERFORMING ARTS

— ARTINFO film correspondent J. Hoberman looks at three excellent films hitting theaters this weekend — including Abel Ferrara's apocalyptic "4:44 Last Day on Earth" — and concludes that it's OK to miss the week's most anticipated release, "The Hunger Games."

— Patrick Pacheco parses veteran of screen and stage Frank Langella's new memoir, "Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them," for its juiciest name-drops.

— Nick Catucci listens to Unsane's new album — their first since 2007 — "Wreck," which, he says, "out-bludgeons any other disc released so far this year."

— J. Hoberman assesses the offerings on this year's roster for the Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center's "New Directors/New Films" series, including SXSW favorite "Gimme the Loot" and Cannes best first film winner "Las Acacias."

— The first official from phenomenally buzzy Los Angeles-based horrorcore rap collective Odd Future, "The OF Tape, Vol. 2," is only sporadically deranged.

OTHER

— Following last week's list of the best artist retreats in the U.S., Alanna Martinez and Chloe Wyma compiled a collection of the oddest artist residencies in the world, from an artificial island to the Large Hadron Collider.

WHAT: Larry Poons’s “Recent Works”

WHEN: March 24-April 27, Monday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.



WHERE: Mark Borghi Fine Art, 255 Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida



WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: After receiving notoriety early in his career, Larry Poons has had nothing but time to perfect, and consistently evolve, his practice. The Tokyo-born American artist, who took a right turn into an art career after receiving formal music training, will be showing his most recent work at Mark Borghi Fine Art’s Palm Beach location. There couldn’t be a more fitting venue to showcase the artist’s wild, uninhibited, and musically inclined paintings.

Though his work has been categorized as hard-edged, op art, and abstract expressionist (among other things), Poons marches to the beat of his own drum. Each of his new paintings may contain several hundred colors of paint, but the individual brush strokes contrast and pop, and are organized in combinations and repetitions similar to the way a composer writes music. His new paintings are methodically mathematical while casually giving off an air of spontaneity.

Click on the slide show to see paintings from the exhibition. 

With seven international Web sites covering visual arts, breaking news, performing arts, fashion, travel, society, and culture, ARTINFO’s reach spans the globe. In our new weekly roundup, our editors have picked out some recent highlights from ARTINFO Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and United Kingdom. (For those who speak other languages, check out ARTINFO China and France.) Enjoy!

AUSTRALIA

— Results of the First Major Auction of Australian Art for 2012 Held by Menzies Art Brands

— Sleeper Sculpture by Emil Wolff Sets Saleroom Alight at Australian Auction

— How an Australian-Born Rabbi Got His "Jewish Pop Art" on Oprah

CANADA

— Glenfiddich Artist in Residency Program and OCAD University Announce Canadian Winner, 2012

— Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge Discuss Art, Politics, and the National Gallery's "Bad Faith"

— Curator Denise Markonish on the Largest-Ever Survey of Canadian Art to Happen Outside Canada

HONG KONG

— Shoe Fetishists Alert - Louboutin Celebrates 20 Years in Shoes

— Taking Inspiration From Everything But Fashion, Designers Build a Daydream Nation in Hong Kong

— Artists Explore What it Means to be Dressed

INDIA

— Behind Closed Doors: A Peek into Saloni Doshi’s Space 118

— Dhaka to Host Bangladesh’s First Art Summit

— Love and Marriage: Photographer Sunil Gupta’s New Show Explores Dichotomy

UNITED KINGDOM

— Can the Web Transform Performing Arts? Choreographer Jérôme Bel Inaugurates Tate's Virtual "Performance Room"

— Heading South: The Jerwood Gallery Champions British Art in Hastings

— "I Don't Do Pavilions": Dan Graham Sets the Record Straight

The buzz among actors in New York, especially in the African-American community, is about the workshops of two promising projects: “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” the Tupac Shakur jukebox musical directed by Kenny Leon and “Super Fly: The Musical,” Bill T. Jones’s adaptation of the Gordon Parks, Jr. blaxploitation film from 1972. “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” which will be in workshop in New York from April 23 through May 11, is being produced by the Gold Company, headed by Eric Gold, the talent manager for Ellen DeGeneres and Jim Carrey. Carrey attended the last workshop of the Broadway-bound musical, in October 2011, because he and Tupac were friends. An actor who was in that previous workshop told us that the show has tremendous potential, but that the book is “a mess.”

No surprise there. Librettos for musicals are notoriously difficult, and fitting a story within existing songs — as this does, using the Tupac catalogue — is a jigsaw puzzle. Faced with that challenge is 37-year-old Todd Kreidler, a one-time protégé of the late playwright August Wilson and associate artistic director at the True Colors Theatre in Atlanta, headed by Leon. (The duo are also working together on a musical adaptation of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the 1967 Sidney Poitier movie about interracial marriage.) According to the actor we spoke to,  “Holler” is about a young black man who returns to his neighborhood after a stint in prison. The casting notice for the workshop, which calls for “terrific rappers,” further describes the musical as “set in present-day in the inner city streets of a mid-western industrial city.” It is the story of two childhood friends, one of whom must decide whether to continue life as a drug dealer or to go straight by purchasing a garage with his friend.

The stakes are raised when a gangland shooting makes that decision all the more difficult, despite the remonstrations of a mother who is described in the casting notice as having “tough but compassionate love.” It’s not too much of a stretch to see the character as having been inspired by Alfeni Shakur Davis, Tupac’s mother, who controls her son’s estate and who has given her blessing to the project. TMZ reported that she was “ecstatic” over an earlier workshop. In a scene from the musical, a mother implores her son to change. Chagrined at the prospect of burying yet another child, she refuses to become involved in her son’s plight by keeping money for him. This prefaces Tupac’s song “Dear Mama”: “When I was young me and my mama had beef/17 -years-old, kicked out on the streets/Though back at the time I’d see her face/Ain’t a woman that could take my mama’s place.” Leon, who in this season alone has directed “The Mountaintop” and “Stick Fly,” told PBS that he hoped the musical would reach Broadway by the 2012-13 season. “The idea was always to make a musical inspired by his music and not to do an autobiographical approach to his life,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bill T. Jones told me at the opening night of “Jesus Christ Superstar” on March 22 that his current workshop of “Super Fly: The Musical” – which he is directing and choreographing – now features a book written by television writer Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and the newest addition to the team, Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys,” “Addams Family,” “Peter and the Starcatcher”). Jones, who has two Tony Awards for choreographing “Spring Awakening” and “Fela!” said that “Super Fly” will feature music of the period, including songs from Curtis Mayfield’s Grammy-nominated score. “The album,” he said, “sold even more units than the film sold tickets.” Jones was at the opening with his longtime creative director Bjorn Amelan and Tommy Mottola, the legendary record producer who will be co-producing “Super Fly” with Dodger Productions. The Dodgers – who with Andrew Lloyd Webber are behind the current revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar” – gave renewed impetus to the careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons through their smash hit, “Jersey Boys.” It’ll be interesting to see if they can do the same for Mayfield and ’70s-era soul, funk, and R&B artists. If all goes well with the workshop, which concludes in three weeks, the plans call for a pre-Broadway tryout in San Francisco before the end of the year. 

The Whitney's forthcoming pop-up studio, designed to host the museum's supplementary educational programming, will have a bold presence in its Madison Avenue courtyard. The dramatic black cube features a diagonal swath of neon yellow glass that cuts into it on one side and runs over the roof to the other, providing at once two windows and a skylight, brightening the interior, and allowing passersby a glimpse of what’s going on inside. It abounds in angular geometries, sharply cut diagonals, and plays on the most basic of shapes. While the construction is relatively straight forward, it stands out radically, marking a sharp contrast to the museum's concrete exterior.

It’s also made entirely of shipping containers, the material of choice for LOT-EK (a play on "low technology"), the New York-based architectural firm commissioned for the project. To construct the pop-up studio, they stacked two layers of containers and partially cut the interior to create a mezzanine, resulting in a succinct, 472-square-foot minimalist cube. While shipping containers come in one shape, the rigid rectangular prism, the firm doesn't find them limiting, according to principal Giuseppe Lignano.  

"It’s not very dissimilar from art that went on in the '70s," he told ARTINFO, referring to the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Simon Gouverneur. "We're playing with these kind of plain, basic geometric shapes, but distorting them, intersecting them, splitting them open, making them do things they don’t really want to do. By imposing another geometry, we come up with surprising shapes and volumes."

Lignano and fellow principal Ada Tolla have been perfecting their use of these leftover boxes of steel for nearly 20 years, having founded LOT-EK in Naples in 1993. Devoting themselves to sustainable architecture, they’ve made it an inherent part of their practice to “upcycle” these overproduced vessels, to make use of what they refer to as a "marginal aspect of our civilation." At the Whitney in 2004, LOT-EK presented their Mobile Dwelling Unit, a complete shipping container housing structure with functioning bathing, cooking, and sleeping amenities. The firm is also playing a hand in Manhattan’s Pier 57 redevelopment program, which will include a shipping container market with a rooftop mezzanine. Their next shipment lands at the Whitney in April.

To see more shipping container architecture by LOT-EK click on the slide show.

The directors of the world's great art collections are generally paid well for what they do. In 2008, in his seventh year as director of the Louvre, Henri Loyrette earned an estimated base salary of €7,500 ($9,928) a month. As director of the Metropolitan Museum, director Philippe de Montebello was compensated that year with $916,030. You'd think that Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance, would value culture — after all, it took in $38 billion in tourism revenue last year, a lot of it drawn to storied sites like the Uffizi Galleries and the Doge's Palace. Not so, however. In fact, Italian museum directors are making a stink about their paltry salaries. 

In an open letter (published in translation here), the managers of some of Italy's most famous museums cite the "need for transparency" outlined by the new centrist government of Mario Monti to draw attention to the issue of low pay. Though they may oversee the most prestigious museums in Venice, Florence, and Rome, compensation for these museum directors is less than that of their peers in France, Spain, and the United States. Quite a bit less.

"We are functionaries with complex responsibilities that range from personnel management, to fund raising, to museum directorship, to highly specialized roles in curatorship, restoration, and scholarly research," the letter reads. "And yet we do not earn more than €2,000 [$2,600] a month, with no real benefits in addition to our stipend, and no other type of compensation more than €1,780 [$2,356]." In the United States, that would put them in the league of the median starting salaries for telemarketers, adminstrative assistants, and cable TV installers.

Among the letter's authors were Palazzo di Venezia director Andreina Draghi, National Museum of Rome director Rita Paris, and Antonio Natali, director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. Anna Lo Bianco, who directs the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, believes her salary represents a gross underestimation of the country's cultural treasures. "We have an enormous heritage, so many works of art, museums, churches, and paintings. Our heritage isn't given proper consideration, and neither are its caretakers," she told ARTINFO. "Maybe we need to move ourselves closer to the world of politics, and to ask for what we haven't had."

Public service in Italy has long been characterized by inefficiency and cynicism, and the cultural sector is no exception. Lo Bianco and her colleagues have felt under-appreciated for quite some time, but the straw that broke the camel's back arrived earlier this year during negotiations that would have augmented their monthly salary by €150 ($200). Highly accomplished museum directors, almost all of whom carry PhDs, were asked by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage to produce photocopies of their university credentials. The directors were appalled. "It was ridiculous," Rita Paris told ARTINFO. "After my thirty-two year career in the field, did they really need me to prove that I had a degree?"

Though the Ministry of Cultural Heritage has not publicly responded to the open letter, Lo Bianco and Paris say they spoke with Ministry chief of staff Salvatore Nastasi, and described the conversations with restrained optimism. "They wanted to know who we are, what our contracts look like, and if they can find ways to arrive at an accomodation," she said. "It's encouraging, but we're not hoping for much. We'll have to wait and see."

DENVER — Tuxedos and evening gowns were out Friday night as 800 special guests strutted across a pink carpet to gather at the Denver Art Museum’s black-tie gala to welcome the very fashionable exhibition “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective.” Once inside, guests dispersed over the museum’s first two floors, where a twisted cluster of giant black balloons rose along the staircase, leading to the second-floor exhibition. 

Guests mingled and sipped on special Yves Saint Laurent Grey Goose Cherry Noir martinis and munched on truffles and canapés before previewing the retrospective, which opened to the public on March 25. Two of Saint Laurent’s closest confidants were there, taking pride in continuing the legacy of their beloved friend: Yves Saint Laurent co-founder and partner Pierre Bergé, and the muse whom Saint Laurent considered his twin sister, Betty Catroux. The Colorado band DeVotchka, French ambassador François Delattre, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and a few Colorado “Project Runway” alums, including Ivy Higa, were also present to fête the exhibition of the legendary designer’s work.

“We spent our lives together, we loved each other, I miss everything, every day, every minute I miss him,” Catroux, looking chic in a YSL haute couture tuxedo jacket, told ARTINFO. “But we try to prolong him this way — with the exhibition, and talking about him — Pierre Bergé and myself.”



A beaming Bergé addressed the guests before the galleries opened for viewing. “I know,” Bergé told the crowd, “I know very well Yves Saint Laurent would be so proud and happy with it in Denver, with us.” That night, it was Denver that was proud and happy to have Yves Saint Laurent there.


Click on the slide show to see pictures from the gala for “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective” 

We suffered in silence for 17 months for the season five premiere of AMC’s “Mad Men," and so it was with great anticipation that we awaited the respite brought by last night’s two-hour television extravaganza. The show, of course, is a pitch-perfect study of the sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism of the era, as well as a more general essay on the loneliness that defines the human condition. The women’s costumes in particular seamlessly acknowledge the claustrophobic mores imposed on women — homemakers and professionals — at the dawn of the sexual revolution. Yet from the beginning "Mad Men" has also become a style icon in its own right – it’s been widely praised for its meticulous, historically accurate sets, costumes, and soundtrack, and was even the inspiration for a flimsy, overpriced line of clothing at Banana Republic. 

To mark the new season we — that would be style editor Ann Binlot and senior editor Sarah Kricheff — offer our rundown of important fashion highs and lows from last night’s episode.

ANN'S PICKS

Best Birthday Present

Va va va voom! Megan Draper’s black trapeze minidress with the sheer bell butterfly sleeves and rhinestone collar was so sexy. I’d like that for my 40th birthday. Her rendition of Gillian Hills’s “Zou Bisous Bisous” was the icing on the cake.

Most Likely to Get You Kicked Out of Your Office

I don’t know about that red, navy, and white diagonal striped tie with the blue and navy plaid jacket that Harry Crane was wearing. With that hideous ensemble, it’s no wonder they’re making him trade his office with Pete.

Most Overdressed Office Visit

Joan’s magenta dress with the sequined cuffs and and whispy black flower print. Wow. Who wears that when they’re just going to visit the office? I know it was the ’60s and all, but isn’t that a bit much? Whose eye is she trying to catch? 

Best Ploy to Get Your Husband to Sleep With You

Megan Draper stripped down to her lace black bra and panties while cleaning the house because, as she claimed, she didn’t want to get sweaty. Yeah, right. She could have changed into some house clothes. She clearly wanted to tempt Don Draper.

SARAH'S PICKS
 

Most Likely to Start a New Trend in Williamsburg

Peggy’s nerd-cool blue and white saddle shoe pumps added a touch of flair to the character’s usually frumpy sartorial selections. The shoes were paired with a shapeless white, short-sleeved button-down shirt (I wish costume designer Janie Bryant would ditch these awful tops already – even style-challenged Peggy deserves better) and a masculine plaid, knee-length skirt. When it comes to Peggy, I'll take what I can get.

Best Showing From a Bored Wife

Jane Sterling’s stunning orange-and-white swirled floor-length silk dress was a close second – and fabulous counterpoint – to Megan’s sex-kitten party frock. Looking effortlessly chic, Jane’s outfit and weirdly copper ultra-tan were spot-on representations of the character’s place as Roger Sterling’s trophy wife. She has become comfortable with her status, has tons of money and time to burn, and doesn’t have to try too hard (see: Megan) to impress anyone anymore.       

The first trailer for “Cosmopolis” is a decadent blast of white noise and black necropolitana – almost an end zone unto itself – scored to a portentous metronomic beat. Just 30 seconds long, the rapidly cut teaser, released last Friday, gives zero information about David Cronenberg’s hungrily anticipated adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 dystopian novel. Instead it bludgeons viewers with a stroboscopic montage of Robert Pattinson, alternately ravenous and jaded, indulging in sex and/or gunplay with various women – “I’m looking for more … aim and fire ... hit the switch,” the naked RPattz requests of the bare-breasted Medusa who’s pointing a revolver at him in the first “scene.”

Juliette Binoche can be seen writhing in a little black dress and being penetrated from behind in the Pattinson’s character’s limo; Samantha Morton’s in there, too, turning her pale moon face to look out of a window. A dinosaur lumbers (rather than rampages) across what might be Times Square. Pattinson stabs a wraith-like man in the eye. The whole thing looks like it was shot not by the Canadian auteur, but by French cinema’s Argentinian enfant terrible Gaspar Noé in amped-up “Enter the Void” mode. It’s calculatedly cliché-d, as most trailers are, and, because it’s Cronenberg, tantalizing.

“A Dangerous Method” was (give or take the spankings and Keira Knightley’s admirable histrionics) a comparatively serene entry for Cronenberg and a period piece to boot, so it was more than likely he would follow it with a more visceral and contemporary piece.

Taking its cue from James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” DeLillo’s densely metaphorical novel follows the day-long odyssey across Manhattan of a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager, Eric Packer (played by Patterson), whose immediate goal is to get a (Samson-ian?) haircut but whose seeming destiny is to self-destruct and bring about universal economic collapse. There’s a presidential motorcade in town, an idolized rapper’s funeral adds to the gridlock, assassins lurk in the shadows, and a massive anti-globalization protest pre-echoes the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Although the book wasn’t well reviewed, it's surely ripe for one of Cronenberg’s more rigorously topical films – think body-politic-horror. The signs are that it will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Watch the trailer for David Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis" here:

Charles Atlas, "The Illusion of Democracy"
Luhring Augustine Bushwick, 25 Knickerbocker Avenue, Brooklyn
February 18–May 20

A pioneering experimental filmmaker and video artist, Atlas was given the freedom to use Luhring Augustine's newly opened space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, however he saw fit. He chose to exhibit three video projections on the walls; the largest, 143652, 2012, was created for the exhibition, and the two smaller pieces—Plato’s Alley, 2009, and Painting by Numbers, 2008—are appearing in new York for the first time. The sense of illusion in all three works is underscored by numeric transitions: digits melting into one another, shrinking into infinity, or trailing one behind the next in clouds of echoing vibrations. The works are legible, but any hope of decrypting the significance of the numbers is futile.

The pieces seem to offer a sharp contrast to Atlas’s early film works, which probe personae, sexuality, and the body. But they do reflect the deep influences on his career as an artist, film director, and renowned collaborator. When Atlas moved to New York in the early 1970s, he worked as an intern-turned-videographer for the dance legend Merce Cunningham. This might lead us to believe the stark, monochrome numbers are simply choreographed to perform for us at different levels of focus. Atlas chalks his beginnings in dance and video up to chance. Andy Warhol must have influenced him early on, but not as much as Cunningham’s close friend and collaborator John Cage, who was a frequent visitor to the latter’s studio. Much like the principles of the I Ching, championed by Cage as a tool for creating, and used often by Cunningham in his choreography, Atlas’s new exhibition feels more like a tribute to and meditation on chance operations and choreography—exploring the unveiled equations that are invisible in the movements and patterns of everyday life.

This review will appear in the May issue of Modern Painters magazine.

To see images from Charles Atlas's "The Illusion of Democracy" at Luhring Augustine, click on the slide show.