Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Fashion, and Performing Arts, June 11-15, 2012:
ART
— At Art Basel 2012, we picked our 10 favorite booths, planned an itinerary of 10 must-attend events, marveled at major galleries' masterpiece-filled stands, reported serious sales during the two-day VIP preview — including Pace Gallery's $25-million Gerhard Richter — checked out the large-scale sculptures in the fair's Art Unlimited section, and finally found some time to sneak out to join Dasha Zhukova, Tracey Emin, and more at a lavish dinner party honoring Rem Koolhaas, before checking in with both the Design Miami/ design fair and Volta.
— Shane Ferro crunched the numbers and discovered that while prices for trophy pieces by Munch, Rothko, and company have soard, the art market's mid-level is stagnating and may be on the brink of collapse.
— Swiss collector Uli Sigg donated more than 1,400 works of iconic contemporary Chinese art to Hong Kong's under-construction M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District.
— The Metropolitan Museum invited new media artists to scan and remix works from their collection, and they produced new takes on canonical art history with the Makerbot 3D printer.
— Rising art star and YouTube art critic Hennessy Youngman discussed the similarities between the art world and hip-hop, and revealed an embarrassing painting he recently purchased.
DESIGN & FASHION
— Janelle Zara reported on Design Miami/Basel's W Hotel-sponsored Designers of the Future prize, which went this week to three rising stars.
— Kelly Chan wrote that steel giant ArcelorMittal's broke its promise to concentration camp survivors in a small town in Bosnia while assembling Anish Kapoor's $35-million tower for the London Olympics.
— Ann Binlot investigated the sudden ubiquity of elaborate nail art, which has been worn by everyone from superstars like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry to attendees at the super-indie Bushwick Open Studios.
— HBO added a 350-pound, $30,000 replica of the spiky Iron Throne from its hit series "Game of Thrones" to its online store.
— Salavatore Ferragamo became the first designer ever to have a fashion show in the gilded halls of the Louvre.
PERFORMING ARTS
— J. Hoberman enjoyed the comic embarrassment of sibling love triangle comedy "Your Sister's Sister," but lost interest when things turned serious.
— With production underway on yet another "Moby Dick" screen adaptation and a film based on Thomas Philbrick’s National Book Award-winning “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” Graham Fuller predicted a string of whaling-themed blockbusters.
— We gloated a little when most of our predictions about Sunday's "Mad Men" season finale turned out to be extremely accurate.
— Bryan Hood noted that Lindsay Lohan, who is set to co-star with pornstar James Deen in "The Canyons," a new indie movie directed by Paul Schrader and written by Bret Easton Ellis, is in many ways already a character from an Ellis novel.
— While in Berlin, J. Hoberman marveled at artist Rabih Mroué's haunting film installation based on cell phone video of the Syrian uprising, "Double Shooting."