Despite working steadily in film and television for 30 years, Gary Oldman has had a lower-key career than might have been anticipated from the string of virtuosic performances he gave in his first decade or so – the years of “Meantime” (1983), “Sid and Nancy” (1986), “Prick Up Your Ears” (1987), “Track 28” (1988), “JFK” (1991), “Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’” (1992), and “True Romance” (1993). Never less than incisive and troubling, he has more recently impressed as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films, and we were reminded of his range and threat by his frosty, repressed George Smiley in last winter’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”

Oldman has a fan in the novelist Martin Amis, who on Monday evening presented a screening of the 1989 BBC drama “The Firm” as part of  “Under the Influence: Writers on Film,” a series held at the Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo, in Manhattan. The last kinetic film directed by the great Alan Clarke, it explores the psychology and sociology of the soccer hooliganism rampant in Britain from the late '60s through the early '90s and is a companion piece to Clarke’s “Scum” (1977) and “Made in Britain” (1982), which similarly examined youth violence. Another analogue is Mike Leigh’s “Meantime,” in which Oldman excelled as a racist skinhead whose courage can’t match his inane swagger.

In “The Firm,” Oldman stars as a married East London real-estate broker who bullies a gormless crew of soccer thugs into taking on two rival “firms” for the right to follow the English national team in the 1988 European Championship. Never descending into caricature, Oldman quivers, postures, and goads as “Bex,” determined to get his “buzz” through violence, even at the cost of his young son’s safety. Lesley Manville, married to Oldman at the time, is also outstanding as Bex’s wife, who recognizes that his thuggery is an aberrant form of play. It’s also a form of (homo)sexual displacement, with Bex and his boys and their enemies constantly taunting each other with mock effeminate voices. The savagery, though, is unpalatably real.

The Crosby’s audience seemed stunned by Clarke’s depiction of soccer hooliganism (which has largely been eradicated through CCTV) and by Oldman’s performance – what kind of Martian is this Bex? Amis attributed the thugs’ “herd mentality” to the desire for young British men of the time to fight non-existent wars; one of Bex’s crew, significantly, is a former soldier. “The sociological line was that this was a kind of nostalgie for Empire. They still wanted to have quasi-military raids and this was the form it took for a while.” He noted how at the national level, soccer tribalism elicits “emotions of religion and war, and they’re very powerful and atavistic and repellent.”

As for Oldman, “he strikes me as the most novelistic actor I’ve ever watched,” Amis told Michael Maren, his onstage interlocutor. “It’s all based on observation, on ear and eye. The way he does the modulations of the [Cockney] accent and the glottal stops – all that is so exact. Perhaps American wouldn’t recognize the type, but it’s a graphic rendition of a certain kind of Englishness.”

“He’s the most concentrated actor I’ve ever seen at work, “Amis continued. “Do you remember ‘Dracula,’ where he had this marvelous voice? You have next to him the spectacle of Keanu Reeves trying to do an English accent and making five mistakes per syllable.  He’s trying like mad to do it, and there is Gary doing a Translvanian accent with about 30 per cent of his concentration and the rest is going into these marvelous, graceful stylized [hand] movements. And think of him as Lee Harvey Oswald in ‘JFK.’ He’s not a starry actor. He doesn’t, as [Robert] De Niro would, play [himself] against the character … where it’s almost osmotic and you’re wondering how De Niro is going to have a pas de deux with his character. [Oldman’s] not like that at all. He remakes himself for every role.”

Amis talked regretfully of Hollywood’s failure to get behind a film of his scabrous 1984 novel “Money,” which was to have starred Oldman as the protagonist, John Self, a decadent English movie director who falls victim of a practical joke when trying to launch a project in New York.

“It was one of the great lost opportunities of cinema,” Amis said. “The producer Eric Fellner and I went to Belgrade where Gary was filming ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ from the Tom Stoppard play. I was led into his hotel room and he said, ‘I’ve been sick, but I’ve been working on the part and I’ve got a great new cough.’

“We talked about ‘The Firm’ and the scene where Bex and Snowy [a black member of his crew] crush Oboe [the leader of a Birmingham gang] on the ground and Bex throws his head back and he’s sweating with loathing and hatred.” What Bex then does to Oboe is concealed by a long shot and Bex’s back. “I said, ‘What do you do to him with that Stanley knife [boxcutter]? Do you gash his nose like the Roman Polanski character does to Jack Nicholson in ‘Chinatown’? And Gary said, ‘No, I blinded him.’”

“We had a good talk about violence. He’s not one of these literalists who goes and hangs out with football hooligans for months, but he has his points of reference and he says that often the most violent guys are not the biggest, not the strongest, but they have another quality, which we narrowed down to being the most self-righteous. When they come after you, their blood is boiling with self-righteousness. They have their point to make.”

“Money” the novel, Amis said, was partially based on his experiences working on Stanley Donen’s “Saturn 3,” a “very poor” 1980 science-fiction movie that he wrote and which starred Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel. He reported how Douglas was obsessed with wanting to appear naked in the film and wanted his co-stars to follow suit.

“So I had this material about actors,” Amis said. “They all want to redeem themselves through the character and are tremendously transparent about their insecurities and wanting to adjust the role to give them all the strengths they don’t have and to obliterate the weaknesses they suspect they have.” Amis based "Money"’s ageing tough-guy star Lorne Guyland (one of his greatest character names) on Douglas.

“That was really the idea for the film. John Self is trying to get a film going and it falls through in the most terrible way, just as the film of ‘Money’ fell through. As someone said, no one really knows why certain films get made and certain films don’t. Brian De Palma, whom I interviewed, said that what happens is that there are all these ideas swilling around in Hollywood, all these thoughtful discussions in the dens of the Moorish mansions of Los Angeles, and the ideas and projects sit around until someone who has power gets attached, then it goes through development with a writer and actors get connected to it, then it goes upstairs to the suits. Then a very mysterious decision is made, and either it goes forward or gets put into turnaround. De Palma said they only make the films they can’t get out of making and that everyone has absolute terror of taking responsibility.”

Three of Amis’s novels have been filmed. Following “The Rachel Papers” (1989) and “Dead Babies” (2000), both disappointing, “Money” was finally made as a solid television movie by the BBC two years ago. Shekhar Kapur will reportedly direct a movie of the sexually apocalyptic “London Fields,” David Cronenberg and Michael Winterbottom having previously been attached. 

I asked Amis for his reaction to the “Money” movie. “I thought it was really pretty good,” he said. “Nick Frost as John Self was great. But what the writer is going to feel watching an adaptation of something he wrote…you’re going to feel a succession of missed opportunities and also embarrassment at the lameness and vulgarity of some of your jokes. So it’s a deeply armpit-igniting experience.”

Nothing came of Amis’s screenplay of Jane Austen’s "Northanger Abbey," written for Miramax, and he doubts he’ll get into bed with the film industry in the future. “You get discouraged,” he said. “Writing for movies is collaborative. You’re willing to try your hand at that when you’re 35, but when you’re 60 you’re so jealous of your territory that the idea of listening to someone else’s suggestions….” If the right opportunity presented itself, however, you wouldn’t bet against him writing something for Gary Oldman. It would have to be an indie, of course.

SALE: An Eye For Opulence — Art of the Ottoman Empire

LOCATION: Sotheby's London

DATE: April 24, 2pm

ABOUT: In a three-day flurry of sales that rival New York Asia Week in breadth, London is getting geared up for a flood of Islamic and Turkish art next week. Sotheby's is selling a collection made up exclusively of work from the Ottoman Empire. The sale includes Ottoman works from the 15th to the 19th centuries and covers everything from pottery to painting to furniture. The top estimated lot is a rare blue "golden horn"-style jug circa 1530-40 from the western Turkish town of Iznik, which for centuries during Ottoman rule produced some of the most sought-after pottery in the empire. The jug could fetch £250,000-350,000 ($396,000-554,000).

Also on offer is a painting of Ottoman sultan Murad I (who ruled in the late 14th century) of the North Italian School, painted in the 17th century. Murad is considered the first great Ottoman conqueror on European soil, and pushed his empire all the way into Serbia before he was assassinated during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The work, estimated to sell for $150,000-200,000 ($237,000-317,000) appears to be part of a larger collection of portraits of Ottoman rulers that are now dispersed among collectors.

Other notable lots include an Ottoman voided velvet and metal thread çatma panel, with a typical Ottoman floral motif from the 16th century (est. £80,000-120,000, $126,000-190,000), and an Ottoman calligrapher's table from the 16th century featuring funky geometric designs (est. £40,000-60,000, $63,000-95,000).

Turkish and Islamic Week, London:

Sale: Islamic and Indian Art
Location: Bonhams London
Date: April 24, 10:30am

Sale: Oriental Rugs and Carpets
Location: Christie's London
Date: April 24, 10:30am and 2pm

Sale: The Orientalist Sale
Location: Sotheby's London
Date: April 24, 12pm

Sale: Arts of the Islamic World
Location: Sotheby's London
Date: April 25, 10:30am

Sale: Contemporary Art/Turkish
Location: Sotheby's London
Date: April 26, 10:30am

Sale: Islamic and Indian Works of Art on Paper (A Private Collection)
Location: Christie's London
Date: April 26, 10:30am

Sale: Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds
Location: Christie's London
Date: April 26, 11am

Sale: Islamic and Indian Works of Art and Textiles
Location: Christie's London
Date: April 27, 10:30am and 2pm

OTHER INTERNATIONAL SALES:

Sale: Spring Modern Auction
Location: Bukowskis Stockholm
Date: April 25-27

Sale: Prints and Multiples
Location: Christie's New York
Date: April 24-25

Sale: Prints and Multiples
Location: Sotheby's New York
Date: April 26-27

Luciana Scarabello told a touching childhood story as the nine remaining contestants on NBC’s reality design competition “Fashion Star” were challenged to step outside of their comfort zone this week. She recalled losing miserably the first time she tried her hand at — bowling! The tenacious girl immediately enrolled in bowling lessons, going on to become a member of Brazil’s national bowling team. Lesson here: never give up. If you keep trying at something you may actually become good at it.

Scarabello’s drawn out “Fashion Star” rise parallels her bowling story, with an uneventful string of episodes. But this week, she designed her first jacket – a cropped, collarless number that Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue went nuts over – bidding ruthlessly until Saks finally conceded to Macy’s $100,000 bid.

Ross Bennett went from tailored vests to sexy lacy lingerie, impressing H&M enough to get a $50,000 bid. “Somebody’s missing their wife,” remarked Jessica Simpson after seeing the racy undergarments.

Next, Nzimiro Oputa left his usual effortlessly cool menswear behind and moved on to a breezy dress that paid homage to Nicole Ritchie. Its billowy sleeves didn’t do much to win us over (we prefer his menswear), but H&M put in a $50,000 offer. Oputa’s fashion show partner, Sarah Parrott, failed to impress even her biggest supporter, H&M, with her bikinis, and garnered not one single bid.

Ronnie Escalante made another sale with his one-piece scuba-inspired swimsuit featuring a sexy mesh detail that revealed just enough cleavage to leave the rest to the imagination. Macy’s loved the suit and snapped it up for $50,000.

The last sale of the night went to Kara Laricks, whose soft, layered, romantic maxi dress was a surprise departure from her edgy menswear-inspired womenswear. Saks’s Terron Schaefer, the only buyer to bite with a whopping $100,000 offer, referenced Sally Fields’s 1985 Oscar acceptance speech, telling Laricks, “We like you, we really like you.”

Parrott joined the three other designers who didn’t impress the buyers. Barbara Bates’s attempt at boho failed with a color-blocked printed maxi dress; Nicky Poulis’s men’s shorts and slacks were a bit flat. But it was Orly Shani who really missed the mark with her latest gimmicky and overdone two-in-one item – a confederate-style jacket that became short at the pull of a zipper. The mentors chose to save Poulis because her designs have been purchased by each of the three retailers. Bates tried to play the victim card after she presented her collection, but the buyers still sent her home.

The most popular item of episode 6 so far? Scarabello’s jacket, which is the only sold-out piece at the moment.

Related:

"Fashion Star" Episode 5 Report: Window Display Flop and Free Advice From H&M

“Fashion Star” Episode 4 Report: The Case of the Cocky Texan’s Tacky Petticoat and Snarky Celebrity References

"Fashion Star" Episode 3 Report: Party Rockers, a Trapeze Act, and the Return of the Plaid Fabric

"Fashion Star" Episode 2 Report: Jessica Simpson's Odd Dream, Plus Tie Dresses and Tuxedo Pants

NBC's Reality Show "Fashion Star" Fills a Void, With Style

Last year, the well-known advocacy group Americans for the Arts started putting out an annual index that would provide a measure of the health of the arts in the United States. The data was two years behind, though, and working with 2009 numbers things looked understandably grim (memorably, the report called on struggling non-profits to "die with dignity"). This year, the data from 2010 has been crunched, and while the outlook is not quite as rosy for the art industry as recent auction results may have you believe, it does show that the public began spending more money on art, music, and culture in 2010 as the country emerged from the Great Recession.

The index brings together many different indicators — everything from music sales to Broadway attendance to overall employment in the arts-and-culture industry, and not all of these indicators are that relevant to the state of visual arts. On that specific front, two statistics culled from the Index are worth highlighting: 43 percent of non-profit arts organizations were operating at a deficit (up from slightly from 2009, but still down from the crisis year of 2008), while the amount of philanthropic giving to the arts is increasing in total, but losing market share to other forms of giving (down from 4.9 percent in 2001 to 4.5 percent in 2010).

However, there is much more in the report — such as the fact that federal arts spending is going down (but we already knew that). ARTINFO has pulled out some of the more interesting points that relate to the visual and performing arts industries. 

People are Spending More at Museums...

Personal expenditures on museums/library visits (not the way we would break down the category, but we are not statisticians) are down from $7.2 billion in 2008 to $5.9 billion in 2010. However, there is hope. In 2000 the number was $3.8 billion. Even adjusted for inflation — $3.8 billion in 2000 dollars is $5 billion today — that's almost $1 billion more than a decade ago. As a percentage of the overall expenditures on cultural goods (things like books, music, and movies), museum and library expenditures are up from 2.9 percent in 2000 to 3.9 percent in 2010 (the high-water mark was 4.36 percent in 2008).

...But That Doesn't Necessarily Mean That More People Are Going

The data about art museum attendance is mixed. Despite blockbuster shows at the nation's largest museums (think Tim Burton at the MoMA, since we are talking about 2010), fewer people are setting foot inside art institutions overall. Art museum attendance in metropolitan areas declined from about 33 million visitors in 2003 to 30.6 million in 2010 (that's a loss of about 8 percent). However, the 2010 total is about level with 2008 numbers, which is an achievement considering that in 2009 the number dropped all the way down to 26.7 million.

While the total numbers may be declining, the number the index defines as "median museum attendance" — the median number when all museum attendance figures are lined up, meaning it is probably the attendance total most representative of a medium-sized museum in a smaller city — is up from 2000. The American Association of Museums takes the median visitor count of all the museums that report as a way of balancing between the blockbuster museums like the Met or MoMA and the smaller, more specialized museums — say, the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

How to square all this with the idea that Americans are spending more on culture? It could just be that museum entry fees are going up.

People Are Really Into Self-Publishing

Book publishing on art-related themes is way up, to 11,390 books published on music, theatre, dance, or art from a measly 7,092 in 2009 — likely not because there is so much more demand for arts literature, but because many more ebooks and self-published books are being issued ISBN numbers, according to the report.

People Are Going to Art School — After Liberal Arts School

Visual or performing arts degrees are up in the associates and masters categories, but down in the bachelors categories (from 18,643 to 19,703 associates degrees conferred, 14,948 to 15,552 masters degrees, and 93,009 to 91,802 bachelors degrees conferred, comparing 2009 to 2010). However, if people went back to school when the recession hit, those advanced degrees won't be doled out until 2011 or beyond, so the real impact of the recession isn't yet clear on the education front.

Don't Become a Dancer or a Stage Actor

A whopping 12 percent fewer people went to a live arts performance (dance, theater, opera, symphony) in the 77 metropolitan markets surveyed than in 2003 (the year it was indexed). Overall, participation in live performances is trending sharply downward. Opera attendance continues to decline, even from 2009 (it dropped from 3.9 million in 2000 to 2.9 million in 2009, to 2.7 million in 2010). The one bright spot for aspiring performers is traveling shows: while theater attendance on Broadway is going down, attendance at traveling Broadway shows around the country is skyrocketing. 

The Arts Shed Jobs for the First Time This Decade

Employment didn't really start to bounce back until early 2012 (and employment in general is still sluggish), so it isn't all that surprising that the arts industries appear to be continuing to lose jobs. In this report, job numbers appear to be a year or two behind other indicators. In 2008 there were 1.66 million arts jobs (that includes music, performing arts, etc.); in 2009 there were 1.69 million. In 2010 there were only 1.56 million.

As a percentage of all occupations, 2010 was the first year that the number of people in arts occupations as a percentage of all occupations did not grow. Up from 1.07 percent in 2000, the percentage of workers who worked in arts and culture was 1.29 in 2009. In 2010 it dropped to 1.24 percent — though, it's worth noting, this still marks a big jump in the last decade (that's better than we can say for journalism, for sure).

Rich Urban People See the Most Art

New this year to the Arts Index is a section that allows for searching in localized areas (counties), a feature which allows you to see a lot about the way different regions of the country value art, especially when compared with census data about median incomes in the region.* With a quick comparison of some of the economic and cultural hubs, along with some more suburban and rural places, it seems that the percentage of the population attending art museums is dependent partially on income — richer counties on average have higher museum attendance — but also partially on cultural infrastructure.

In rich suburban counties a smaller percentage of people visit museums than in poorer urban areas. For example, New York County (Manhattan) has an astonishing 45.7 percent museum attendance (ARTINFO can only assume this includes tourists who do not actually reside in the county) and a median household income (MHI) of $64,971. The wealthy Southern California suburban enclave of Orange County, on the other hand, has a MHI of $74,344 but only sees 10.6 percent of its population attending museums. In Brooklyn, where the MHI is $43,567, but the landscape is urban and there is plenty of access to arts institutions, 21.3 percent of the population went to a museum in 2010. But in a more rural locale with a similar median income — the mostly agricultural Kern County, California, where the MHI stands at $47,089 but it takes over two hours to get to Los Angeles — a truly measly 9.5 percent of the population has been to a museum in the last year. The Bronx, on the other hand, is poor (MHI of $34,264), but urban, and the rate of museum attendance there is 16.7 percent.

* U.S. Census demographic data from quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html.

Click on the slide show to see the raw data ARTINFO looked at, or click here to read the full report. 

The art of Bill Bollinger possessed a visual language that conjured a Zen sensibility through the use of industrial materials. He shows us tension with a thick rope pulled taut; he embodies containment with clear tubes full of water; his slumping metal screen expresses gravity. Odd as it might seem from a man who earned a degree in aeronautical engineering, Bollinger wasn’t interested in the aesthetics of form: He was concerned with conditions of being. He once told a Swiss dealer that his art existed only when it was executed, and it ceased to exist when it was taken down. The central problem for viewers who seek out Bollinger’s art is that it rarely exists because it’s almost never shown. “Bill Bollinger: The Retrospective,” on view at SculptureCenter, in Long Island City, from April 22 through July 30, provides a unique opportunity to revisit his legacy.

The artist’s career essentially spanned the decade between 1965 and 1975, peaking right in the middle. Between 1969 and 1970, Bollinger participated in 37 solo and group shows, both in the United States and in Europe, the most ambitious of which was a site-specific installation that sprawled through an entire floor—16,300 square feet—of the Starrett-Lehigh building, in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York (the same building, coincidentally, that currently houses the offices of Modern Painters). Press materials billed the exhibition, “Bollinger: Sculpture,” as “probably the largest non-retrospective one-man show ever organized.” It didn’t go well, and the artist’s career subsequently nosedived. Between 1975 and 1995, his work was shown only once. He died in 1988, at the age of 48, from complications brought on by excessive alcohol consumption.

Christiane Meyer-Stoll, the chief curator of the retrospective—which initially opened at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, in Vaduz, last year, before traveling to venues in Germany and the United Kingdom—had access to two prominent European collections that held Bollinger’s work, but she cast her net more widely. She collected his letters, notes, and drawings and gathered slides and photographs from institutions and individuals. She also solicited recollections from people who knew the artist personally, including Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Rafael Ferrer, and Keith Sonnier. This material became the basis of the exhibition as well as the meat for an authoritative monograph.

No two iterations of the touring retrospective have been the same because, as the SculptureCenter’s executive director, Mary Ceruti, observes: “Bollinger’s sculptures have a contingent quality in that they are in direct dialogue with the architecture [of their environments]. The support of a wall is necessary for Screen Piece [1968−69] to achieve its gentle curve, and the rope pieces are essentially about the tension over the distance between the floor and the ceiling or the two points on the floor.” This type of spatial consideration—more than any effort at chronology—will likely guide installation decisions for the SculptureCenter exhibition.

In addition to approximately 25 drawings, the SculptureCenter show includes major works composed of screens, ropes, pipes, and extruded aluminum channels, as well as Bollinger’s only film, Movie, 1970, a comical nine-minute piece in which the artist attempts over and over to balance a long beam on its end. Another gem is Cyclone Fence, 1968, a work that was first shown at the legendary exhibition “9 at Leo Castelli,” curated by Robert Morris. Instructions for its installation might read: Lay chain-link fence across floor, and flip once so that what begins as the right edge ends as the left edge. Observe gravity’s torque: A kink comes to rest as a gracefully swooping arc.

Art history wrote off Bollinger, and this exhibition aims to change that. “He was one of the artists most responsible for rethinking an art object as the result of material procedure,” muses Ceruti. “Young artists who are engaged with the current discourse will see this work for the first time, and I hope that they find the show inspiring—as I did.” 

Click on the slide show to see images from “Bill Bollinger: The Retrospective,” on view at SculptureCenter, in Long Island City, from April 22 through July 30.

This article appeared in the April issue of Modern Painters magazine.

BUENOS AIRES — I’m in downtown Buenos Aires for a few days as the guest of BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente), which has published a Spanish-language anthology of my work.

As film festivals go, BAFICI places a natural emphasis on Latin American and especially Argentine movies, but with an unusual avant-garde bias. When I was here in 2006 there was a line around the block to hear Jonas Mekas show and discuss his work. Given the brevity of my stay and various commitments, which included introducing a screening of Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures,” I devoted most of my viewing time to the local product.

Jonathan Perel’s hour-long documentary “17 Monumentos” is a James Benning-like structural film composed of 17 shots, each showing one of the modest monuments built on the sites of the various detention and torture centers established by the 1976-83 military dictatorship. The structures, which all feature three vertical planks each marked with a single word (“Justice,” “Memory,” and “Truth,”) are more or less identical, as is the camera angle; the sites vary from non-descript highways to suburban backyards to shabby city streets to empty vistas fronting majestic mountains. I found the movie affectingly understated — although a respected Argentine critic of my acquaintance thought it self-serving propaganda for the current government.

“Masterplan,” a shaggy-dog comedy by the brothers Diego and Pablo Levy, had a promising first half detailing the after-effects suffered by a hapless, depressed George Costanza-type for his passive complicity in his prospective brother-in-law’s harebrained credit card scam. Restrained performances (mainly by non-actors, including some filmed by the Levy brothers as part of their 2011 documentary on the neighborhood Once, Buenos Aires’s equivalent to New York’s Lower East Side) and deadpan, observational humor give way to a sort of modified magic realism as the schlemiehl-like protagonist is compelled to “abandon” his beloved car, and comes under the redemptive spell of the happy vagrant who has taken up residence in it.

“Nocturnos,” by the distinguished filmmaker and writer Edgardo Cozarinski, concerns a sad young man who, as Robert Frost wrote, is “acquainted with the night.” He frequents empty tango bars, walks deserted streets, drives around the empty city in search ... of what? Buenos Aires is additionally haunted by the ghosts of old movies, memories of a lost love, and the dreams of the pavement dwellers. Precious but accomplished, “Nocturnos” is something of a knock-off. (The movie’s laziness is emphasized by its closing words, with Cozarinski’s attributing William Faulkner’s most quoted line to Jean-Luc Godard.) But it does capture the uncanny feel of this expansive, shabby, grandiose, self-absorbed city, a sea port at the edge of the world.

For me, the Buenos Aires uncanny was accentuated by seeing jury member Pilar López de Alaya (a fetish object in both “In the City of Sylvia” and “The Strange Case of Angelika”) materializing, expressionless and solitary, around the festival, and also by being recognized by an old acquaintance, avant-garde filmmaker Leandro Katz, at a screening of movies by the work of the German-born artist Narcisa Hirsch. Still active in her 80s (although hitherto unknown to me), Hirsch was a bridge between Buenos Aires and the New York underground film scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. To judge from the first of five programs devoted to her oeuvre, her work is not so much derivative of as engaged with that of certain American avant-garde filmmakers, most productively Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage. “Patagonia” (1970) is a refilmed, ominously-scored landscape film — eerie and atmospheric. Another sort of mood piece, “Descendencia” (1971) reworks home movies from the 1920s. Hirsch’s more overtly feminist super-8 productions include “Bebes” (1974), which is a birth film that opens with a shot of distressed doll heads on a turn-table, and “Mujeres” (1979), which recycles some of the Patagonia footage as projected on some guy’s torso.

Hirsch is definitely a figure for further research. Still, the one non-Argentine movie I saw was also the strongest one that I saw — Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ two-part, flashback, silent-talkie melodrama “Tabu.” Winner of a third-place prize at Berlin last February and quite different from his elaborate sit-doc “Our Beloved Month of August,” “Tabu” is an affecting, energizing, funny (ha-ha as well as peculiar) movie about mad love, Portuguese colonialism, and the music of the Ronettes. It’s a brilliant, maybe even a great piece of cinema that I hope to be able to write about at greater length when it is shown, as it surely will be, at the 50th edition of the New York Film Festival.

Read more J. Hoberman in Movie Journal

We already know that Marina Abramovic will likely go down in art history as the first artist to successfully bring performance art into a museum context, thanks to her blockbuster 2010 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. But how about bringing performance to an art fair? This June, Abramovic's dealer, Sean Kelly, will restage the artist's seminal performance, "Imponderabilia," at his booth at Art Basel.

As in the original 1977 performance, a woman and a man will stand, nude and motionless, flanking a doorway — though this time, reperformers will replace Abramovic and her partner Ulay, and the doorway will be the entrance to Kelly's booth. Visitors will have the option of participating in the performance by passing in between the nude performers on the way inside. Less frisky fair-goers can enter through an alternate doorway. In addition to promising an eye-catching display, the restaging defies the expectation that galleries must bring their most commercial work to art fairs.

This isn't the first time "Imponderabilia" has been re-performed — in addition to being featured at Abramovic's MoMA retrospective, the piece played a starring role at the second-annual Rob Pruitt Art Awards. (Presenters entered the stage by passing through the pair of nude performers.)

It is also not the first time performance has made its way into an art fair. This year's Armory Show staged several (markedly less nude) performances in its aisles, including a symphonic poem about the financial collapse of Iceland by Örn Alexander Ámundason. Brazil's Luciana Brito Galeria even presented its own Abramovic piece at the Armory Show, staging the artist's "Bed for Human Use," complete with a supine performer lying on top of an elevated wooden slab.

Will deep-pocketed fairgoers have the opportunity to purchase their very own piece of performance art history with "Imponderabilia"? (Questions of logistics and performer compensation aside, imagine entering an art collector's home by walking through Abramovic's seminal work.) The gallery said that while the performance itself won't be for sale, collectors can acquire a limited edition video of the original 1977 performance. Meanwhile, the Art Basel presentation will give new meaning to the idea of seeing iconic artwork in the flesh. 

– Maya Lin's Latest, And Possibly Final, Memorial is Online-Only: Over three decades after creating her famous Vietnam Memorial, architect and artist Maya Lin has created a powerful new work memorializing a very different type of loss. Her Web-based "What Is Missing?" project, which is now live, provides an archive of the globe's endangered species. "It’s my last memorial," Lin says, "but I’ll be contributing to it for the rest of my life." [Bloomberg]

– Forget the Silver Spoon: Celebrity couple David and Victoria Beckham have done their infant daughter, Harper Seven, one better: They've gifted her a bespoke baby monitor designed by death-obsessed artist Damien Hirst. (The former Posh Spice also has a pair of "Spot Painting"-themed boots — but that's another story.) [Daily Mail] 

– Chinese Artifact Crime Wave in Britain: Not two weeks after objects worth over $2 million were taken from Durham's Oriental Museum, another cache of Chinese artifacts was stolen from Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum. The robbery took place Friday evening, and the culprits made off with 18 items, most of them jade sculptures, estimated to be worth millions of pounds. [ARTINFO UK]

– U.S. Court Returns Painting Stolen During WWII: A federal court in Tallahassee returned the 16th-century Romanino painting "Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue" to the descendents of Frederic Gentili di Giuseppe. The heirs plan to sell the painting, which was originally sold at a 1941 auction when the family fled France to escape the Nazis, at Christie's in June. It is estimated to be worth as much as $3.5 million. [WaPo, HuffPo]

– Bureaucracy vs. Ai Weiwei: The dissident Chinese artist has hit an unexpected roadblock in his quest to sue the Chinese government over his festering tax case. According to the court, Ai must produce his company's special seal, used on all official documents in China, in order to proceed with the lawsuit. Here's the catch: That seal was confiscated by police during his detention last year. [Reuters]

– L.A. Critic Gone Gallerist: The Los Angeles art critic Mat Gleason, whose Goagula Art Journal has been covering the local art scene for two decades, will open a new gallery in L.A.'s Chinatown, Coagula Curatorial. The space will debut with a solo installation by Tim Youd and photographs of Joseph Beuys performances on April 21. [Artweek L.A.]

– NASA Outsources to Art and Design Students: The U.S. space program is kaput, due to budget cuts. But perhaps science's loss is art's gain: NASA is teaming up with eight MFA candidates at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to create user interface for software that will allow astronauts on the International Space Station to remotely control a four-wheeled robot on Earth. [Wired] 

– When it Comes to Public Art, Chicago Can't Catch a Break: After being forced to endure a towering (and vaguely lewd) sculpture of Marilyn Monroe, residents of the Windy City must now welcome an ornate metal sculpture of former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. But at last this artwork comes with a practical application: It doubles as a BBQ smoker. [HuffPo]

– CAM St. Louis Appoints New Director: Lisa Melandri has been appointed director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis following a five-month international search. Melandri currently serves as the deputy director of exhibitions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. [Press Release]

– RIP John Golding, Painter, Art Historian, Critic, and Curator: The influential British artist and thinker, who died on April 9 at age 82, has been described as "Cubism's Vasari." Golding taught at London's Courtauld Institute of Art, where he wrote much of his influential scholarship on Cubism, Surrealism, and other Modern movements. His Abstract Expressionist paintings circulated almost as widely as his writings; he showed in many London galleries from the '60s onwards, and at New Haven's Yale Center for British Art. [WSJ, NYT]

VIDEO OF THE DAY

As Art Cologne 2012 opens, take a walk through the fair with Vernissage TV:

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Rockstar Lenny Kravitz proved his acting chops in 2009's "Precious," and more recently in this year's "Hunger Games," but his third talent has managed to stay largely under the radar. Surprise! It's furniture design. And Kravitz's lesser-known hobby is taking the stage at Milan's flagship Kartell store during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the world's most important design fair. 

The Kravitz Design team, in operation since 2003, took French industrial icon Philippe Starck's classic Mademoiselle chair for Kartell, normally so prim and lady-like, and re-upholstered them in python skin, fur, and leather. It was the classic rock and roll makeover, not unlike what they did to Sandra D. in "Grease." The revamped, rocked-out new collection of six is on view through April 22. 

To see the "Kartell Goes Rock" collection, click the slide show. 

NEW YORK — It was all about the power of the female at the Brooklyn Museum yesterday. “Women love women,” said artist Mickalene Thomas, one of the numerous ladies fêted last night. The sentiment echoed throughout the evening with a four-part marathon that celebrated, among other things, the fifth anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The packed crowd at the institution rivaled the place settings of artist Judy Chicago’s 1979 feminist homage, “The Dinner Party.” The event kicked off with activist and journalist Gloria Steinem, who presented 15 honorees – including Nobel-Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and broadcast journalist Connie Chung ­– with the Sackler Center First Awards. The honor earned each woman in the group a seat in the symbolic fourth wing of the iconic installation by Chicago, who was hard not to miss as she roamed about in a bright pink, blue, yellow, and green sequined dress.

The cocktail hour was just the second round of a full night at the museum. An interactive video installation by Nicole Cohen that allowed participants to be depicted in artists’ studios flanked the entrance. Towards the end of the hour, the center’s founder, collector and philanthropist Elizabeth A. Sackler, announced an undisclosed seven-figure endowment to support the appointment of a permanent curator of feminist art at the museum.

Afterward guests flooded the institution’s grand Beaux-Arts Court for its annual Brooklyn Artists Ball, where Sackler was awarded with the Augustus Graham Medal, and artists Martha Rosler, Amy Sillman, and Mickalene Thomas received the Asher B. Durand Award.

All eyes gravitated to the 40-foot-long table environments created by 16 female artists from Brooklyn. Actors in Viking costumes poured Mead (a honey wine) into hollowed-out cow horns for diners to enjoy at artist Liz Magic Laser’s table, titled “Honey and Horn.” Street artist Swoon scattered layers of cut paper and relief prints that represented rivers progressing towards the sea. Artist Chitra Ganesh used found mannequin parts to create a surreal feminist sci-fi sculptural and collage piece with eyeballs and legs. The artists had the entire day to prepare their installations, but many completed them in just a few hours due to their busy schedules. “They didn’t give any specifications,” Ganesh told ARTINFO. “They just told us it would be 40-feet-long.”

As the dinner wrapped up, everyone headed back downstairs for the final festivity of the night — a lively after-party. “I can’t think of a better occasion to be celebrated,” said Thomas, who has an upcoming solo show at the museum this fall. “I’m just very happy about that because these women paved the way for me to be who I am today.”

Click on the slide show to see guests at the Brooklyn Museum Artists Ball.

America’s most famous street artist got his start not on New York City’s graffiti-covered urban canvas but at the august Rhode Island School of Design and the billboards and stop signs of Providence. That origin story — how Shepard Fairey (A. 1992) began planting stickers emblazoned with the face of wrestler Andre the Giant in response to an art class assignment — will soon be retold in “Obey the Giant,” a 25-minute, lightly fictionalized film by RISD student Julian Marshall, that has the street art great's official seal of approval. The director tells ARTINFO that it will be to Fairey's origins what “‘The Social Network’ was to Facebook.”   

Marshall got to know Fairey as an intern in 2009 helping him produce a documentary about his own work. But that project “got put on the backburner,” the director said, presumably owing to Fairey’s trouble with copyright lawsuits from the Associated Press. Once Marshall started preparing for his undergraduate film thesis at RISD, he got in touch with Fairey and suggested a new approach to immortalizing his exploits: “I told him, why don’t we do a project that’s factually based but technically a narrative, so that it’s based on a true story,” Marshall recalled.

Fairey signed over story rights for that particular period of his life (circa 1983 and 1990). Incredibly, Marshall was able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance the production from “people who wanted to see the story get out” — that is, the legions of Obey fans out there — enlisting a professional film crew he knew from working on iconic indie director Wes Anderson's latest production. In February, the team shot for eight hectic days straight on the RISD campus. The school chipped in as well, providing office space, and some housing as well as the locations, plus the aid of over 50 students.

The polished "Obey the Giant" trailer shows wiry actor Josh Wills as Fairey, screenprinting a grid of Andre stickers, braving academic suspension, and plotting to plaster an Andre the Giant face over an unsightly campaign billboard of Providence’s ex-mayor and then-mayoral-candidate Buddy Cianci (played by Keith Jochim). In 1984, Cianci was forced to resign after pleading guilty to assaulting a contractor who he believed was sleeping with his wife. After rehabilitating himself as the host of a local radio show, Cianci ran again for mayor in 1990 — which is what made his ad such a juicy target for the young Fairey. The consequences of his guerilla act of art critique are the subject of "Obey the Giant"'s central drama. 

Does all this sound like something you want to be associated with? Though the shoot itself was entirely financed, Marshall and his team have launched a Kickstarter campaign attempting to crowd-source a minimum of $30,000 to finish editing the film, mixing the sound, and writing a score. Rewards for donations range from a DVD edition of the film to signed Shepard Fairey works (donated by the artist himself) and pieces of the set, including the fake Cianci billboard. 

See the trailer for Julian Marshall's "Obey the Giant" below: 

1. The trailer for “Magic Mike,” starring Channing Tatum as a dancer for hire, is here. (Watch it below.) [Vulture]

2. Maxwell has announced a mini-tour which will include the sales of unique merchandise supporting President Obama’s reelection campaign. [The Juice/Billboard]

3. “Damages” will return on July 11. [Deadline]

4. “Cash Cab” has been cancelled. [Vulture]

5. Read an oral history of “Da Butt.” [Washington City Paper]

Previously: Michael Fassbender, Darren Aronofsky, Diddy, Levon Helm, and Louis C.K.

The slate for next month’s Cannes film festival was announced this morning at Paris’s Intercontinental Hotel. According to whom one believes, the American presence at the festival will be “strong” (Variety) or “typically slight” (The Guardian). Thierry Fremaux, the festival’s artistic director, said “American cinema is back in force.” He also said “American cinema will be relatively strong, and not just Sundance-style independent cinema and studio fare.”

It depends what one means by “American.” The U.S. films in the Competition section include “Killing Them Softly,” a Brad Pitt heist-and-hitman drama directed by the New Zealander Andrew Dominik; “Lawless,” a Depression-era bootlegging-gangster movie directed by the Australian John Hillcoat; and the adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” directed by the Brazilian Walter Salles (and an Anglo-American co-production).

The other two American Competition entries were actually directed by Americans. “Mud,” the Missisippi-based story of a friendship between a fugitive and a 14-year-old boy, was made by Jeff Nicholls (“Take Shelter”), who comes from Arkansas. “The Paper Boy,” based on Pete Dexter’s novel about two brothers investigating the possibly wrong conviction of a man on Death Row in Florida, was directed by Philadelphian Lee Daniels ("Precious").

Matthew McConaughey plays the fugitive in “Mud” and a reporter (the brothers is played by Zac Efron) in “The Paperboy.” Nicole Kidman, who plays a Death Row groupie in “The Paperboy,” also portrays the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn opposite Daniel Craig’s Ernest Hemingway in HBO’s “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” directed by Philip Kaufman. It plays out of competition at Cannes, as does the animated “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” and, more interestingly, Bernardo Bertolucci’s latest, the all-Italian teen drama “Me and You.”

The American films in Un Certain Regard are Benh Zeitlin’s post-Hurricane Katrina fantasy drama “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which triumphed at Sundance, and the US-Canadian disease thriller “Antiviral,” the directorial debut of Brandon Cronenberg, whose dad David’s “Cosmopolis,” based on the Don DeLillo novel, is one of the most eagerly anticipated Competition films. Actress Sarah Gadon appears in the films by both Cronenberg père and fils. She is a future star, but may not yet deflect paparazzi attention from Kristen Stewart (“On the Road”) and Robert Pattinson (“Cosmopolis”) as their publicists try to keep them apart on the Croisette.

Woody Allen's "To Rome With Love" may yet turn up at the festival. As previously announced, the opener is Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” certainly a fillip for American kudos. The closer is “Thérèse Desqueyroux,” the second adaptation (following the 1962 Georges Franju film) of François Mauriac’s harrowing drama about a woman who poisons her husband. It stars Audrey Tautou and is the last film directed by Claude Miller, who died on April 4.

The Competition is reasonably well represented by auteurs, though there’s not a woman among them. As well as “Cosmopolis,” the roster includes new films by the 80-year-old nouvelle vague master Alain Resnais, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach, Léos Carax, Christian Mungiu, Abbas Kiarostami, Carlos Reygadas, and Jacques Audiard. The latter’s French-Belgian “Rust and Bone,” about a homeless man (Matthias Schoenaerts) in love with a killer-whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) who is horrifically maimed, may be the Gallic favorite to win the Palme d’Or.

The full list of Cannes' films is here. 

NEW YORK — Indie it-girl Chloe Sevigny and Nate Lowman were just a few of the bold names sitting around an all star table in the cellar of Acme, the new Downtown artist hotspot that recently opened on the corner of Great Jones and Lafayette streets. Terence Koh was there, too, clad in all white, and the art set was downing bottle after bottle of a very special 2003 Dom Pérignon vintage. It was an art world celebration for sure, albeit of nothing in particular. "Tonight reminds me that the spirit of creation and collaboration is still alive," said Rita Ackermann, whose recent video series "WARFILMS" was on view throughout the evening.

Projections of computer screens playing footage of Muammar Gaddafi and Rachel Black flashed like specters on the walls, part of the Hungarian artist's latest artistic endeavor. Post-dessert, the images both lit up and served as the backdrop to a performance by Koudlam, the French sunglasses-at-night-clad, self-described symphonic composer. After the one-man digital orchestra set, we sat down at Lowman's table. While he declined to comment on the artwork, he did share the story of how Ackermann led him to New York.

"The first time I ever visited New York, it was her stained-glass window piece in the old New Museum, when it was still in SoHo, with a Bob Flanagan installation inside the building that were the reason I moved here," he told ARTINFO. And did he ever let her know? "I might've got drunk and told her once actually. I don't know. It's uncomfortable when people fan out on each other." After his show at Milan's Massimo de Carlo gallery, he's taking the next couple of weeks to "chill out in my studio and think about a way to make better art." Has he made any progress? "They're secrets. Tricks of the trade I can’t tell you."

Meanwhile at the bar, Aarong Young, a former neighbor of Ackermann's from their Lower East Side days on Forsythe Street, was happy to give us his take. "At first I was like, 'What are these layers all about?' I thought it went brilliantly — layers and layers of different things of significance and compelling current events that actually solidify each other one after the other. It’s not narrative but it does come across as something when you add it." He's currently working out an upcoming top-secret May performance in Lebanon: "I can’t give out the details, I have to go there," he told us. "It has to be site-specific."

As the night started to devolve from elegant dinner party to raucous after-party, we found Ackermann nestled with her boyfriend, looking very happily cloistered in a dark corner booth. With her assistant running interference, she gave us a very brief proxy interview. What inspired her use of these images? "The Internet," ersatz Ackermann told us. And was she a fan of Rebecca Black? Two enthusiastic thumbs up. 

NEW YORK—For Frieze's London incarnation, the temporary sculpture park that accompanies the fair in Regent's Park is always a highlight. Today, the hotly anticipated new Frieze New York announced the international slate of artists who will be included in its own outdoor sculpture garden on Randall's Island next month. Expect fireworks — literally: The selection, curated by Tom Eccles, executive director of Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies, will include some arty pyrotechnics by Cerith Wyn Evans on the night of the fair's preview.

The Frieze sculpture park will be sited a short two-minute walk from the fair's snaking pavilion designed by SO-IL, on the banks of the East River. The list of seven artists contributing new pieces includes some heavy hitters: James Angus, Rathin Barman, Christoph Büchel, Ernesto Neto, Tomás Saraceno, and Katja Strunz. Existing works by Louise Bourgeois, Joshua Callaghan, Subodh Gupta, Ryan Gander, Jeppe Hein, Gabriel Kuri, Susan Philipsz, and Jaume Plensa will also be on view.

There are some fortunitious inclusions. May will be a busy month for the Argentine sculptor and installation artist Saraceno, who after installing his new piece "Pollux" (2012) on Randall's Island for Frieze's May 4 opening, will go to work completing his rooftop installation at the Metropolitan Museum, "Cloud City," which opens on May 15.

New Yorkers might already be familiar with Jaime Plensa's work from his enormous head sculpture in Madison Square Park last summer. For Frieze, he will show off another side of his practice via "Yorkshire Soul III" (2010), a large seated figure made of metal cut-out letters.

Meanwhile, the Indian artist Subodh Gupta's playful, monumental "Et tu, Duchamp?" (2009/2010), a bust of Marcel Duchamp dressed in drag as Leonardo's "Mona Lisa," promises to add a touch of humor to the pop-up sculpture park — one more reason to make the pilgrimmage to Randall's Island.