The Silver Altar from the Baptistry of St. John was unveiled to the public this week after six years of intensive, surgically delicate work by the Florentine Office of Precious Stones. Though outranked in popularity by Titian's "Venus of Urbino" or Leonardo da Vinci's "Annunciation," the imposing work of ecclesiastical art (which measures 10 cubic feet) is attributed to a veritable who's-who of Renaissance Florence masters, including Tommaso Ghiberti, Bernardo Cennini, Antonio del Pollaiolo, and Andrea del Verrocchio. Given the breadth of talent in Verrocchio's workshop, some have even speculated that da Vinci, who worked as his apprentice, was among the altar's sculptors. 

Project director Clarice Innocenti respectfully shrugged off this hypothesis. "The restoration brought us very close to what we can see was a mature artist," she told ARTINFO. "Leonardo was an experimenter, who probably would have found the capillary technique of silver work boring. But there's always a need to include more, important names." Without the name-dropping, the public's reaction to the newly-polished sculpture was nevertheless tremendous. "It's not something that you can walk by without noticing," she said. "It's enormous, and the impact on visitors was really remarkable. People were really affected by it." 

Newly-installed at the museum of the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower, the four-hundred-year-old altar has regained much of the luster it had lost to tarnish and oxidation, and surfaces that had turned completely black are restored to their previous shine. Since Florence's Accademia made no small matter of the quadricentennial scrubbing of Michelangelo's "David," some expected a string of world premiere-style ceremonies to promote the eminent work of art's new look, perhaps to the tune of the Louvre's controversial cleaning of Leonardo's "Virgin and Child with St. Anne." So far, none have materialized, but Innocenti isn't sulking. "Public opinion doesn't place it on par with painting or sculpture," she said, "but I can tell you that silversmiths in the 1360s, the 1370s, and the 1380s were much further evolved stylistically than the painters of that period, and when people actually see the work, they're completely stunned by its beauty."

Between scheduled appearances at art fairs in New York and Dubai, iconic Canadian author and artist Douglas Coupland made time to discuss Canadian art and identity with ARTINFO Canada.

In your recent visual art productions (“Canada Pictures,” “Permanent Press Landscape,” “Group Portrait 1957”), you tread a fine line between parodic and considered — even esoteric — portraits of Canadian culture and its art history. How would you describe your “Canada Pictures” — where did these come out of, for you?

Mostly the items come from my own memory bank and are images and situations I’d never before seen addressed in art. There’s an obvious indexical side to the photos. You have to remember how utterly unexplored Canadian identity was in 2000. There was nothing. And when I did these and put them out there, I wasn’t expecting people to say, “Wow, that’s me, too.” As with most things, I didn’t expect any response. I was surprised at how synchronized my own memories were with so many other people. That was nice.

With the “Permanent Press Landscape” and the “Group Portraits” series, your referents (the Group of Seven) are distilled and at a remove.

Somewhat, yes. They’re like a set of tribe-specific sacred images that really don’t go far at all outside of our own tribe. I also use the term, "secret handshake" when describing the Group of Seven to non-Canadians. Outsiders just don’t get them. With my mode of stylization, I like pushing them further so that even insiders have to work a little bit to get them. That’s what makes it so satisfying for viewers... they had to work a little bit to get the work, and once they do get it, they realize that there is this wonderful collective bond of landscape.

Do you feel you have a distance from Canadian culture such that you can observe its character?

Quite the opposite: intimacy.

How would you describe its current cultural profile?

Canadian culture? Strong and confident... maybe overconfident. But compared to most other countries our cultural production per capita is massive.

Can you expand on what you mean by “overconfident”?

Pride cometh before a fall. Sometimes I think we get a bit too high on ourselves, which is fine. But eternal vigilance is the price of democracy and eternal vigilance is the price of making sure that arts funding mechanisms are kept in place. A culture without consistent and proper arts funding is merely a parking lot. There’s a bit too much slashing going on right now.

Do you perceive a frustrated ambivalence towards Canadian identity?

Compared to, say 1990 or 1980, Canada seems very unambivalent about itself. I mentioned in the New York talk [at the Armory Show] that during the Mulroney years Canada felt one lapdance away from being absorbed into the United States. Those days are long gone. I think we really have our shit together these days.

What do you think of "Oh, Canada" (opening May 27), the forthcoming Mass MoCA endeavor to survey an entire country’s art practice?

It comes at a good time. I have this feeling that certain strains of thinking and working have reached endpoints, and I’m curious to see multiple new points of view.

Is this kind of curatorial conceit still relevant, or useful?

If the show is done properly, it will find pockets of genuine relevance and foreground them. It depends on the curator’s vision. So we’ll see.

What do you think it will do for Canadian culture — both abroad, and with regards to its self-perception?

Well, I’m in Dubai right now at the Dubai Art Fair and when I say I’m from Canada or Vancouver, even the most obscure people smile and then give me lists of Canadian artists they know or know of — and I usually know all of them, and many of them personally. The art universe is highly aware of Canada and I don’t think they’ll see the show as an exercise in “What’s this quirky country up to?” They’ll be more interested to see what comes after all the other things they know of.

You diagnosed a generational zeitgeist with "Generation X" and have followed it with another epochal reflection in "Generation A." But do you think generations maintain themselves — do they grow up, evolve, and shape-shift as a unit, or do they come apart?

I don’t know if I agree with the assumption that generations even really exist. When I wrote "Generation X" I thought there were maybe twelve people I went to high school with who might get it. And 20 years later I’m amazed that people still think it was an exercise in demographics.

Are you pessimistic?

I have a dark sense of humor but that doesn’t mean pessimism. I think people are more good than they are bad — but only just.

­A seething, phantasmagorical imbroglio even by Guy Maddin’s standards, “Keyhole” has something to do with a ’30s gangster (Jason Patric) whose mind is in an advanced state of disintegration. That the character is called Ulysses and is trying to find his way back home — or at least back to his bedroom — would seem to link Maddin’s latest, hopping off the festival circuit for a run at the IFC Center in New York, to Western civilization’s founding epic, if not high modernism’s paradigmatic prose work. Or maybe not.

Over the past 20 years, the Bard of Winnipeg has developed his own arcane, heavily eroticized mythology, based on his Icelandic forebears, his mother’s beauty shop, his obsession with his hometown hockey team – his specialty is backdating film history with purposefully anachronistic genre mashes. Here it’s something like “The Public Enemy” transposed to “The Old Dark House” and infused with a suggestion of old-fashioned blue movies. (Madden talks about his sources — “Spooks Run Wild”?! — in a wonderfully free-associative and typically confessional interview with ARTINFO’s Graham Fuller, although there are also intimations of the 1933 Pre-Code shocker “The Story of Temple Drake,” adapted from William Faulkner’s lurid “Sanctuary.”)

In any case, the mode is doggedly non-linear. Shot in smoky black and white, punctuated with superimpositions, filled with dissolving images, and riddled with non sequiturs, this gorgeous, turgid, voyeuristically-titled affair could be Maddin’s most abstract work. (It was commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts and, like Maddin’s 2003 masterpiece “Cowards Bend the Knee,” could easily be imagined as an installation.)

After a chaotic violent montage, the action settles into a two-story frame house — which is to say, a movie set — littered with bodies, some of them alive. A police raid is expected. A wild party is either imminent or recently concluded. The place is populated by heavily made-up floozies in various states of dishabille, paired off with plug-uglies in newsboy caps and undershirts. The upstairs bathtub gets very crowded. The house, like the movie, is a museum for odd contraptions. Ulysses has evidently arrived with a pair of kidnapped hostages. One is a drowned girl; the other is his son, strapped into a homemade electric chair powered by a bicycle-driven generator. The reliably creepy Udo Kier drifts through the proceedings as some sort of doctor, brought to the house to bring the girl back to life. His X-rays show something like a handcuff under her lungs.

When one character tells another that someone else prefers the radio “tuned between stations,” he might be referring to the filmmaker’s own sensibility. Although everything is confined to the house, nothing is stable. The mood is lethargic yet sexually charged and the genealogy properly confused. The place is populated by specters, including Ulysses’s abandoned wife (Maddin favorite Isabella Rossellini), and her father, naked and rattling his chains. Actually, Mrs. Ulysses often seems more like Ulysses’s mother. (Her name, Hyacinth, recalls both the Spartan prince who, in Greek mythology was the original homosexual love object, and the second stanza of “The Waste Land” in which addressing “the hyacinth girl,” the poet describes himself as “neither living nor dead.”)

As the resident tough guy, Ulysses relentlessly pushes his phantoms around even as he travels from room to room seeking to rejoin Hyacinth in their boudoir. Ultimately, the gang turns on its leader and straps him into the electric chair, raising the possibility that the entire movie is something like the classic 1932 Warner Brothers’ cheapster “Two Seconds,” starring Edward G. Robinson, in which the anti-hero’s entire life flashes before him as he sits in the hot seat waiting for the warden to throw the switch. “I feel charged,” cries the man in the chair.

A comedy set in a haunted movie studio, “Keyhole” has a family resemblance to Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” (to which Maddin paid homage with his faux ’60s underground psychedelic orgy film “The Little White Cloud That Cried”) as well as Pat O’Neill’s more recent ghost noir “The Decay of Narrative.” Like those, it’s a carnival of souls. There’s a pervasive sense of a moribund medium galvanized back to life — it hardly seems coincidental that “Keyhole” is Madden’s first digitally shot film.

Think you have the best photo diary in New York City? Instagram, the super popular iPhone (and now Android) app that lets users snap photos, add film-mimicking filters, and share them with friends is hosting its first-ever real-life exhibition at the W Hotel in Times Square. The show will feature the work of six star Instagram users, as well as one extra chosen by curator Brian Difeo from among those who upload images using the app’s #WDESIGN hashtag in the coming week.

Difeo, who is also Instagram’s community manager, hopes that the W showcase will help fight the impression that the app is just for turning your snapshots into faux-vintage Polaroids. “There are immensely talented photographers producing incredible work on the application,” he said in a statement. “The gallery exhibit will elevate this art form to new height [sic].” The Insta-artistes Difeo has uncovered include the likes of collagist Angeliki Jackson, professional photographer John de Guzman, and painter Chrixtian Xavier Chantemargue, among others. All of the featured photographers will be honored for using Instagram to document their daily lives in New York City. 

So, will this exhibition help Instagram escape its association with twee hipsterdom? The initial results, it has to be said, are not promising. Photos released from the exhibition so far consist of dreamy black-and-white shots of bridges, sunbursts seen down Manhattan streets, and skyscrapers turned into architectural abstractions — hardly fare that is likely to win over the avant-garde crowd. Hopefully the results will stray beyond the traditional vocabulary of tourist postcards.

If you can do better, shoot some Instagram snaps that “focus on the impact that urban design elements and architecture have on the character of a city’s landscape,” and tag them #WDESIGN any time before April 12. The contest is open to photographers in any city the world over, and the grand prize includes a weekend at the W and a souped-up iPhone camera lens, along with a spot in the exhibition. For those curious about the results, the Instagram showcase will run from May 1 through June at 1567 Broadway.

The last few days have brought an onslaught of announcements from the big auctions houses about their May sales, which are already looking to be some of the all-time biggest art auctions. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of material will be offered during the Impressionist and modern or post-war and contemporary art auctions in the first and second weeks of May, respectively, with iconic works by hallowed artists like Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Andy Warhol, and Francis Bacon, many of which are fresh to market. The month is set to be an intense one, either a series of dazzling highlights or spectacular flops.

Here, ARTINFO rounds up information on some of the most coveted items, and why they are attracting so much attention (to see some of the commentary in illustrated slide show format, click here).

IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART – CHRISTIE'S

Work: Paul Cézanne – Watercolor "Study for the Card Players" (1892-96)
Estimate: $15-20 million
Importance: This work is both new-to-market and tied to one of 2011's most famous sales — the $250 million purchase of the original "Card Players" painting (for which this work is a study) by the Al Thani family of Qatar. According to Christie's, the watercolor was last seen in 1953, and was rediscovered in the spring in the private collection of Dr. Heinz F. Eichenwald of Texas.

Work: Henri Matisse – "Les Pivoines" (1907)
Estimate: $8-12 million
Importance: From Matisse's Fauvist period, the work is a still-life with vivid colors depicting a pot of flowers. It was painted two years after Matisse and André Derain began working with bright and bold forms and colors. In 2011, a Fauvist work by Matisse's contemporary, Maurice de Vlamnick, sold for $22.5 million at Christie's New York.

Other works to look out for: Pablo Picasso's "Deux nus couches" (1968), est. $8-12 million; Alberto Giacometti's "Buste de Diego" (1957), est. $8-12 million; Claude Monet's  "Les demoiselles de Giverny" (1984), est. $9-12 million); and Henry Moore's "Reclining figure" (1956), est. $4-6 million.

IMPRESSIONIST AND MODERN ART – SOTHEBY'S

Work: Salvador Dalí – "Printemps nécrophilique" (1936)
Estimate: $8-12 million
Importance: Surrealism is having a moment in the art market. At last November's anemic Impressionist and modern art sale at Christie's, Max Ernst's Surrealist "The Stolen Mirror" was the auction's saving grace, attracting excited bids and eventually a $16.1 million price-tag (est. $4-6 million).  This particular work, shows two faceless figures in a dream-like composition, a seemingly endless expanse of sand and sky. The flower-headed woman in the work is a character that appears in many of Dalí's works.

Work: Edvard Munch – "The Scream" (1895)
Estimate: In excess of $80 million
Importance: The "Scream" image is one of the most well-known in art history — even the popular television show "The Simpsons" has appropriated the work — and is thus likely to draw the interest of the world's wealthiest and most powerful art collectors. This version is the only one of the four completed by the artists to remain in private hands, making it even more rare.  

Other works to look out for: Paul Delvaux's "Le canapé bleu," est. $3.5-5 million; Max Ernst's "Leonora in the Morning Light," est. $3-5 million.

POST-WAR AND CONTEMPORARY ART – CHRISTIE'S

Work: Yves Klein – "FC 1 (Fire-Color 1)" (1961)
Estimate: $30-40 million
Importance: Klein completed this work using a blowtorch and models as "brushes" just a few weeks before his death in 1962. It features both his signature "International Klein Blue" color and anthropometric elements. Klein works are rare because he died so young (at the age of 34) and worked as an artist for only seven years. If it hammers down within estimates it will be a record for the artist at auction and put Klein in the top-tier of blue-chip contemporary artists price-wise. The auction house claims that it is the most important work by Klein ever to be offered at auction, although ARTINFO has no third-party sourcing to back that up.

Work: Mark Rothko – "Orange, Red, Yellow" (1961)
Estimate: $35-45 million
Importance: Christie's announced this work would be sold at the post-war and contemporary sale as part of the David Pincus collection, which includes a bevy of important Abstract Expressionist works by the likes of Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and a rare Clyfford Still. In this work, blocks of red, orange, and yellow seem to float above a brown background in the artist's signature style. Quality Rothkos can go for high-eight figures (one from the collection of David Rockefeller sold for over $70 million in 2007), so it is not terribly surprising to see the auction house estimating around $40 million.

Other works to look out for: Pollock's "No. 28, 1951," est. $20-30 million; Newman's "Onement V" (1952), est. $10-15 million, and de Kooning's "Untitled I" (1980), est. $9-12 million.

CONTEMPORARY ART – SOTHEBY'S

Work: Roy Lichtenstein – "Sleeping Girl" (1964)
Estimate: $30-40 million
Importance: After Lichtenstein's "I Can See the Whole Room... And There's Nobody In It!" (1961) fetched $43 million last November, work by the pop artist featuring his iconic cartoon-like characters are likely to be in high demand. While this pieces does not have one of Lichtenstein's signature speech bubbles, it has been off the market almost 50 years, since 1964, and is one of the highest-quality works done by the artist in his series of single-figure works featuring blonde women.

Work: Andy Warhol – "Double Elvis" (1963)
Estimate: $30-50 million
Importance: The work was included in Warhol's dedicated Elvis show at Los Angeles's Ferus Gallery in 1963, a seminal moment in the Pop artist's career. The cowboy-like Elvis is a complement to Warhol's feminine and flirty Marilyns and Jackies. Nine of the 22 works created in the series are currently in museum collections, and this is the first to come to market since 1995.

Work: Francis Bacon – "Figure Writing Reflected In Mirror" (1977)
Estimate: $30-40 million
Importance: Just announced Thursday, this is one of the British painter's most iconic works. It was shown in 1977 at Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris alongside "Triptych" (1976), which was purchased by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for $86.3 million in 2008 — the record for most expensive contemporary work of art sold at auction. In the painting, a figure sits in his underwear at a desk, writing in front of a mirror with Bacon's signature dark palette and smudged paint.

Among the many stand-out vehicles at the New York International Auto Show 2012, one of our favorites was the ludicrously extravagant, MIT-engineered Terrafugia Transition, better known as “that flying car” (or "that driving plane" to the glass-half-empty types). With hourly wing-unfolding demonstrations and a sales pitch that describes how "its unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots" — like "uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight" — it's clearly not a vehicle for the average consumer.

For those of us with enough capital, though, it might be the most convenient transportation solution on the street or in the sky. The wings fold up for the road, and can be deployed at the push of a button once the lucky driver reaches  his or her personal runway. Once in the air, the pilot has the option of landing and driving if weather conditions go sour, and never has to worry about the tediousness of transporting luggage from one vehicle to another.

While it's still in its concept stages, the Transition is expected to cost $279,000. For more details, and answers to questions such as "Why would I get a Transition® instead of a car and a plane?," visit the Terrafugia website.

To see it in action, watch the video below, and to see more images of the Transition click the slide show.

Born in 1921 to an Italian father and a Croatian mother in the former Yugoslavia, Ottavio Missoni lived many lives before he and his wife, Rosita Missoni, founded their eponymous luxury Italian knitwear label, known for its colorful zig-zag stripes, in 1953. An international track star, Ottavio made tracksuits worn by the 1948 Italian Olympic team and also represented the country in the 400-meter race that year. During World War II, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Egypt. To commemorate his remarkable career, the Italian Union organized an exhibition, “Ottavio Missoni: Master of Colors,” in Maribor, Slovenia, to coincide with the city’s appointment as 2012 European Capital of Culture.

The show, on view through April 30 at the Vetrinjski dvor Mansion, is divided into three parts. It depicts Missoni as an artist, businessman, and athlete. His original 1948 tracksuit is on display, on a mannequin covered in Missoni fabric. Pattern plans, fabric swatches, and artworks that carry his vibrant aesthetic are also included. There are actual Missoni pieces, too — bright baubles, scarves, and bags, along with vases encased in his flashy knits. To celebrate the April 4 opening of the show, faceless performers covered head to toe in Missoni fabric ran around the exhibition and through the streets of Maribor.

Click on the slide show to see highlights from “Ottavio Missoni: Master of Colors,” on view through April 30 at the Vetrinjski dvor Mansion.

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, April 2-6, 2012:

ART

— Chloe Wyma checked out a new Jenny Holzer exhibition at New York's Skarstedt Gallery, and found narry a neon-toned LED display, but rather a collection of colorful abstract paintings that incorporate censored government documents.

— CBS's Morley Safer took another stab at his infamous 1993 "60 Minutes" segment "Yes, But Is It Art?" by visiting Art Basel Miami Beach, where he spoke to Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, and more. Julia Halperin broke down the highlights.

— Coline Milliard noted that the Tate's new Damien Hirst retrospective isn't all "Spot" paintings and shark tanks, looking at eight unconventional works from the big show.

— Affirmation Arts in New York spotlighted Andy Warhol's less-well-known photographs — taken in a very classical, formal style — which the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has loaned for the first time. In other little-known Warhol news, a drawing he made when he was just ten was purchased by a British tourist from a drug addict in Las Vegas for $5, but could be worth more than $2.1 million.

— In a two-part series, Julia Halperin asked why there were so many new documentaries about artists, and found two basic motives behind the trend: artists more and more function as media stars, and/or the public's fascination with the creative process.

DESIGN & FASHION

— Janelle Zara wrote an in-depth report on the growing tendency towards illegible timepieces, asking: "Is the onslaught of incomprehensible watches just the result of designers’ efforts to stay relevant despite the inherent, antiquated nature of an object that does nothing but tell us what we already know?"

— Ann Binlot looked at a new retrospective of the late Los Angeles fashion photographer Herb Ritts at L.A.'s J. Paul Getty Museum.

— Chloe Wyma spoke to Simon Hawes, founder of "Alternative Movie Posters," a Web site that collects fan-made alternative-universe original posters for films like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Jurassic Park."

— Sweden-based Charlie Davidson — a former concept designer at LEGO — created a new floor lamp that looks like a miniature construction crane.

— Ann Binlot and Sarah Kricheff chronicled the best outfits from season five, episode three of "Mad Men," including Megan's floral print bikini and Michael Ginsberg's impossibly loud plaid blazer.

PERFORMING ARTS

— J. Hoberman saw "Damsels in Distress," director Whit Stillman's first film in 14 years, and wished its tale of four self-appointed college campus suicide-prevention and hygiene policewomen — led by Greta Gerwig — were more offensive.

— Reid Singer reported that curator Ron Magliozzi — who masterminded the Museum of Modern Art's blockbuster Tim Burton exhibition in 2009 — is curating a retrospective of imaginative filmmaking duo Stephen and Timothy Quay (better known as the Brothers Quay), set to open in August.

— The first trailer for Woody Allen's next film, "To Rome With Love," revealed that Jesse Eisenberg will be the septuagenarian director-actor's latest cinematic stand-in, playing opposite Penelope Cruz's sassy Italian prostitute.

— Nick Catucci watched the visuals for Rufus Wainwright's greatest song ever, "Out of the Game" — in which Helena Bonham Carter plays a sexy librarian — and noted that "somehow this video does it justice."

— The new trailer for "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane's upcoming and unconventional buddy comedy "Ted" had man-child Mark Wahlberg having to choose between his new girlfriend (Mila Kunis) and the titular obnoxious talking teddy bear roommate (voiced by MacFarlane).

No matter what your holiday weekend brings, whether it be a casual back yard cookout or more formal Easter Sunday brunch, these wines will be sure to please the palate. From light and lively to rich and hearty, consider pouring one of these at your Easte

In our weekly roundup, our U.S. editors have picked out some recent highlights from five of ARTINFO's nine international sites: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and United Kingdom. (For those who speak other languages, be sure to check out ARTINFO Brazil, China, France, and Germany as well.)

AUSTRALIA

– How Art World Powerhouse Matthias Arndt Plans to Infiltrate the Asia-Pacific Market Part 1

– Make Films and Circuses Not War: Q&A with Australian War Artist George Gittoes Part 2

– The “Big O” Brings Matrix Technology to MONA Museum Tours

CANADA

– The Canadian Rejoinder to Herb and Dorothy: Bruno Billio Stacks His Arthouse

– Big League Curators Gather at MACM to "Not Talk About Themselves"

– Manon De Pauw Intrigues in First-Ever Exhibition in France

HONG KONG

– $27-Million Dish From the Fabled Ru Kilns Smashes Song Dynasty Porcelain Record at Sotheby's Hong Kong

– Budi Tek Secures Historic Chinese Contemporary Works at Sotheby's Hong Kong

– See Highlights of the Tokyo Art Fair, From Renaissance Pastiche to a Participatory Seashell Memorial

INDIA

– German Artist Rebecca Horn’s India Debut

– The Young Man and the Sea: Rajorshi Ghosh’s Show Distorts the Horizon

– Street Smart: Public Art Project “Extension Khirkee” is Officially Open Until Further Notice

UNITED KINGDOM

– It's Not Just About Sports — London Gets (Even More) Arty for the Olympic Games

– Kitchen Pans and a How-to for Suicides: the Damien Hirst You Don't Know

– Love Him or Hate Him — After Gagosian, Damien Hirst Hits Tate Modern

Is it possible to create a new photograph from an old negative? That’s the question at the center of a bitter legal dispute between collector Jonathan Sobel and photographer William Eggleston. On April 4, Sobel filed a complaint against the artist in federal court, alleging that Eggleston diluted the value of Sobel’s collection by printing larger, digital versions of some of his best-known works and then selling them for record prices at Christie’s.

“The commercial value of art is scarcity, and if you make more of something, it becomes less valuable,” said Sobel, who owns 190 Eggleston works worth an estimated $3 to $5 million. “I feel betrayed.” The Whitney Museum trustee and former Goldman Sachs executive is a committed collector of Eggleston’s work: He frequently lends photographs from his collection to museum exhibitions and even helped finance the photographer’s 2008 retrospective. But if he had known Eggleston would someday make digital reprints of works from his collection, he never would have bought them in the first place, he said.

When Eggleston decided to print his photographs in limited editions in the 1970s and 1980s, digital technology didn’t exist yet. But according to Eggleston’s lawyer, John Cahill, the artist has the right to explore this new medium today — even if he is only using it to make larger versions of earlier, limited-edition photographs. “A limited edition is a collection of physical objects, but the artist owns the copyright for the image itself,” Cahill told ARTINFO. “There is no law that prevents an artist from creating additional works with the same image.”

The Christie’s sale featured 36 poster-size, digital prints of images that Eggleston had shot in the Mississippi Delta more than 30 years ago. Some, like a wistful image of a car trunk, were created from negatives he had never printed before, while others were based on iconic works, such as the famous “Memphis (Tricycle).” Sobel owns a 17-inch version of that photograph — he told the Wall Street Journal he bought it two years ago from a collector for roughly $250,000. Last month, the 5-foot-wide digital version sold at Christie’s for $578,500, the highest price ever paid at auction for an Eggleston photograph. By the time the sale was over, digital versions accounted for seven of the artist’s top 10 prices.

It is, of course, too soon to determine whether the large-format prints will indeed decrease the value of the original photographs, as Sobel fears. On Thursday, one of the original dye transfer prints of “Untitled (Peaches)” — a 1973 photograph of a painted “Peaches” sign perched on a tin roof — sold at Christie’s for $242,500, well over the high estimate of $90,000. (The five-foot digital version sold in March for $422,500.) Seven of 15 Eggleston prints in Thursday’s sale, however, were bought in.

This isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of these digital images. In October, Cheim & Read will present a selection at the next Frieze Art Fair in London. Gagosian Beverly Hills is also planning an exhibition of the digital works.

Though it’s too early to discern the market outcome, lawyers say Sobel’s case hinges on a different question: Are the digital works different from the original prints? In a statement, Christie’s called the digitals “a completely new addition” to Eggleston’s oeuvre; the house's photography specialist told PDN they were marketed as works of contemporary art designed to appeal to contemporary art collectors, not photography traditionalists. But Sobel’s lawyer disagrees: “They think making it bigger makes it different, but that’s not true,” said Thomas Danziger.

Photography dealers have a different take. “Clients are cognizant of the difference between dye transfer prints and digital prints. They have a very different appeal,” Julie Saul, president of an eponymous photography gallery in Chelsea, told ARTINFO. “Eggleston's work is all about color, and the dyes have a richness you don't get in other kinds of prints. It is my understanding that the dye transfer process is the most archival of the color processes.”

Perhaps Sobel’s claim is more interesting as an ontological question than a legal one. What does it mean to create a new work of art in the digital age? According to Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and consultant to Eggleston’s legal counsel, the vintage and digital prints “are entirely different, as objects — viewers experience these prints quite differently, and the market clearly has placed a high value on both experiences.” In today's plugged-in world, audiences frequently see images of artwork reproduced online and believe “they've 'got it,' but that is reducing the artwork to merely an image. These new prints are an affirmation that the particular tangible expression of an idea, the physical life of an artwork, has a unique power."

Name: Liz Magic Laser
Age: 30
Occupation: Artist and Teacher
City/Neighborhood: New York City

What project are you working on now?

I am about to start on a project for Malmö Konsthall that will take the structure of the television news format for an adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play "No Exit." The three characters in “No Exit” will be recast as archetypical roles on television news programs: a newscaster in the studio, a reporter on location and a “real” person who gives testimony. I am also developing a short performance that continues to compare the use of gesture in filmic melodrama and televised politics. I will likely stage it at the opening of my show in May at Various Small Fires in L.A.

Your most famous piece, “I Feel Your Pain," mined interviews of political players like Glenn Beck, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, and John Boehner for humor and absurdity. Originally acted out live at Performa 11, video documentation of the piece is now being shown at Derek Eller Gallery. How might “ I Feel Your Pain” take on new meaning in today’s political climate, versus that of 2011?

The way a politician’s performance is being engineered to evoke our empathy has not changed drastically since last year. However, the fact that it’s an election year means it is “show time” for this affective manipulation to reach new heights. The nature of the dialogue between the left and right in this country has changed dramatically in the past year and I think the video of “I Feel Your Pain” will resonate differently as time goes on. When I started writing the script for “I Feel Your Pain” in early 2011, I was thinking about the struggle over polemic rhetoric. I was looking at how the language of political activism was being recuperated by the Tea Party movement to great effect. It appeared the left had lost its claim on affective language and meanwhile on the right, Andrew Breitbart was successfully deploying agitprop tactics that originated with the Soviet avant-garde. By the time the performance of “I Feel Your Pain” took place, the Occupy movement was in full swing and it appeared the left was reclaiming its activism. Yet this struggle over the affective strategies that sway public opinion will continue and take forms I cannot predict.

In the performance/ video installation “The Digital Face,” dancers juxtapose the gestural movements of Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush. How did this project come about?

After focusing so closely on the emotional manipulation engineered by the language spoken on the political stage with “I Feel Your Pain,” my mind bounced back to the body language, the choreography, that I had omitted. I looked back at the interviews I had adapted in my script, but the casual, intimate conceit of the interview did not call for the gestures I was thinking of and it became clear I had to look at how gestures were now being contrived for formal speeches.

When I saw Obama’s last State of the Union Address, it immediately clicked. Obama’s hands were so active and precise, he might as well have been signing. With [François] Delsarte’s method in mind I turned to previous State of the Union Addresses and imagined I’d find a nice starting point for virtuosic gesticulation with Reagan’s speeches. However I was stunned to discover that Reagan barely moved at all and his hands remained glued to his visible script. Additionally Reagan was predominantly filmed in a close-up that cropped out his hands and script. I discovered the same static hands and close-up framing in the formal speeches of his predecessors.

While some presidential gesticulating comes into play with debate scenarios and the like, it turns out that H.W. Bush is the one to bring gestures back to the formal speech. So his first State of the Union Address became my starting point for the contemporary oratorical performance, a physical display that pleads with the public.

I worked closely with two dancers, Alan Good and Cori Kresge, to replicate the gestural movement from the first and last State of the Union addresses to feature gesticulating hands: President Barack Obama’s 2012 speech and President George H. W. Bush’s 1990 speech. Both Alan and Cori were involved in Merce Cunningham’s dance company, and the meticulous precision they were able to bring to the project was significant to me. I wanted to force the orchestrated body language of these two presidents into dialogue and to highlight the evolution of the politician’s performance. The mechanical efficiency of the American president’s performance continues to be maximized further with the aid of speech coaches and advisors along with focus groups and market research. In 1990 H.W. still scratched his face, stopped to drink water and revealed his script. Now these signs of human fallibility have been fully concealed by teleprompters and fine-tuned training. Yet our empathy has only increased along with our politician’s streamlined performance.

Why make theater out of political theater?

Four years ago I was researching the melodramatic gestures of early film and came across the work of François Delsarte, who developed oratorical theories and exercises in the early 19th century. Delsarte’s ideas and exercises became the basis for Stanislavski’s model of acting. It seemed the methods of the modern stage actor and the methods developed for the politician or lawyer to plead for their cause were one and the same. I’ve become fascinated by this inextricable link between theater and politics that goes back to ancient Greece and then gets updated in tandem and codified by Delsarte at the dawn of the industrial age. His theories seem to presage scientific management and the drive to maximize the efficiency of every gesture performed in the workplace, and on the theatrical or political stage.

You’ve created site-specific performances in ATM vestibules, movie theaters, the crowded streets of Times Square, and a bubble-shaped performance space. What are the joys and the challenges of displaying work in a more conventional art venue, such as a gallery space?

No space is neutral for me so I approach each of these spaces as a type of place that conditions a type of behavior that I might engage with and disturb on its own terms. I do enjoy working in art venues and the gallery opening scenario has been a generative context. Perhaps the short attention spans that seems to coincide with art venues these days is the easiest challenge for me to identify, but it’s also a challenge I have taken as a fruitful provocation.

You’ve written that politicians and artists have undergone “similar changes in the twentieth century.” In a culture where Charlie Sheen, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Lady Gaga have all been labeled performance artists, what’s the relationship between artists and politicians?

I wrote that in the context of an essay about the interview that came out in "Art in America" last month. I was saying that the politician was revered with a greater sense of decorum in the nineteenth century. America’s democratizing sensibility demoted the politician from a superior to a social equal, while the artist has likewise been demoted from the status of genius.

Though you primarily work in theater and video, you started out as a photographer. How does that background influence your work?

My mother is the choreographer Wendy Osserman, so I grew up with rehearsals in our living room. I did start as a photographer and I would often make photographs of dancers for press and invitation fliers. We ended up participating in one anoother’s projects frequently. Since I was collaborating with dancers, I confronted the issue of mediating performance with the camera early on. This concern has continued in my work and I usually cast the camera in a constitutive role in my performances.

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

Andrea Fraser’s “Untitled” (2003). I wandered into the show without prior knowledge and only read the press release later as I made my way down the street. I talked about how awful it was for weeks, but eventually I did a complete 180 on the show when I realized I couldn’t stop talking about it. Then I read Fraser’s essay, “Why Does Fred Sandback's Work Make Me Cry?” and became a total fan.

What's the most indispensable item in your office?

My hard drive collection.

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?

The news.

Do you collect anything?

No.

What's the last artwork you purchased?

Not Applicable.

What's the first artwork you ever sold?

A self-portrait photograph.

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

A few years ago I saw Ann Liv Young squirting her breast milk at a purple Peep (the marshmallow Easter candy) that she made a man hold up as a target in a gallery. The performance featured more provocative moments, but this odd combination of elements does stand out in my mind and seeing the Peeps on the shelf at Duane Reade today sparked the memory.

What's your art-world pet peeve?

Posturing.

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

Billymark's West or Mooncake.

Do you have a gallery/museum-going routine?

I usually meet a friend for a coffee in Chelsea, we see a dozen shows, get demoralized and have a drink.

Know any good jokes?

No.

What's the last great book you read?

Yvonne Rainer’s “Feelings Are Facts.”

What work of art do you wish you owned?

Fountain.

What would you do to get it?

Use it.

What international art destination do you most want to visit?

Japan.

WHAT: “Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show”

WHEN: Through April 29, Wednesday, Saturday & Sunday 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Thursday & Friday 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m

WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: There couldn’t be a more perfect synesthetic artistic marriage than Joshua White and Gary Panter, who have currently transformed the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit's 22,000-square-foot space into a backlit funhouse of neon light and tricks for the eye — the largest exhibition in the instititon's history. The duo’s partnership is a fusion of White’s transcendent, era-defining audio-visual environments — he's famous for his work at Woodstock and the Filmore East — and Panter’s expressionist comic characters and wacky set design, like those created for “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”

The exhibition is designed to be an immersive environment for viewers from the moment they walk through the entrance; the mouth of a kooky large-toothed face — straight from the depths of Panter’s massive vault of characters — swallows viewers and spits them out into the world of the light show. The space is dimly lit so that propped up cut-outs and lighted corners can come to life vividly under black lights; the projections are both intense and playful, challenging the eye wit bright color. Panter’s custom wallpapers are peppered throughout the show, providing the backdrop for projected drawings on the large free-standing sculptures. “The sculptural elements I designed serve as stations for Joshua's light effects and designs," Panter told ARTINFO when asked how the different elements of the show work together. "I designed wallpaper that would animate under various lighting conditions so that we had destinations in the space that change under the actions of Joshua's light art.”

The exhibition also includes a variety of ephemera charting the careers of both artists, from Panter’s “Jimbo” comics to original elements from early Joshua Light Shows. Various elements change based on the performances of invited guests, ranging from bands to video artists. The space doubles as a musical stage for artists to perform within, as Monster Island (the band formed by Destroy All Monsters founder Cary Loren) did on February 10th. The exhibition is an experiential venture that can only be described as a one-of-a-kind trip, produced by the countless alchemies White and Panter work up in harmonious motion as “Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show.”

To see images of the environments in  “Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, click on the slide show.

– Rolling Stone Gets a Painting Show: Today, guitarist Ronnie Wood, of Rolling Stones fame, unveils a new series of portraits picturing buddies like Jack Nicholson and Slash at Broome Street Gallery in SoHo (presented by luxury collectibles purveyor Symbolic Collection). Though his former bandmates are among his harshest critics ("They were kind of, 'Oh, you've overworked it, blah blah blah,'" said Wood), he now counts critic Brian Sewell and, yes, Damien Hirst among his fans. Indeed, only a Rolling Stone-turned-painter would be able to say that his studio is "all decked out with stuff that Damien Hirst got me when I came out of rehab." [NYDN]

– Activist-Artists Stuck for Occupy Stickers: The day after two Occupy Wall Street sympathizers gave a too-candid TV interview about their mission to place stickers reading "Priority Seating for the 1 Percent" on New York City subway seats, they were arrested by the NYPD. The men had intended the cheeky street art gesture as a protest against the rising fees and increasingly debilitating service cuts. [NYT]

– Muybridge Gets Doodled: In honor of photographer Eadweard Muybridge's 182nd birthday, the ever-vigilant artist-birthday monitors over at Google have transformed their home page into an homage to the pioneering photographer. The designers have turned Muybridge's famous "The Horse in Motion" — originally created to prove that all four of a horse's hooves come off the ground simultaneously during a gallop — into a delightful animation. And if you're wondering what Muybridge ever did for Google, just remember: without him, there would be no GIF. [Google]

– Will the Mob Mangle Major Pompeii Restoration Project?: Italian prime minister Mario Monti has announced a joint project between Italy and the European Union to secure the ash-smothered ancient city of Pompeii to the tune of €105 million ($137 million). Securing the entire city would require double that sum — and that's without taking into account mafia graft. "We want to ensure that this is accomplished through honest and capable workers and companies," Monti said, "while keeping away the organized crime that is still strong in this area." [BBC]

– Autopsy Planned For Kinkade: The Santa Clara county coroner is planning an autopsy to determine the cause of death of "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade, who passed away over the weekend at the notably young age of 54. Kinkade was known for his wholesome imagery, but also battled alcohol abuse in recent years. Meanwhile, his business, the Thomas Kinkade Co., sent a message to his many distributors to assure them that his business would continue, promising that Kinkade's "art and powerful message of inspiration will live on." [LAT]

– Watts House Project Pioneer Checks Out: Artist Edgar Arceneaux has stepped down as executive director of Los Angeles's Watts House Project. Arceneaux, who founded the community-driven redevelopment project in 2009, left two days after a feature appeared in the L.A. Times reporting major problems at the non-profit organization. [LAT]

– Van Gogh Visits New York: One of the painter's most celebrated portraits, "Portrait of a Peasant," will leave its home at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the first time in 40 years. From October 30 to January 20, it will be on view at New York's Frick Collection. [HuffPo] 

– Couple Ties the Knot With Art Project: British artists and partners Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk, whose "House of Fairy Tales" participatory funhouse art installation has been delighting art-lovers for over a year, will tie the knot at the end of April in its latest incarnation, "Mystery of the Hidden League and the Misplaced Museum," at Hall Place in Bexley. Their latest project involves visitors taking up a challenge to complete 53 tasks, to which the artists will add a 54th: Saying "I do." [TAN]

– "Mona Lisa" Snubs Google: The Louvre — the most visited museum in the world — and its most prized possession, Leonardo's "Mona Lisa," are conspicuously absent from the latest expansion of the Google Art Project. Meanwhile, while Google's online art initiative is having a real effect on public interest in art: The Israel Museum's just-digitized Dead Sea Scrolls were visited by one million users in the first three days of appearing on the Google project. [Bloomberg]

– Brutalist Buildings Incite Brutal Debate: Are some buildings simply too ugly to survive? It's a question many towns must face now that Brutalist architecture is reaching middle age and beginning to show signs of wear. In Goshen, New York, a county government center designed by the celebrated Modernist architect Paul Randolph is facing demolition, despite protests from preservationists who seek to preserve its stark-itecture. [NYT]

– RIP Mauricio Lasansky, Master Printmaker: The Argentine-born printmaker was as well known for his series "The Nazi Drawings," which depicted the horrors of Nazism, as he was for his grand, vivid, and complex prints. He died last week at his home in Iowa City. He was 97. [NYT]

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"We Really Have Our Sh*t Together": Artist and Author Douglas Coupland on Canada's Place in the Art World

PeeWee Goes to Woodstock: Take a Virtual Tour of Gary Panter and Joshua White's Trippy MCA Detroit Show

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He was Salvador Dali's secretary, advisor, accountant, driver, bodyguard, confidant, and best friend. Enrique Sabater's duties could range from negotiating the artist's payments to running out to buy moustache wax, and he has called the time he spent in Dali's employ, from 1968 to 1981, "some of the best years of my life." Dali was at the peak of his fame, and he gave Sabater a remarkable collection of sketches, photos, engravings, watercolors, and other materials. In Paris's Espace Dali, Sabater has curated a very personal show, on view through May 10, that draws from his vast collection.

Upon entering this dark little museum at the top of Paris's hillside Montmartre neighborhood, the first thing the visitor notices is the eclectic range of items that Dali signed and gave to Sabater, including Bristol board, manuscript pages, photos, menus, and greeting cards. The exhibition documents a narcissistic art at which Dali excelled, considering his signature as a work of art in and of itself, a stylistic and almost cabalistic symbol.

While this art of the signature can prove repetitive, it also allows for all kinds of whimsical experiments. The most insignificant item can become a pop and surrealist palette for spur-of-the-moment compositions that reveal Dali's creative obsessions and personal concerns. He scribbled drawings onto pages of the Bible, "The Divine Comedy," Hemingway novels, and monographs on his own artwork. There are also some sketches for significant works, the creation of which Sabater saw first-hand. This is the case for "Original Study for the Sculpture the Sun God Rising from the Waters of Okinawa." Dali made the sculpture for the 1975 World's Fair in Okinawa and asked Sabater to take it to Japan by ship.

Clearly, the works seen here are a bit outside Dali's official oeuvre. But what makes this modest-sized exhibition so charming is Sabater's sincere affection for Dali, his real nostalgia for a lost friend. A black-and-white photo of Dali seen on a theater stage, flooded with lights, symbolizes the artist as entertainer, perhaps using self-parody as a way of protecting the seriousness and the coherence of his art. In the exhibition materials, Sabater describes how Dali would wait for journalists while painting very calmly, asking his secretary to let him know five minutes before the guests were due to arrive, so that he could put on his "interview suit" — a white tunic or some other flamboyant costume.

To see works from Dali's secretary's collection, click the slide show.