Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, March 26-30, 2012:
ART
— Kyle Chayka round up a list of the 20 most-innnovative artists' Web sites, including those of Tauba Auerbach, Keith Tyson, and Andrea Zittel — as well as Damien Hirst's brand new in-studio live-stream, of course.
— Ben Davis talked to auteur director David Lynch on the occasion of his exhibition of new paintings at the Upper East Side's Jack Tilton gallery, though the filmmaker was characteristically difficult to intepret.
— The Welsh painter Nicola Jane Philipps told ARTINFO UK that she's anxious about the portrait of Kate Middleton that Prince Charles has comissioned her to paint, because "beautiful people are always more difficult."
— After Art Dubai ended last weekend, Madeleine O'Dea selected the best and worst from the Middle East's most glamorous art fair, which this year saw record attendance and a rush of early sales.
— Friends of the High Line announced that one of the designs for the third and final section of New York's elevated park involves fabricating and installing Jeff Koons's infamous and enormous $25-million suspended locomotive sculpture "Train" dangling over the walkway.
DESIGN & FASHION
— The exhibition “Helmut Newton 1920-2004” opened in the photographer's long-time hometown of Paris at the Grand Palais, with more than 200 works curated by the artist's widow, June Newton.
— On the occasion of the "Mad Men" season 5 premiere, Ann Binlot and Sarah Kricheff looked at the most notable outfits sported by the show's women in their first episode back.
— The son of famous architect Richard Neutra, Raymond Richard Neutra, decided to sell a one-of-a-kind design by his father, but it's for a good cause: To save his childhood home.
— Ann Binlot looked at Denver's move to become a major cultural destination, centered on the Denver Art Museum's new blockbuster retrospective of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
— Meanwhile, all is not well in the house of YSL, which recently lost long-time creative director Stafano Pilati. Speaking at New York's French Institute Alliance Française on Tuesday night, Pilati assured the crowd: "I’m really happy."
PERFORMING ARTS
— The city of Paris is trying a new tactic for dealing with noisy nighttime revelers: Roving squads of noise pollution-reducing mimes who will seal offenders within invisible boxes.
— ARTINFO film correspondent J. Hoberman went to see "The Hunger Games" one week after the rest of America, and reports that he "wasn’t unduly bored."
— The busy, busy German auteur Werner Herzog, fresh off an acting gig opposite Tom Cruise in the upcoming thriller "One Shot," revealed details of another three movies he has in the pipeline.
— Unfortunately none of those projects are the just-greenlighted fictionalized version of Brit-rock band The Kinks' rise to fame, "You Really Got Me," which will be directed by Julien Temple but has yet to cast its the roles of frontmen Ray and Dave Davies.
— Graham Fuller considered the implications of a recent bidding war for the film rights to the "mommy porn" book trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey."