“Portrait of Wally,” a Tribeca Film Festival entry, is a Holocaust art theft documentary that plays like a serpentine thriller. It was initiated by David D’Arcy, who co-wrote the film with the director Andrew Shea and co-produced it with Shea and Barbara Morgan. Since the 73-year-drama surrounding the painting’s ownership eventually cost D’Arcy his reporter’s job at National Public Radio, he also appears as one of the film’s talking heads. D’Arcy, it should be added, writes a film blog for ARTINFO.
 


The movie traces the torturous journey of Egon Schiele’s candid 1912 expressionist portrait of his red-headed, blue-eyed girlfriend, Walburga Neuzil. Bought from Schiele by the Jewish Viennese gallery owner Lea Bondi, and kept by her in her home, the painting was stolen by a Nazi art expert, Friedrich Welz, following the Anschluss. Welz also confiscated and “aryanized” Bondi’s gallery. She herself escaped to London in 1939.

Bondi died at 93 in 1969, having spent 30 years trying in vain to get the painting back. She had put her trust in the obsessive Klimt collector Rudolf Leopold, who in 1954, according to the film, bartered one of his thousands of canvases, an unremarkable painting of a boy, to acquire “Portrait of Wally” from the Belvedere Museum, the Austrian National Gallery. “She said don’t let it disappear,” says former New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau in an onscreen interview. “But it disappeared into his ownership.”
 


How had “Portrait of Wally” ended up at the Belvedere? The painting had been seized from Welz by United States forces in Vienna after the war and delivered in 1947 to the Austrian Federal Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, along with paintings Welz had stolen from the Jewish art collector Heinrich Rieger, who had been murdered with his family in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.


The Rieger heirs sold their artworks to the Belvedere in 1950, and “Portrait of Wally,” erroneously listed as a drawing of Schiele’s wife, went as part of the consignment. The movie, which meshes interviews with astonishing period footage, speculates that the director of the museum must have known that “Portrait of Wally” had been incorrectly listed and that it had a false provenance.


In 1994, Leopold, for 40 years the painting’s wrongful owner, transferred it to the Leopold Museum, which loaned it to the Museum of Modern Art for its 1997 Schiele exhibition. The late Henry Bondi, of Princeton, New Jersey, filed a claim that the painting belonged to his aunt’s estate and asked MoMA to hold it in New York.
 


The movie explains how, wary of the damage that could be done to the international loaning of art, MoMA and the Leopold Museum denied the claim and the Bondi family’s ownership, causing Morgenthau, the hero of the hour, to subpoena and impound “Wally,” preventing it from leaving the U.S. We learm that D’Arcy’s contract with NPR was crudely terminated when it was deemed, wrongly on the evidence presented in the film, that he had not sought MoMA’s input when he reported on the conflict for the media organization.
 


“The U.S. vs. Portrait of Wally” lasted 13 years and was eventually settled out of court in 2010, at which point Leopold had already died. If you don’t know the outcome, I won’t divulge it here, suffice to say that not all members of the Bondi family were satisfied and that it’s hard to watch Leopold’s widow basking in reflected glory at the end of the film. This follows a dramatic scene in which “Wally” is removed – almost “Rosebud”-style – from a government storage facility in Queens, echoing images of GIs disinterring Old Masters from Nazi vaults after the war.
 


The impression the film gives of the Leopold family’s acquisitiveness is not flattering. Nor is the image of the Viennese people, shown welcoming Hitler in 1938 footage, though Shea balances this material by showing conscientious contemporary Austrians protesting their country’s Nazi past.


As a footnote, “Portrait of Wally” describes, in titles, the fates of Schiele and Neuzil – victims of the Spanish flu epidemic in 1917 and 1918, respectively. The extraordinary tenderness of Schiele’s painting of the woman he loved and abandoned (so he could marry someone better off, apparently) is undiminished, but no one can deny that first the Nazis and then some of art’s international powerbrokers trampled on their intimacy.

The lasting benefit of the “Wally” case, however, is that is has facilitated the increased restitution of works that the Nazis stole from Jewish families during the Holocaust and which had landed in European and American museums. Lea Bondi’s long campaign to get her beloved Schiele back was the starting point. 

“Portrait of Wally” premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival at 5:30pm, Saturday, April 28. The venue is the SVA Theater, 333 West 23rd Street, Manhattan. (212) 592-2980. It opens at the Quad Theater in Manhattan on May 11 and will be followed by a national release.

WHAT: “Cy Twombly: Works from the Sonnabend Collection”

WHEN: April 5-May 19, Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5 pm

WHERE: Eykyn Maclean, 23 East 67th St., New York

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: They were owned by one of the most accomplished gallerists of the 20th century, but many of the paintings in “Cy Twombly: Works from the Sonnabend Collection” have never been shown in public before. And, other than the one-room exhibition of painted wood sculptures that went on display at MoMA in May, this gallery exhibition is the first exhibition of work by the artist since his death in July 2011. Though he is best known for work he made decades ago, it appears the world still has a lot to see and learn from this master of brash, childlike scribble.

The most negative thing you could say about the work in this exhibition is that it is “representative” of his work. In auction house-speak, this would be to say that they look like typical Twomblys: full of pencil waves and playful jousts of shapes, lines, numbers, and words — all the best features of an eighth-grade romantic’s scrapbook. Such is the spirit of the work “Sperlonga Drawing” (1959). There, tiny, awkward rectangles, circles, and lines are placed in neat columns and scattered rows. Everywhere, the paper surface is kissed and flecked with dabs and droplets of white paint. The coastal town in southern Italy referenced in the title is also classic Twombly, evoking peace, pleasure, and a long-held tether to the ancient world.

These days, some might say that this just the sort of thing a new collector might want in order to prove that he owns a signature work by the artist. It doesn’t change the fact that that these paintings were bought by Ileana Sonnabend, wife of Leo Castelli, at a time when Twombly’s work was still largely under-appreciated by mainstream critics. Something in Twombly’s view of the world resonated with Sonnabend early on. This show lets the viewer take a gander at what it was that caught her eye.

Click on the slide show to see images from “Cy Twombly: Works from the Sonnabend Collection.” 

NEW YORK— "It’s not a middle-of-the-road show, it is the best of the best," producer Rosemary Krieger promised ARTINFO. She was talking about NYC20, a new fair of high-end vintage objects and furnishings by Dolphin Fair Group and 1stDibs.com, currently making its debut at the tents at Lincoln Center. With a formidable roster of 36 exhibitors, the emphasis here is on blue-chip modern design, keeping up with the younger collector set. It's well worth checking out: The booths resemble "Mad Men"-era living rooms, with flourishes of primary colors standing brightly against the inevitable plywood. A display of ‘60s Pop art minidresses in the Katy Kane Vintage and Couture Clothing booth were right at home.  

Perhaps our favorite stand was that of Hudson-based Mark McDonald, which drew us in with the enormous revolving shelf on its left wall. Upon closer inspection, this intriguing display turned out to be a set of sinks fused together with resin to create a single room partition, the latest cutting-edge creation by shipping container architects LOT-EK (it was $90,000 for a pair). Although it was built in 2000, the shelf's coat of retro tangerine automobile paint fit in nicely with the rest of the booth's cluster of mid-century furniture: a set of nesting tables by Grete Jalk ($22,000, ca. 1950s) supporting an Isamu Noguchi Radio Nurse (ca. 1940s). The baby room monitor, in the abstract form of a nurse’s face crafted in the wake of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, goes for $8,500. 

To the left of the tent's entrance, L.A.-based Dragonette represented the West Coast in fine style, boasting remnants of old Hollywood and designs that read as quintessentially Californian. A set of four white Hostess chairs by Williams Haines served as the centerpiece, their gleaming white accented by dark lacquered wood ($85,000, ca. 1950), from the Palm Springs estate of film executive Jack Warner (better known as half of the Warner Bros.). Against the wall were a set of ink drawings by director and screenwriter Jean Negulesco, caricatures of anonymous café culture figures who look like celebrities ($15,000-$34,000, ca. 1920s).

White was the overriding color at Los Angeles-based gallery Downtown's centrally-located booth, which conjured the atmosphere of a '60s beach party in Acapulco. All the pieces were culled from Mexico, including the Arturo Pani fiberglass lounge chairs (ca. 1965). They sat beneath the Austrian retro-space-age "Miracle Chandelier" ($34,000, ca. 1960) by crystal producer Bakalowits, which the gallery had scavenged from an old house in Acupulco, presented against the backdrop of a wall-sized close-up of Maria Felix in a straw hat (Felix, an icon of mid-century luxury, was Mexico's own Marilyn Monroe).

A metal screen by Tloupas Philolaos (ca. 1970) was a standout at Sally Rosen 20th Century Collections, set against the booth's back wall. The piece was salvaged from an old financial building in Paris that was gutted of all its functional artwork. It had existed as a set of four; two of these currently belong to Karl Lagerfeld. 

Finally, towards the back of the fair, there was something very magnetic about the lemon yellow of the Parzinger Originals lacquered cabinet, studded with gold, at the Palumbo Anderssen stand. Its bright sheen was in contrast with the avocado-green, tower-like Tommi Parzinger clock in the nearby corner (ca. 1950), which the American-German designer (1930-1991) constructed around a found clock face. on On one of the desks, there was a seemingly out-of-place industrial necklace of large, pyramid-shaped black beads on display. Gallerist Anka Anderssen wasn't quite sure who designed it or where it came from; nor did she seem too concerned whether it went with the rest of the booth. "Anything gorgeous, I buy it," she told ARTINFO. "Mix 'em together, and it’ll blend."

NYC20 runs through April 15 at the tents at Lincoln Center. 

Street artists might finally have a bona fide system for getting their work up on walls legally — if they’re in San Jose, at least. ArtHERE is a project that developed during one of San Francisco’s Summer of Smart hackathons, programming jams that bring developers together with urban activists, architects, and artists to solve the city’s biggest issues. The new Web site provides a forum where San Francisco and Bay Area property-owners can actually request art — they list the location of their forlorn, empty walls, and artists propose projects that will fill it. Through the site, commenters can vote for and comment on the projects they like best.

The system is perfect for street artists seeking out voluntary victims to practice their craft on. But it also helps artists of any stripe fill spaces of any type, whether it’s a colorful tag, a giant sculpture, or a pop-up video projection. ArtHERE is launching in conjunction with the upcoming ZERO1 Biennial in Silicon Valley, a series of exhibitions opening September 12 that will examine the intersection of art and technology, as well as the decentralized, networked nature of technological innovation in California.

Through ArtHERE, the biennial has listed a series of spaces open for art installations, including the ZERO1 Garage, the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Downtown Yoga Shala, and more. Artists then submit their proposals for pieces to fill the spaces publicly, adding some transparency to the biennial’s curatorial process. Thus far, two projects have been proposed. One is “Drone,” a crowd-sourced sound installation in which German artist Karl Heckmannufer will work with audiences to build ambient sound generators to be installed on the ZERO1 Garage’s façade; the other is Cause Collective’s “The Truth Booth,” also for the Garage, an inflatable structure that records two-minute-long video responses completing the statement “The truth is….”

By offering an open forum for debating public art projects, ArtHERE has the potential to change the curatorial process, forcing exhibition organizers to be more collaborative with and accountable to their audiences. Whether crowd-sourced curation will lead to a better biennial, however, has yet to be seen. We'll know in September.

Amy Herzog, one of the most promising of young American playwrights, is pregnant and due to give birth to a daughter on May 1 of this year. The date has more than a little significance, given that it is a high holiday among a vanishing political breed – communists. Though the 32-year-old writer doesn’t share the ideology, it is a deep vein coursing through her family and one that she has tapped in her work. 

In “After the Revolution,” the 2010 play that first brought her acclaim, she tackled the rifts which developed in her family when, in 1999, it was revealed that Joe Joseph, her paternal step-grandfather, had shared government secrets with the Soviets during World War II. In her latest play, “4000 Miles,” currently at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, the lead character is 91-year-old Vera Joseph (Mary Louise Wilson), who proudly carries the Socialist torch of her late husband. If it appears to be a lost cause, she is unaware of it. Her querulousness is reserved for her irritating neighbors in her Greenwich Village apartment building and, occasionally, for her guilt-stricken grandson (Gabriel Ebert), who has suddenly descended upon her after biking across country.

“Plays as truthful and touching and fine as ‘4,000 Miles’ come along once or maybe twice a season,” wrote Charles Isherwood in the New York Times of Herzog’s semi-autobiographical work. “This is the rare theatrical production that achieves perfection on its own terms.”

Vera, in fact, is based on Leepee Joseph, the playwright’s 95-year-old grandmother who, like her doppelganger, lives in the Village (a character based on Leepee also made a brief appearance in “After the Revolution”).  

While the Josephs are a source of fascination to the Yale-educated playwright, her biological paternal grandfather is no slouch either. He is Arthur Herzog, a writer and lyricist best known as having co-authored, with Billie Holiday, “God Bless the Child.” “He was a philanderer who went on to marry three more times after he divorced my grandmother,” says Herzog, who lives in Brooklyn with her husband, director Sam Gold (“Seminar,” “Look Back in Anger”). Though the playwright laughingly referred to having “pregnancy brain,” she recently spoke with ARTINFO eloquently – and astringently – of her family’s firebrand socialist legacy and how it has influenced her own world view. 

You mentioned that after seeing “After the Revolution,” Leepee said, “Well, Amy is very creative but ultimately she’s a conservative.” How true is that? 

Well, it’s certainly not true by any normal standards. In my family, “liberal” is kind of a dirty word. It suggests that you’re pretty far right of everyone else. So when she says conservative, she’s using that in relative way. But I think that when she saw the play, she disagreed fundamentally with me questioning whether my grandfather had done the right thing. She would have preferred a play that would have been a wholehearted agitprop defense. I certainly don’t think I condemned his actions. But I represented a number of different points of view.

Dinner table conversations must’ve been stimulating. What do you remember of them, especially as you grew up as the ossified gerontocracy of the Soviet Union yielded to Mikhail Gorbachev and Perestroika?

What I mostly remember is a great deal of defensiveness about it. Especially if you brought up Stalin [and the Purges] to my grandfather. The joke in my family is that he would always say, “There were problems.” I was young, so I wish I could have these conversations with him now. I’m sure they were incredibly, incredibly distraught about what was going on in Soviet Russia up to the dissolution. But I think they felt their role regarding any state which was making a true Communist effort was to supportive and to point out what was good because they thought that the rest of the world was doing the other thing. I was very young but I wasn’t aware of any reflective or nuanced positions.

What form did their political activism take in this country?

They were huge supporters of the Civil Rights movements and it was a huge source of pride that my father and uncles were involved in registering voters. But as much as they were avid supporters, there was this overarching ideology that class struggle was the first and most important struggle and everything else came under the rubric of a bourgeois cause. They would often boast of how much more racial equality there was in the Soviet Union than in the United States, probably a claim that is not so easy to support now.

Was Castro’s Cuba a heroic cause?

Yeah. Huge. They visited Cuba many times. My grandmother, as recently as five or ten years ago and well into her ’80s, went to Cuba on volunteer missions bringing medical supplies and stuff. They held up Cuba as a model.

How did you personally come to terms with their condemnation of bourgeois values? Did you feel guilty?

Interesting. First of all, my immediate family was much less radical so the influence was at a little bit of a remove. I was really proud of having this strain in my family, but I don’t think that I felt guilty. I think that descended on me later in my 20s when I started wondering why I was not picking up this mantle and why my generation in general seemed so much less interested in fighting for social change than my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I also ran into funny contradictions even in the older generations. Though my grandparents were committed Communists, my grandfather, after he was blacklisted, was not able to work in government again and ended up getting a high-level job at a pharmaceutical company, earning quite a bit of money and getting to travel the world. And my grandmother loved travelling with him and staying at four-star hotels. So I saw enough contradictions in those generations that I felt less guilty about having them in my own life.

Do you envy that passion and total commitment expressed in that generation?

I did and I do feel envy. And more than envy, I feel really puzzled. I don’t understand why I’m not more driven to be fighting for social change and I probably need to take more personal responsibility about it. I always put it in terms of my generation. But really, I could do something. What’s puzzling to me, my grandmother and I are so close, that if we’d met at the same age, if I’d been around then, I imagine that I would have been swept up by the same things that she was swept up by.

Does Leepee’s faith in Communism remain undiminished?

“Undiminished.” What an interesting word to think of in terms of her life right now when I know that, at 95, she feels like she’s losing things constantly. Yes. I would say it’s undiminished except that she isn’t able at this point to have the kind of active engagement with it that would reinforce it. I believe that she holds all of the same views that she held 20 or 70 years ago. The one thing she’s changed her mind about is that she used to believe that homosexuality was a mental illness,  and she has come around to completely accepting it as a normal part of the course of human events.

You mean, the Communist libel that homosexuality was a symptom of capitalist decadence?

[Laughs] Yes. As a result, my dad and aunts and uncles really took up the mantle of gay rights. They took up their parents’ politics but were able to react against this part of it.

How do you feel looking back at what now seems a vanished world?

Profoundly mixed. I feel a real sense of loss around the idealism – the time and heart that they put into that fight and what was so beautiful about that fight. But the more I learned about the Soviet Union, the more I felt disquieted about what they chose to be willfully blind to. I don’t believe that the ends justify the means, but I feel some uncertainty whether they were maybe right to be so dogmatic and forceful, if that was the most productive way to go about it or if something was really lost with that kind of approach. Maybe they’d have made more headway if there’d been a little more reflection and self-knowledge and criticisms about what was going on in the movement.

Are you attracted as a dramatist to the cost of it, in both personal and familial terms?

I was already extremely interested in that angle of the story long before I learned about my grandfather’s activities in the ’40s. My family always had a sense of pride of what my grandfather and grandmother have endured and what they were willing to lose. And I have worried, actually, that by writing a play like “After the Revolution” and emphasizing his small point of culpability that to certain people it proves, or detracts from, the truth of what happened, which is that these people were unjustly persecuted and they were fighting for good.

Do you suppose that is why Leepee would want you to write agitprop? The argument that you have to be radical to move the needle and can’t let anything compromise that radicalism?

Yeah. I was open to that argument at one point. But it’s hard to hold that position and be a writer because what I do in my job is really at odds with that kind of partisanship. I spend a lot of time trying to see all sides of any issue. I’m not that much of a student of history to know whether it’s true, but I do know that it’s not the way that I’ve grown into my approach to the world.

How do you feel about these issues now that capitalism appears to be established as our state religion?

Mostly with dismay I guess. At capitalism in general. I don’t know how to answer that question. I feel fairly alienated from mass culture.  I’ve chosen to make a life in the theater, which is a sort of antiquated arena and not a particularly capitalist one. Again, why am I not doing anything? I’m certainly dismayed by what I see but I don’t think that much about the alternatives. My grandparents saw capitalism as something that could be defeated and I’m not sure that I do. It seems here to stay.

I believe you mentioned that you have one more play in you about your family. What dictates your ethical approach to what you will and will not divulge about them?

It entails a lot of communication so they know what’s going on. My grandfather’s name was already in print but I did have some real anxiety about naming his name in writing the play about him. In terms of the living members, I am inspired by what I’ve witnessed, but what I write ultimately ends being a work of fiction. And I try to not to talk about what’s true and what’s not in order to protect their privacy. So far it’s worked. Nobody’s disowned me.

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, April 9-13, 2012:

ART

— Julia Halperin looked into a lawsuit brought against William Eggleston by one of his most devoted collectors to prevent the celebrated photographer from making new editions of his works.

— Kyle Chayka compiled a list of 20 terrific Tumblr blogs belonging to museums, galleries, and non-profits, from the New Museum and LACMA to Gavin Brown and Creative Time.

— Following the untimely death of Thomas Kinkade last week at age 54, Ben Davis reflected on the significance of his accidentally avant-garde practice — perhaps further boosting the rapidly increasing market for his kitschy paintings and prints.

— ARTINFO Brazil's Fernanda Lopes asked curators, artists, and critics from that country why they thought the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil's M.C. Escher exhibition, "The Magical World of Escher," took the prize as the most-attended exhibition in the world last year.

— Shane Ferro asked gallerists — including Jane Cohan, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery's Ethan Sklar — what chance Frieze New York had of supplanting the Armory Show as the Big Apple's top art fair when it debuts next month.

DESIGN & FASHION

— William L. Hamilton asked the experts — from staffers at Sotheby’s and Los Angeles Modern Auctions to the curator of one of North America's richest 20th century design collections — which names are emerging as collectors' favorites in the maturing market for Modern design.

— Janelle Zara surveyed the highlights from Japan Society's new exhibition, "Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945," which chronicles Japanese artists' attempts to fuse traditional iconography with Western modernist influences.

— Ann Binlot spoke to Bruno Pieters, a former creative director at Hugo by Hugo Boss, about his new label, Honest by, which aims to break fashion world trends by striving for "100 percent transparency."

— Postmodern architect and designer Michael Graves discussed his just-ended partnership with Target, how he accidentally designed an "American tea kettle," and why he's indifferent to the New York City skyline.

— Janelle Zara picked over the proposals by 12 world-renowned architects vying to redesign Washington D.C.'s National Mall.

PERFORMING ARTS

— New York is in the grips of Kraftwerk hysteria, and Ann Binlot was front row center when the German electro-pop group launched its MoMA residency this week — while the rest of us lusted after the accompanying limited-edition catalogue.

— J. Hoberman reviewed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín's "Post Mortem," which opened this week at New York's Film Forum, deeming it "a new and original vision of political terror."

— Artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen annouced that his next feature “Twelve Years a Slave” will be based on the 1853 autobiography of Solomon Northup (to be played by Chiwetel Ejiofor opposite Fassbender as a plantation owner), the son of a freed slave.

— Graham Fuller speculated what the film adaptation of Bob Dylan's classic album "Blood on the Tracks" — just announced by the Brazilian company that recently bought the rights to it — might be like.

— Actress Greta Gerwig spoke to ARTINFO about her neurotic character in Whit Stillman's new campus comedy "Damsels in Distress," working with Woody Allen, and her super-secret new project.

As we move into spring in the Northern Hemisphere, we're about as far around the calendar from the much maligned Beaujolais Nouveau as we can get, and maybe that's a good thing. The return of spring flowers and green leaves came to much of the U.S...

Today, Flo Fab reports that David Bouley has hired chef Eiji Ichim...

What price movie modernizations of literary classics? The news that “Hurt Locker” and “Twilight” actor Christian Camargo will make his directorial debut with an update of Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” set in the New England countryside over a hectic Memorial Day weekend, raises the question again.

Variety reported on Wednesday that the actress Juliet Rylance, who is Camargo’s wife, and the New Globe Theater founder Barbara Romer will produce the indie picture. Camargo has assembled an impressive cast: Allison Janney will play a movie star based on Chekhov’s Irina, William Hurt will play her brother (based on Sorin), and Katie Holmes “the temperamental daughter of the estate’s caretaker” (Nina). Russell Means and Jean Reno will co-star. Rylance and her stepfather, Mark Rylance, are also in negotiations for parts.

Given audiences’ affinity for period atmosphere, re-envisioning period dramas in the present is a risky proposition, as the makers of the 1997 “A Thousand Acres,” based on “King Lear,” and the 1998 “Great Expectations,” will testify, though the latter Dickens adaptation made $26 million, surprising given its embarrassing modernity. “Treasure Planet” (2002), a sacrilegious animated adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” meanwhile returned less than $54 million on its estimated $140 million cost. Enough said.

Sometimes, though, there are surprises. “Clueless” (1995), Amy Heckerling’s Californian high-school version of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” overcame its gimmickry with the help of a fleet script and a new star in Alicia Silverstone. Its look has dated with its fashions – in sharp contrast to “Metropolitan” (1990), indie filmmaker Whit Stillman’s auspicious East Coast version of “Mansfield Park,” which retains its preppie charm – but the zest of “Clueless” remains infectious.

“Cruel Intentions” (1999) and “Cruel Intentions 2” (2000) made nonsense of Chodleros de Laclos’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” though they can be forgiven for opening doors for Reese Witherspoon and Amy Adams, respectively.  

“The Seagull” is a particularly difficult challenge, given that New York has staged exceptional theatrical versions in recent years. In 2007, Ian McKellen, Frances Barber, and Romola Garai appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In 2008, the Royal Court’s acclaimed 2007 production arrived at the Walter Kerr on Broadway with a cast that included Kristin Scott Thomas, Peter Saarsgaard (as Trigorin), Peter Wight (as Sorin), Mackenzie Crook, Zoe Kazan, and Carey Mulligan, who gave a standout performance as Nina.

Indeed, Holmes will have her work cut out trying to match Mulligan’s tearful intensity in the role, or Garai’s tremulous melancholy. Then again, a play is not a film, and maybe Camargo has something different up his sleeve for the role of the would-be actress who becomes enslaved by her desire for the callous Trigorin.

LONDON – On April 4, London ditched the old-school analogue TV signal for its digital successor. The timing of “Remote Control” couldn’t have been better. Conceived by Matt Williams of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, this curatorial musing on artists’ complex relationship with television deftly avoids the pitfalls of a large-scale film and video exhibition. True, there’s a lot of stuff on screens. You could easily spend a day watching Gerry Schum’s iconic “TV Gallery,” TVTV’s mordant documentary “Adland” (1974), Joan Braderman’s hilarious comment on the gender politics of “Dynasty” (“Joan Does Dynasty,” 1986), and pieces by the likes of David Hall, Richard Serra, and Marcel Odenbach presented in the lower gallery. And if you can, you should. But “Remote Control” manages the rare feat of gratifying on a purely formal and sculptural level, presenting television as more than a picture stream, artistic or not.

The films in the lower gallery are part of an installation by Berlin-based artist Simon Denny. Each is shown on custom-made cathode ray tube monitor that had to be ordered from China, as they are no longer available for domestic use in the U.K. Modestly sized, their frame a glossy claret color, the monitors have the look of adolescent-bedroom TV sets, establishing a comfortable intimacy between videos and viewers. Facing those screens, a huge machine, once used to transmit Channel 4 to part of East Anglia, stands like a monument to an already bygone analogue era. This daunting statement on technology's rapid obsolescence gives television – too often considered as a disembodied medium – an imposing physical presence. Ira Schneider’s oversized wall drawing of the “Center for Decentralized Television” (1971), picturing the office/viewing room/living and meeting place of self-proclaimed “media think-thank” Raindance Corporation, is an inspired prefiguration of the rhizome-like development of media, the moving image in particular, in the decades to come.

The formal and the political continue to cohabit in the upper galleries. The three vertical screens of Hito Steyerl’s “Red Alert” (2007) play on loop a deep, glowing red redolent of both Constructivism’s monochromes and the unnerving hue picked by the United States Homeland Security Office to signify the highest alert level. Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujică's documentary on the Romanian revolution, stitched together from amateur footage, is a fascinating reminder of how cheap video cameras launched a first assault on the dominance of official media outlets — an assault that turned into a global landslide with the rise of digital technology.

The show’s precise splicing of different techniques, concerns, and generations of artists is a stimulating and timely addition to the discourse around television. The small screen isn’t — as it too often is — presented as a wicked and increasingly obsolete instrument of mass decerebration, nor simply as an exciting artistic strategy, but as the technology that radically transformed the way we conceive and deal with images. 

“Remote Control,” April 2-June 10, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

NEW YORK—As vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, conceptual Chinese artist Xu Bing is the patrician dean of China’s art world. His work is incisive and thought-driven; iconic works like “Book From the Sky” and “The Living Word” play aesthetic games with the pictograms of the Chinese language. Yet, as he explains, Xu’s background is anything but Ivory Tower. He grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and in 1975 was sent to the countryside to work as a farmer.

Xu recalls that his desire to create art endured through that difficult time. After the Cultural Revolution, the artist was one of the first students to reenter China’s growing art education system, and became part of CAFA’s printmaking staff upon graduation. He moved to New York in 1992, rooming with Ai Weiwei in an East Village basement before taking up residence in Williamsburg, where he currently has a home and studio converted from an old bakery. The cavernous stone oven left over from the building’s previous use forms a sunken pit that he has taken over as an office.

On the occasion of his “Tobacco Project” exhibition at the Aldrich Museum, ARTINFO sat down with Xu Bing to discuss how he became an artist despite political challenges, the inspiration he took from New York’s tumultuous art scene, and his latest projects.

Watch ARTINFO’s video profile of Xu Bing below:

– Qataris Preparing for "Scream" Sale: After their blockbuster purchase of Cézanne's "Card Players" last year for a quarter-of-a-billion dollars, the royal family of Qatar was dubbed "the world's biggest buyer in the art market." Now, the Middle Eastern royals are said to be preparing to move their massive sand dunes of cash to make a play for for the last privately-owned version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" when it heads to auction at Sotheby's on May 2. For rival collectors lusting after the Expressionist trophy, such rumors are sure to provoke some angst. [Arabian Business]

– Ai Weiwei Sues China's Tax Authorities: The dissident artist-activist Ai Weiwei announced on Friday that he is suing China's tax authorities for fining the company that produces his work 15 million RMB ($2.4 million) for tax evasion following his arrest and 80-day detention last year, without showing him any evidence or witness testimony. In dealing with Beijing Fake Cultural Development, Ai alleges, Chinese authorities' "actions were illegal and violated regulations." [Reuters]

– Nobel-Winning Novelist Opens Real Fictional Museum: Orhan Pamuk, the outspoken Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, released his eighth novel "The Museum of Innocence" two years thereafter. Now he's putting the finishing touches on an institution in Istanbul of the same name. The new Museum of Innocence, which opens April 27, features cabinets corresponding to the novel's 83 chapters, filled with related artifacts. [FT]

– David Hockney Defends Smoking, Again: Full-time artist and part-time cigarette evangelist David Hockney has stepped back into the limelight to defend cigarette companies' right to decorate their own packets. In a letter to the Daily Mail, he calls the proposal "a draconian measure of which Stalin's censorship police would have been proud" and notes that "it is a dangerous thing to try to diminish the right of expression." Plus, he says, "I don't believe the second-hand smoke stuff." [Daily Mail] 

– Guy Jennings Returns to Christie's: Call it auction house musical chairs: as longtime Impressionist and modern art chairman Thomas Seydoux prepares to leave Christie's, the company has announced that Guy Jennings will become deputy chairman. Jennings returns to Christie's after years working as a private dealer with partner Simon Theobald. [FT]

– New York Public Library Defends Renovation: Library traditionalists are up in arms over the NYPL's proposal to reimagine  its Fifth Avenue flagship to the tune of $300 million. The Norman Foster-designed overhaul would include converting the building from a reference operation to a circulating library. [NYT] 

– Thomas Kinkade Battled Alcoholism: Though the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of wildly popular painter Thomas Kinkade remain murky pending autopsy results, the 54-year-old artist had relapsed into alcoholism shortly before his death, according to his brother. (Previously, a recording of the call by rescue workers who found his body indicated that the painter had been "drinking all night.") [Mercury News]

– Kraftwerk's Founder Speaks: How private is electro-pop band Kraftwerk? Though Kraftwerk's founding member Ralf Hütter divulged in a rare interview that a new album is in the works, the location of its Düsseldorf studio is a secret, and its mail is said to be returned unopened. Even curator Klaus Biesenbach, who organized Kraftwerk's MoMA retrospective, is under a strict gag order. "I'm not allowed to talk about it," he said of his visit to the band's studio. [NYT]

– New York's Russian Auctions Shrinking: Sotheby's and Christie's offerings of Russian art and artifacts, once rich, have dwindled in recent years. For the first time in half a decade, neither house's decorative arts sale, to be held this week, includes the usually competitive Russian painting category. [Businessweek]

– James Franco Fans Flock to MOCA: Actor and artist James Franco held a lecture and book signing over the weekend at Los Angeles's MOCA, which will host the upcoming and long-delayed Franco-curated exhibition "Rebel." Jeffrey Deitch's gratitude was palpable in his generous introduction, which addressed the expanding definitions of art: "No one embodies this aspect of what art is becoming better than James Franco." Lord help us. [LAT]

– ArtSway Closing After 15 Years: In the UK, the ambitious art center in a converted stable in New Forest, Hampshire, announced that it will close its doors due to lack of funds. Founded in 1997, ArtSway has exhibited many emerging artists — including Christopher Orr and Gayle Chong Kwan — and mounted exhibitions of resident artists at four consecutive Venice Biennales. [Art Review]

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

New Web Initiative ArtHERE Seeks to Crowdsource Public Art in Silicon Valley

"Remote Control": London's ICA Dissects the Conflicted Love Affair Between Artists and Television

An Unpretentious Dallas Art Fair Kicks Off, With Dealers Praising It as the "Miss Congeniality of Art Fairs"

The Holocaust Art Theft of Egon Schiele's "Portrait of Wally" Becomes a Documentary Thriller

Top Drawer: New York's NYC20 Fair Courts the Young Collector With Modish Midcentury Designs

Classic Twombly: See the Artworks That Captured Ileana Sonnabend's Imagination, On View at Eykyn Maclean

Fashion as exhibition fodder may be more prolific since blockbusters like “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” or “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” but it’s rare that a current collection goes on display. Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind Japanese avant-garde label Comme des Garçons, is changing that with an exhibition of her spring/summer 2012 collection at Paris’s Les Docks, on view through October 7.

“White Drama” — named after the collection — will showcase the monochrome confections of the line, which magnifies four stages of life: birth, marriage, death, and transcendence. Clusters of fabric roses adorn some garments, while graffiti-like patterns decorate others. Naive dresses evoke a baby’s baptism, lace veils signify one’s wedding day, and shroud-like garments point to life’s end.

Kawakubo conceptualized the installation design, encasing groups of 33 looks – styled in the same manner as they appear in her runway show – in giant clear plastic bubbles.

“I was interested to put the clothes of this collection in a different environment to the show. I thought about making a second space within the existing as it was a new space of the city of Paris,” Kawakubo told WWD. “I would be happy if people felt that ‘White Drama’ has become even more dramatic.”

The exhibition will run concurrently with that of another fashion legend: Cristóbal Balenciaga, whose show, “Cristóbal Balenciaga: Fashion Collector,” is running at the same venue through the fall.

Click on the slide show to see highlights from Comme des Garçons’s “White Drama,” on view at Les Docks through October 7. 

1. Watch Tupac Shakur perform in hologram form at Coachella. [AllHipHop]

2. Mitt Romney may appear on “Saturday Night Live.” [Daily Intel]

3. Axl Rose was booed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. [RS]

4. Frank Langella speaks on video about his new memoir. [Speakeasy/WSJ]
Related: The Juiciest Bits From Frank Langella’s Celebrity-Leveling Memoir “Dropped Names”

5. All five actors who played the various “Star Trek” captains will appear together in London. [Reuters]

Arguably the world's most important furniture trade show, Salone Internazionale del Mobile (or, the International Furniture Fair of Milan), opens its 51st installment on April 17, presenting the newest creations from over 2,500 designers — including design stars like Marcel Wanders and Philippe Starck; powerhouse manufacturers like Kartell and Bisazza; and emerging talents like Postfossil and Studio Juju. The mammoth fair is open to the public on April 21, and for those outside the trade, the entire five days will be chock-full of interactive events and installations, beyond all the beautiful objects to ogle. 

MOST WITH TOM DIXON

British design and manufacturing company Tom Dixon is setting up "MOST," a sprawling exhibition that encourages visitors to peruse various high-tech and high-concept designs at the National Museum of Science and Technology Milan. Aside from the Warhol Factory-style mise-en-scene, a major draw will be the multisensory installation of Dror Benshetrit's new collection for Tumi. It’s a luggage exhibition like you’ve never seen: an action-packed film and photo installation by Jules Wright chronicling a secret agent's transcontinental trek, trusted luggage in hand. SodaStream, in collaboration with gadget wonk Yves Behar, is hosting the Soda Bar, a very special, sustainable, bottle-free refreshment stand showcasing Behar’s new home soda system and chandelier installation. Other exhibitors include Areaware (which plans to present the world’s largest Cubebot), David Weeks Studio, and Objekten.

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia, Via San Vittore 21; April 17-22; most.tomdixon.net

HACKED

Promising visitors “100 Hours of Rebellious Imagination,” British curator Beatrice Galilee is taking over an entire floor of the historic department store La Rinascente for "Hacked,” five days of avant-garde, experiential presentations with a penchant towards the anarchic. Options include exchanging lunar rocks and space dust at the “Moon Colony Trading Post” on Tuesday, the 17th; constructing a Lumiphone of your own (that is, a hybrid light and music device) at “Make Your Own Instrument” on Wednesday, the 18th; and witnessing the contest of man versus machine as Dominic Wilcox competes with a 3-D printer to construct replicas of the nearby Duomo on Thursday, the 19th.

La Rinascente, Piazza del Duomo 3; April 16-21; hackedmilan.it

THE SECRET GARDEN

Celebrated glassblowers Barovier&Toso and marble maters Citco have enlisted the help of Paola Navone and Zaha Hadid Architects to transform Milan’s largely unknown Botanical Garden into a whimsical installation. Navone will be installing Barovier&Toso’s Murano glass chandeliers in simulated “nests” interwoven with hazelnut trees. The interior of Hadid’s pavilion is a jigsaw of marble fragments fit together to form patterns on the walls. 

Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer whose legacy extends far beyond his untimely death, is the focus of this special installation by Wallpaper*. The design magazine celebrates McQueen’s handmade craftsmanship with examples of laser-cutting and hand-stitched pleating from his eponymous brand’s spring/summer 2012 collection, which was directed by his successor, Sarah Burton, at the label's Milan flagship store.

Alexander McQueen, Via Verri 8; 17 - 22 April; wallpaper.com

PERSPECTIVES

A show by Belgium is Design, “Perspectives” surveys the quirky landscape that is Belgian innovation. Twenty-five designers, including the well-established and emerging, present their prototypes, products, and other projects that address social issues like economic stability, sustainability, environmental impact, and aging populations. Don't miss Alain Gilles’ Nomad Portable Solar Lamp (2012), a stylish LED lantern powered by the sun, and Linde Herman’s Size 27, an innovative pair of assemble-at-home moccasins.

Triennale di Milan, Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6; 17-22 April; belgiumisdesign.be

WITH MOVEMENT 

A creative label based in the Netherlands with offices in the UK, Laikingland is putting together a program of kinetic design as only the Dutch can do it. The lineup of superstars, including Maarten Baas and Tord Boontje, is sure to be a very dynamic presenentation.

Ventura Lambrate, Via Venture 2a; 17-22 April; laikingland.blogspot.co.uk

BE OPEN

Listen to the likes of Julian Schnabel, Sass Brown, and Ilse Crawford discuss the potential for design to transform our social and economic climate.

Università Degli Studi di Milano; 17-28 April; www.beopenfuture.com

PARIS—Now Europe’s largest art center, the Palais de Tokyo reopened last week with a 30-hour cavalcade of projections and performances straddling the experimental and the self-referential, hinting at both a new identity and the untethered ambition for the French capital’s foremost institution for emerging contemporary art.

Ten months of renovations have brought back into use 14,000 square meters (150,000 square feet) of space left derelict through years of budget constraints and squabbling over whether the Palais was an incubator for young talent or a more conservative, faithful supporter of established French artists. Judging by the first new elements of programming, both demands seem to be catered to, in labyrinthine rooms and corridors that sprawl across four floors that architects Lacaton and Vassal have left under-developed to perfection. It remains to be seen how its new director Jean de Loisy and his curators fare with a Berlin-style industrial concrete site that can be both gracious and unyielding.

Aside from the artist interventions, the Palais seems little changed from how it looked last October, when it was still formally under construction. Dust clings to boots and jeans, exposed concrete is plentiful and electrical wires hang from the ceiling. The Seine-side gallery is bathed in natural light with a view of the Eiffel Tower, while the descent into the vast and dungeon-like basement, lit only by a handful of fluorescent lamps, is damp and stuffy. On the first floor, a skylight brightens an open, white-walled space, while the newly opened underground projection rooms are pitch black aside from a luminous, web-like tapestry of deer in a forest by French artist Julien Salaud. (This juxtaposition is even more striking when one sees pictures of the Palais in the 1960s, a classic museum that resembled its current neighbor, the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.) “It’s a territory for adventure,” de Loisy said at the opening.

A few minutes past 6 pm on Thursday, the doors opened to the tuba-like bellows of foghorns from the roof of the Palais, announcing the rebirth — and symbolically, a new maiden voyage — for a several mile radius around Paris. This was a performance, dubbed “Air de Jeu,” by Fouad Bouchoucha, and it is destined to be immortalized through a film featuring recordings that the artist’s assistants made at different historic places while Bouchoucha tooted his horns, which have been reclaimed from decommissioned ships.

“The horns use compressed air, which echoes the Palais de Tokyo as a residual space, which exists within its closed walls and is shaped by its new architecture,” Bouchoucha told ARTINFO France.

The opening lobby of the Palais offers an immediate reflection on the site’s desire to ally the unkempt and undefined with artistic statements. Before closing, the high-ceiling space had been filled by a work by Serge Spitzer, which has now been replaced by the poetic cacophony of Peter Buggenhout’s enormous hanging sculpture “The Blind Leading the Blind [If one blind man guides another, they will both fall into the ditch (Matthew 15: 14)],” a mass of debris that appears almost to be a part of the Palais that has been left in disrepair, blurring the line between the site and the work itself.

Eight artists have contributed on-site interventions. Christian Marclay has set the building’s palatially classic exterior against the institution's contemporary ideals, installing large windows of 1950s cartoon-style bubbles — “Kaboom,” “Fwooosshh,” etc. — in the café facing onto the Avenue du Président Wilson. The work, which also explores the relationship between words and sound, hints at the Palais’s multi- and cross-disciplinary leitmotif and the daring aspect of bringing a space reminiscent of early Berlin and New York warehouse shows to the quietly luxurious 16th Arrondissement.

Vincent Ganivet, who gained wide exposure after one of his breeze block sculptures was included in the 2010 “Dynasty” survey of young French art at the Palais, has manipulated smoke from fireworks to create planet-like orbs on white backgrounds, a process evoking the tension between deliberate precision, the accidental, and the catastrophic — and also the many possible fates and facets of the Palais. Elsewhere, under a central skylight, Ulla Von Brandenburg’s double skate-ramp “Death of a King” appears as a colorful, almost psychedelic, untouchable stage.

At the reopening (dubbed an “Entre-ouverture” since a government-initiated Triennale will officially become the Palais’s first post-renovation exhibition this week), dancers, singers, and spoken word artists seemed to emerge from nowhere for ephemeral performances. Young women in lab coats danced with neon-colored skeletons for Gloria Friedman’s live painting “Dolce Vita.” Claude Cattelain built and rebuilt ad infinitum a Mikado-like structure of wooden pillars and planks. For Hajnal Nemeth’s performance “Contrawork,” singers delivered a bizarre, mournful eulogy for a car that was being stripped a few feet away. Visitors had fun piloting a vinyl-scratching remote-controlled car on Lucas Abela’s installation “Vinyl Arcade,” while Monte Laster’s urban street poets popped up in the crowd with deft wordsmithing. Matthew Herbert closed the proceedings, Friday night, with a performance of a music-cum-cooking show “One Pig.”

Across from Buggenhout’s mobile-like sculpture remains Maria Loboda’s immense “Walldrawing” of arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and lead. It resembles modern street art but is actually adapted from Wiener Werkstätte motifs. It’s slogan, “Fear Eats the Soul,” could be a reminder for the Palais itself, long hampered by an internal tug-of-war between different generations of the French art scene.

When Jérôme Sans and Nicholas Bourriaud took the helm of the first Palais incarnation as a site for contemporary creation in 2002, it was with a self-styled remit to pay attention to French artists, going against the internationally-minded gallery scene. Cue years of edgy shows, debate, and a struggle that peaked in April 2011, when the head of the renovation project, Olivier Kaeppelin, left in anger to join the Fondation Maeght. Kaeppelin had more or less formally been offered the presidency of the Palais, but claimed he was being prevented from influencing its artistic direction and that there was tension between him and the Swiss director of the Palais, Marc-Olivier Wahler. Kaeppelin was also the author of a report, commissioned by then minister of Culture Christine Albanel in 2009, which concluded that the Palais de Tokyo should cater to established artists who had yet to receive a major retrospective, as well as emerging talent. He had wanted to present the old guard likes of Robert Combas and Hervé Télémaque, riling some who considered his selection two conservative — but Kaeppelin also managed to show Sophie Calle and Amos Gitaï in the unfinished spaces, before his departure.

The oldest French artist to decorate a space in the new Palais, Jean-Michel Alberola, has filled an upstairs room with simple drawings and philosophical phrases. It is the least inspiring intervention on the building. Of the three solo shows planned for each season, one will present an established artist, with a young French artist and a young international artist taking the other berths. First up will be Fabrice Hyber, incidentally also one of the more contemporary names on Kaeppelin’s list. Philippe Parreno will follow next year, after a show put together by 15 international curators, tasked with showing art in a novel way.

The fate of the Palais de Tokyo says a lot about France’s perspective and ambition for its own art scene, still working to reclaim its early 20th-century importance. Jean de Loisy will have to nimbly navigate between doing justice to proven talent, while avoiding a return to the country’s pre-2005 reputation for top-down sanctioning of selected artists — an issue that the French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand seemed to allude to at the opening when he praised Mr. de Loisy for programming which showed “how you are visionary and, at the same time, realist.” The strategy of leaving the new Palais de Tokyo raw and unfinished, its future unwritten, may then prove to be very effective indeed.

To see images of the new Palais de Tokyo, click on the slide show.

Thirty years ago the actor Richard Johnson would have been a perfect choice to play Rupert Murdoch in a movie set in 1981-82, while Denis Lawson, though Scottish, would have been a shoo-in as Harold Evans, the English newspaper editor who locked horns with the Australian media mogul.

Who will play them now is a tougher call, though one could see Jason Isaacs or Ciaran Hinds as Murdoch, and Michael Sheen (who has already played Tony Blair thrice and David Frost) or Simon McBurney as Evans.

Why the speculation? The British film company What It’s All About Productions has acquired the rights to Evans’s bestseller “Good Times, Bad Times.” Reissued last September with a fresh preface by Evans in the wake of the News Corporation phone-tapping scandal, the book recounts Murdoch’s 1981 takeover of the ailing Fleet Street giant and its Sunday edition, which cost them political independence. Under Murdoch, the papers swung radically to the right.

There would potentially be a role for an actress to play the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who met with Murdoch secretly – and improperly, Evans has said – to facilitate his acquisition of the papers; this contravened media monopoly laws since Murdoch already owned The Sun and The News of the World. Presumably Meryl Streep won’t allow lightning to strike twice by playing Thatcher again.

One of Britain’s greatest postwar editors, Evans ran the Sunday Times for 14 years from 1967, during which time the paper unmasked Kim Philby as a Soviet spy and campaigned on behalf of victims of the drug Thalidomide.

On Murdoch’s arrival, Evans was moved to The Times, but his editorship lasted only a year. His book details his volatile relationship with Murdoch, the latter’s manipulations, and his own mistakes, “the worst in my professional career.”

“The experiences I describe in ‘Good Times, Bad Times’ have turned out to be eerily emblematic,” Evans writes in the new preface. “The dark and vengeful undertow I sensed and then experienced in the last weeks of my relationship with Murdoch correctly reflected something morally out of joint with the way he ran his company.”

According to Variety, What’s It All About has yet to assign a screenwriter to the project, though Peter Morgan, who wrote the three Blair films and “Frost/Nixon,” would be a logical choice if available. The company’s creative director Leon LeCash wants to get the film into production this year.

“Recent stories surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s companies both here and in America have brought the events of almost 30 years ago back into sharp focus,” LeCash told the trade paper. “I have always realized the dramatic potential of ‘Good Times, Bad Times.’ Now, as events unfold daily, I realized the time could never be better to bring this story of ultimate justice and spiritual vindication to the screen.”