NEW MEDIA

France and Iran share film spoils at London film awards

2012-01-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

Acclaimed Iranian film A Separation is being tipped for an Oscar

French film The Artist and Iranian film A Separation have triumphed at the London Critics Circle awards.

Silent movie, and Oscar front-runner, The Artist won film of the year; Michel Hazanavicius won best director and Jean Dujardin was named best actor.
A Separation, which follows a marital conflict in Tehran, won best foreign film, best screenwriter and best supporting actress for Sareh Beyat.
We Need To Talk About Kevin won British film of the year.
In a surprise move, Meryl Streep shared the best actress award with Anna Paquin, for her role in the little-seen film Margaret. Neither actress was present at the awards.
However, both The Artist's Dujardin and Hazanavicius were at the BFI Southbank event in London.
When asked for the reason why he thought the movie had been so successful, Hazanavicius said: "Maybe because it's a simple love story. It's universal. And there's a cute dog. People love cute dogs."
The black-and-white film, a tribute to Hollywood's silent era, won three Golden Globes earlier this week.
It is also nominated for 12 Baftas, and is expected to be among the Oscar front-runners when nominations are announced next week.

Michel Hazanavicius claimed The Artist's success was down to the 'cute dog'

Kenneth Branagh collected the supporting actor of the year award, for his role as Laurence Olivier in My Week With Marilyn.
He revealed that as a teenager he had sent Olivier a letter asking for acting advice.
"His advice was to have a bash and hope for the best , which was a simple and very effective way of saying you've just got to do it."
Branagh praised co-star Michelle Williams' portrayal of Marilyn Monroe.
"She was eerily and spookily like Marilyn," he said. "It really did feel as if I was playing opposite Marilyn Monroe, not Michelle Williams - that's how spooky.
"She seemed to be possessed by Marilyn, but did it while retaining a sense of humour."
Michael Fassbender picked up the British actor of the year award for his performances as a sex addict in Shame and Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method.
Fassbender praised Shame director Steve McQueen, with whom he made Hunger in 2008: "He's very brave and very open and very honest. Steve changed my life and I'm forever indebted."
Olivia Colman was named British actress of the year for her performances in The Iron Lady and Tyrannosaur.

Streep is hotly tipped for the best actress Oscar, but Paquin remains an outsider for the Hollywood gong

Picking up the British film award for We Need to Talk About Kevin, director Lynne Ramsay said: "It's quite a dark film, so I'm really proud of the fact that a film as challenging as Kevin is getting an audience."
Asif Kapadia won best documentary for Senna, while Andrew Haigh was named breakthrough British film-maker for Weekend.
"I used to work here in the cinema as an usher about 15 years ago, so it's quite good to be on the stage winning an award," he told the BBC.
Craig Roberts took home the best young British performer trophy for his lead role in Submarine and Maria Djurkovic won the technical achievement for her production design in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
It was Tinker Tailor's only award of the night, having shared six nominations apiece with stylish thriller Drive.
Don't Look Now director Nicolas Roeg collected The Dilys Powell Award for excellence in film, from actor Donald Sutherland.
Drive's Carey Mulligan and War Horse actor Jeremy Irvine also attended the event.

Titan May Support Earth-Like World, Say Scientists

2012-01-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

A group of researchers has discovered through their latest study, how the atmosphere of the Saturn's largest moon, Titan is structured. Titan, which is the only moon of the Saturn that has a dense atmosphere, is believed to have an Earth-like world, according to the latest report.
Scientists studied the atmosphere of Titan and said that it might support a world that is very similar to the Earth, which possesses a layered atmosphere. They revealed that the lowest layer of any planet, which is also known as boundary layer, has huge impact on the surface with clouds and winds. Apart from it, it itself is affected by a planet or moon's surface.
The team told that Earth's boundary layer is controlled by solar heat that warms the planet's surface and is 500 meters and 3 kilometers in thickness. Whereas, boundary layer of the Titan may act differently as it is farther away from the Sun. It is thick and opaque, which is creating perplexity in the study.
Thus, to solve this mystery, a 3-D climate model has been developed by the team so as to know how the planet might respond to solar heat over time. This invention has revealed simulations like Titan’s lower atmosphere is probably divided into two parts and both differ from upper atmosphere’s temperature, said it.
Further analysis over the hazy and soupy atmosphere of the Titan could help in throwing light on the atmosphere of varied other similar planets that include alien planets and moons, said the scientists. "3-D models will be very useful in the future to explain the data we will get about the atmospheres of exoplanets", said Benjamin Charnay, a Planetary Scientist at France's National Center of Scientific Research.

Intel Launches Performance Tuning Protection Plan On Select Processors

2012-01-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

Intel has formally announced a new program called the Performance Tuning Protection Plan (PTPP), which provides full warranty protection for select “K”, “X”, and LGA2011-socketed boxed processors processors no matter how you kill it. This is in addition to your standard 3 year warranty. In other words, if it fails under normal usage, Intel will replace it under the standard warranty; if it fails while running outside of Intel's specifications, Intel will replace it under the Performance Tuning Protection Plan. The plan pricing and supported processors include:

Intel Core i5-2500K - $20.00
Intel Core i7-2600K - $25.00
Intel Core i7-2700K - $25.00
Intel Core i7-3930K - $35.00
Intel Core i7-3960X - $35.00

We think this program is a great addition and something that overclockers will jump on. The plan doesn't extend the processors 3 year warranty, but makes sure you have replacement coverage no matter how you blow up or break a processor. You can buy the plan from resellers like CyberPower, Canada Computers and Electronics, Scan Computers, and Altech Computers or directly from Intel (must use Paypal). You can even buy a plan after you've bought a processor, which sounds crazy, but the catch is you have to wait 30 days for the plan to go active. This program is currently in a trail phase that will last six months and then Intel will decide whether or not to proceed past the pilot phase. This means you'll want to get in on this now!

Intel is pleased to announce the introduction of a new pilot plan targeted at the enthusiast community. The enthusiast community is a critical market segment for Intel and, as such, when the opportunity arises to try out a service or otherwise address the community’s particular needs, we endeavor to do so where practicable. In this spirit, Intel is announcin a new pilot service plan for “K”, “X”, and LGA2011-socketed boxed processors called the Performance Tuning Protection Plan. This Plan wil provide certain out-of-warranty service offerings in the event of damage caused by over-clocking or over-voltaging by the user. By purchasing this Plan and meeting the Plan’s criteria, the user can receive a one-time replacement processor if the user’s over-voltaging or over-clocking causes the original processor to fail. This pilot Plan in no way expands, changes or extends the original three year standard warranty and is simply a Plan the user may want to purchase for over-clocking or over-voltaging. This pilot Plan will be launched on January 18, 2012, at 12:01AM PST and last for six months.

Microsoft kills System Center single-module licence

2012-01-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

Licensing changes to Microsoft's System Center 2012 could force customers to buy modules they do not need.

Microsoft has slimmed down the number of licensing options for System Center 2012 from over one hundred to just two.

Microsoft has radically reduced the number of licensing options for its new management technology, System Center 2012, from over a hundred distinct options to two, the company announced on Tuesday. However, the new model forces customers to buy a licence for all eight modules of the management suite, taking away their ability to pick and choose.
"Over the last 10 years our licensing has become very rich [with over] 113 different price points," Gareth Fort, general manager of Microsoft's server and cloud division, said.
The two licence options that replace the previous choices are Standard and Datacenter. Standard costs $1,300 (£846) and is for all System Center 2012 components and the ability to run two virtual machines. Datacenter costs $3,600, and supports an unlimited number of virtual machines.
The new model means a requirement for just one of System Center's eight separate modules such as Virtual Machine Manager will cost $1,300. In the past, people have reported paying around $500 for a licence for Virtual Machine Manager Workgroup Edition and $900 for VMM Enterprise Edition.

You'd be hard pressed to see what difference it will make when you're signing on the dotted line and handing over a lot of money to Microsoft.
– Rene Millman

Existing customers will have around a year to move to the new licensing module, Fort said. System Center 2012 is expected to become commercially available in the second half of 2012, though a release candidate was made available on Tuesday.
Microsoft's prices are tailored around specific customers, Rene Millman, an IDC systems management analyst, told ZDNet UK, so the licensing revamp may not register on many customers' bottom lines.
"Microsoft's business model is very much to have an enterprise-wide licence agreement and everything's part and parcel [of that]," he said. "You'd be hard pressed to see what difference it will make when you're signing on the dotted line and handing over a lot of money to Microsoft.
"It is a moveable feast what you can get out of Microsoft on any given day and with any given salesmen."

More than 'window dressing'

ZDNet UK asked Microsoft how substantive it thought the licensing changes were.
"This is definitely more than 'window dressing'," a Microsoft representative said. "We think this change is great for both new and existing customers.
"The licensing reflects the design point around integration across all the capabilities required to run cloud-based architectures, and gives customers all of these capabilities they need in a simplified product line up."
The simplicity of the revamp was welcomed by someMicrosoft watchers.
"Overall it's a positive move that willbenefit customers, simplify purchase scenarios and make businesses moredynamic," Richard Gibbons, software manager at Bechtle Direct, told ZDNetUK. "Definitely, there will be a few cases where it causes problems, butthat's always the case with shifts like this I feel."

Apple, Samsung Vie for Waterproofing Technolog

2012-01-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

Apple and Samsung are looking to enhance their handsets with waterproofing technology, as durability and safety become increasing concerns with consumers and phone makers.
HzO’s “WaterBlock” technology, introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, protects devices on a molecular level, without any bulky casing. Instead, it coats phones with an organic, invisible nano-scale film barrier, which keeps devices operational working after intense water exposure.
Water damage occurs regularly but is not covered under most Samsung and Apple warranties, so waterproofing likely will be a key selling point with consumers in the future.
In addition, the increasing role the ever-present devices play in ensuring safety could make waterproofing invaluable. For example, Apple phones have proven their durability in emergency situations in the past, lending assurance the devices can help in disasters. This feature is likely to appeal to consumers who rely on their devices as potential lifesavers in hurricanes, floods, and other dangerous situations.
Apple and Samsung recognize this opportunity to enhance their products with a unique feature that will grant users with a greater sense of security. The company at the forefront of waterproofing technology will have an advantage, as they will be able to tout the feature’s exclusivity.
Successfully implementing waterproofing technology into mobile devices is likely to appeal to app developers as well, since they will be able to feature apps specifically designed with enhanced durability in mind.
Although HzO’s waterproofing product is not recommended for sustained submersion, technological advances may also lead to a boom in water-sports related features.
For now, the technology means that the next generation of Apple and Samsung smartphones will likely survive an accidental dip in the toilet or rainy commute. If waterproofing advances, it could lead to a phone with an iPod app for swimming workouts, a scuba watch monitoring nitrogen levels for divers — or maybe even a shark alert.

Google Fiber work in KCK is delayed by dispute over how its wires are hung

2012-01-18T10:45:00.000-08:00

Officials with the online giant and Wyandotte County negotiating how and where to hang fiber optic lines.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/17/3376648/dispute-over-how-wires-are-hung.html#storylink=cpy

When Google Inc. announced last spring that Kansas City, Kan., had landed the tech company’s much-pursued super-speed Internet project, the company gushed about the local utility poles.
They were flush with space nicely suited for hanging Google’s cables.
What’s more, the city and county governments are one, and that same Unified Government of Wyandotte County owns the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities and its utility poles. That figured to make negotiations over installing Google’s fiber easier.
Now it turns out that differences over where and how to hang wires on those poles, and what fees or installation costs may be required, have created a troublesome bump in plans to launch the project at “Google speed.”
The issue was dealt with in just 60 words in Google’s original agreement, but nine-plus months later engineers and lawyers are still trying to settle on common ground.
That hiccup in what figures to be a historic digital-age infrastructure upgrade in the city suggests that Google and Wyandotte County officials failed to mind the devilish details of their pact. The deal was hailed last spring as critical to landing Google. The California company said one reason it came to Kansas was because local officials could move quickly to make the project work.
Google has declined to comment on the dispute and delays that have set back the work in Kansas City, Kan., by months.
“We still don’t have an approval of the agreement,” said David Mehlhaff, a spokesman for the BPU. “Within the next week or two we ought to be able to hammer out the final details. We’re moving forward.”
Yet time has already been lost. Google has yet to publicly acknowledge any significant delay in the project. In an interview, Unified Government Mayor Joe Reardon insisted the project had not fallen behind schedule.
That stands at odds with public declarations made in the hoopla of Kansas City, Kan., being picked for the project in late March.
Google said then that it would begin signing up its first customers in the fourth quarter of 2011 and light up its service in the first quarter of this year. To date, while the company says it’s been putting intense effort into engineering the project, it hasn’t begun to sign up customers.
It still hasn’t, in fact, announced how much it will charge customers. It has not begun installing the fiber optic network needed for its service. And its prediction of beginning service has slipped to the first half of this year. Just how many months have been lost is difficult to sort out, especially with both the Unified Government and Google refusing to say.
That apparent delay stems from how, and precisely where, Google hopes to hang its data-shuttling glass wire.
Work near electric wires
Last spring’s agreement between the Unified Government and Google was remarkable because a mammoth company chose to bring a potentially game-changing project to town without asking for tax breaks or the other sorts of goodies so often used to lure attractive businesses.
Attachment A to the development agreement with the Unified Government says that Google can put its fiber optic lines in the same space typically used by cable TV and phone companies. It just needs to pay the going rate. Nothing special about that.
Still, the city did give up something, and the deal is noteworthy in that key respect.
The same single-paragraph clause says that “when Google is in the restricted BPU electrical supply space” — that highly regulated zone typically reserved for power lines — “fees shall not apply.” That freebie, the document states, would act as reimbursement for Google delivering its gigabit-per-second Internet connections for 130 locations such as schools, libraries and city buildings.
Although Google can avoid the attachment fees by hooking up close to power lines, it would swap that expense for a less-certain cost: the trickier job of installing cable far closer to electrical wires.
The dispute over the rules that will govern Google’s work on the poles also highlights what cable companies, to whom Google poses competition, see as favoritism.
Google and the BPU are trying to sort out ways that keep the cost of the project from ballooning while avoiding safety problems or service issues for electrical customers in Wyandotte County.
Utilities such as the BPU have the authority to override the safety codes and place communication wires among their power lines. But doing so requires more highly-trained technicians, usually journeyman linemen, who command hourly rates roughly 50 percent higher than workers who attach cables in the telecom space.
Google faces two choices: Pay the market rates for stretching its fiber optic lines much as AT&T and Time Warner Cable do in the space reserved for telecommunications; or shoulder the costs and complications of threading those same strands amid the electrical supply space.
In allowing Google next to its power lines, the BPU runs counter to the guidelines set by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the National Electrical Safety Code for “practical safeguarding of persons during the installation, operation, or maintenance of electric supply and communication lines.”
That code states that any communication or nonelectrical supply lines should be at least 40 inches below the power supply.
Still, it’s not uncommon for utilities to sanction telecommunication lines in that electrical supply space on utility poles.
Westar Energy, for instance, has fiber optic cables used for its own communications installed next to power lines on many of its poles. That communication cable is wrapped in steel to ground it as protection from being close to high-voltage wires. When hung lower on the poles, fiber optic lines are usually sheathed just in plastic.
Over in Missouri
The apparent trouble and renegotiation between Google and Wyandotte County officials differs markedly from the project on the Missouri side of the line.
When Google announced it was coming to Kansas City, Kan., it bested 1,100 other U.S. communities who’d courted the company to bring its ambitious Internet plan to them.
That score for Wyandotte County was also seen as a failure of Kansas City, Mo. But a month and a half later in May, Google said it would expand its project to the Missouri city as well. There was a distinct difference, and it had to do with utility poles.
In addition to the 19-page agreement Google cut with Kansas City, Mo., including a promise of free warp-speed Internet to 300 locations of the city’s choosing, the company also hashed out an agreement dozens of pages long with Kansas City Power & Light.
The idea that Google might nestle its fiber optic lines in the electric supply space, said KCP&L spokesman Chuck Caisley, was a “nonstarter.”
In fact, discussions over precisely where Google would be allowed to place its wires on KCP&L poles drove the protracted talks that took so much longer than in Kansas City, Kan.
“We did everything we could to have a defined, streamlined process where it’s very specific about the rights and responsibilities of all the parties,” Caisley said. “Because Google stressed the need to build quickly, and we needed to stress that we wouldn’t jeopardize the service to our customers.
“The holdup for us,” he said, “was to make sure that we understood and Google understood exactly what kind of an agreement we were getting into.”
Consequently, Caisley said KCP&L had no indication that the project on the Missouri side had strayed from Google’s original schedule.
Local cable companies said they don’t get into similar discussions about access to the upper reaches of utility poles because they’re only offered the telecom space and are expected to pay attachment fees accordingly.
Cable provider SureWest Communications sells service across Johnson County and other parts of the Kansas City area, including a few business customers in Wyandotte County.
Ken Johnson, the company’s vice president and chief technology officer, said his company’s not much interested in hanging its wires up high with power lines.
“It’s just much more cumbersome,” he said.
Then again, SureWest hasn’t been offered free access to the space. In most places it operates, SureWest provides free service to public buildings as part of franchise agreements, much as Google is promising. But local utilities still charge attachment fees to get on their poles.
“We would expect to have equal treatment,” Johnson said.
Matt Derrick, a local spokesman for Time Warner Cable, described the Google deal in Wyandotte County as a subsidy.
“Google’s not paying for the network” of utility poles, he said. “Somebody else already has.”
Mehlhaff, the BPU spokesman, doesn’t know whether other companies might get the same attachment rights granted to Google.
“We’d have to look at what the other requests are,” he said. “We have to do what we think is best overall for the community.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/17/3376648/dispute-over-how-wires-are-hung.html#storylink=cpy

Toward an International Code of Conduct for Space

2012-01-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

In June 2010, the Obama administration released its National Space Policy (PDF), which declared: “The United States will pursue bilateral and multilateral transparency and confidence-building measures to encourage responsible actions in, and the peaceful use of, space.”
This statement referred to the draft European Union (EU) Code of Conduct for outer space, originally published in 2008 and revised in 2010. The EU code called on member states to establish “policies and procedures to minimize the possibility of accidents…or any form of harmful interference with other States’ right to the peaceful exploration and use of outer space.” The code is not legally binding, but is rather a voluntary agreement with no formal enforcement mechanisms. It is based on three principles:

freedom of access to space for peaceful purposes;
preservation of the security and integrity of space objects in orbit;
due consideration for the legitimate defense interests of states

Beginning in October 2010, Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary of state for space and defense policy, has repeatedly said: “Over the past 18 months, the United States has been actively consulting with the EU on the Code. It is our hope to make a decision as to whether the United States can sign on to the Code in the coming months.”
Fifteen months later, the Obama administration finally made its decision after an extensive interagency review, which centered on responding to Pentagon concerns that the EU code would have an operational impact on the U.S. military’s uses of space. According to Secretary of State Clinton’s statement in the official press release:
“The United States has decided to join with the European Union and other nations to develop an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. A Code of Conduct will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space.”
In other words, the administration has said “no” to the EU code—for now—but “yes” to an international version that incorporates the views of emerging space powers.
I half agree with the administration’s decision. As I argued in a Policy Innovation Memo in November 2011, the administration should have endorsed the EU code for four reasons:
First, the United States and EU had already engaged in four rounds of consultations about the code, after which Brussels incorporated suggested language, including the right to self defense in space.
Second, we do not know precisely what objections the Pentagon had to the EU code. Space capabilities are highly classified, but several U.S. officials told me that they believed the code aligned with all existing Pentagon space plans and policies. However, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher told reporters last week, without any clarification, that the code was “too restrictive.”
Third, the majority of spacefaring countries, including Australia, Canada, and Japan, have already endorsed the EU code, making it the most widely acceptable coordinating mechanism to date.
Fourth, the dangers of orbital space debris resulting from human activities are a rapidly growing threat to civil, military, and commercial satellites. While an international code would be the preferred multilateral forum to deal with space issues, it will undoubtedly take many years to draft and reach an agreement. According to National Research Council study released in September 2011:
“The current orbital debris environment has already reached a ‘tipping point.’ That is, the amount of debris—in terms of the population of large debris objects, as well as overall mass of debris in orbit—currently in orbit has reached a threshold where it will continually collide with itself, further increasing the population of orbital debris.”
Despite the urgency to develop and agree upon an international code of conduct, it would have several advantages over the current version of the EU code:

Other spacefaring nations—such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China—indicated that they might not sign the EU code because they were insufficiently consulted in its development and believe it could limit the future capacities of emerging powers in outer space.
The United States is the predominant space power, with 75 percent of worldwide governmental space funding; roughly 40 percent of all the active spacecraft (both government and commercial) in orbit; and the free-of-charge services provided by the U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Space Operations Center, which detects, tracks, and identifies space objects and warns other countries and commercial space operators when their satellites are at risk. As the primary user of space, the United States can ‘lead from the front’ in shaping an international code.
Secretary Clinton’s statement represents a needed and marked departure from the Bush administration’s National Space Policy of 2006, which stated that “the United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space.” In 2007, Christina Rocca, U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said that the universalizing of existing space agreements (like the International Telecommunications Union) was a “much more practical and effective step towards guaranteeing the peaceful use of outer space,” while State Department official John Mohanco declared: “The cold war is over…and there is no arms race in outer space. Thus, there is no—repeat, no problem in outer space for arms control to solve.”

The Cold War is indeed over, but since 1957 there have been over 5,500 launches that have sent some 7,000 spacecraft into space. Today, there are over sixty countries that own and operate approximately 1,100 active satellites in space. Consequently, humans have made a mess of space with reckless creation of debris, which could impact surveillance and communications satellites that play an invisible but essential role in almost all facets of our daily lives. The Obama administration must translate its word into action by overseeing the development and implementation of an international code of conduct for space, which cannot begin soon enough.

9 Indian kids in YouTube space contest winners

2012-01-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

"YouTube Space Lab received thousands of video submissions from more than 80 countries.

NEW DELHI: Indian students are among the 60 finalists in a global science competition, 'YouTube Space Lab', and if they win, experiments they have designed will be conducted in space with the help of NASA, ESA and JAXA.

"YouTube Space Lab received thousands of video submissions from more than 80 countries. The US led with 10 finalists, followed by India with nine," a joint statement by the organisers announcing the names of the 60 finalists said.

The contest was organised by YouTube, Lenovo and private civilian space flight firm Space Adventures in collaboration with the space agencies.

Experiments designed by the winner will be conducted in space with help of space agencies like National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Space Lab invited budding scientists in two age groups -- 14-16 years and 17-18 years -- to submit a YouTube video describing their experiment, either alone or in groups of up to three.

Approximately 40 per cent of the entries came from India, followed by the US with 15 per cent, the statement said.

Other countries in the Top 10 list of the number of entries are the UK, Russia, Israel, Canada, Spain, Italy, Poland and Japan, it added.

Seventy-eight per cent of the entries came from students between the age group of 14 to 16 years and the rest from 17 to 18-year-olds.

Six regional winners will be announced in February, who will gather in Washington, DC, in March to experience a ZERO-G (zero gravity) flight. They will also be given a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop, the statement said.

The global winners, two teams from each age group, will be announced in March.

Deere sculpture sets world record

2012-01-18T10:26:00.001-08:00

A giant combine made out of 300,000 cans takes shape Tuesday,Nov. 15, 2011, at John Deere Pavilion in Moline, Illinois.(CourtesyPhoto)

MOLINE, Ill. --- In building a combine from more than 300,000cans of food, John Deere's Project Can Do not only helped the RiverBend Foodbank in Moline, but also shattered the Guinness WorldRecord for a canned structure.
"It's one of the best campaigns I've seen over the years," saidBarry Nelson, media relations manager for John Deere Ag and TurfDivision in Olathe, Kan.
"Not only did it tie in to one of our products, it broughtattention to what farmers do every day, and we picked out reallygood food items to give away to hungry people."
The canned-food combine, which was assembled and displayed atthe John Deere Pavilion in Moline, blew away the old record of acanned structure made with 115,527 cans of food. That sculpture wasmade by Disney VoluntEARS at Walt Disney World Resort on Feb. 11,2010, according to the Guinness Book of World Records website.
The sculpture depicted Deere's new S-690 John Deere Combineharvesting corn. It was 60 feet wide, 80 feet long, and 16 feettall. It weighed 170 tons and was made from 308,448 cans of food,as well as 11,268 bags of food that included popcorn, peas andbeans. Items were purchased by Deere from Hy-Vee Foods.
A team of 450 volunteers, including Deere employees, retireesand their families and friends, spent 1,800 hours during Nov. 12-17to create the sculpture, which contained 15 types of cannedfood.
"Guinness Book of World Records has a really good verificationprocess," Nelson said.
"We had to tell them what the project was and we had to havephotos and documentation from witnesses."
Only the 308,448 cans that were in the main structure of thecombine counted. "It all has to support itself when the structureis built from cans," Nelson said.
The cans used for the trailing auger did not count, headded.
The sculpture was dismantled in mid-December and the food itemstaken to the food bank.
In addition to the 170 tons of food for the food bank, MaraSovey, president of the John Deere Foundation, said the foundationboard has contributed $175,000 to the BackPack program, whichprovides hungry children with nutritious and easy-to-prepare foodfor the weekends.
Tom Laughlin, executive director of River Bend Foodbank, hassaid that more than 7 million pounds of food was distributed in2011, surpassing the record of 6.7 million pounds of food in2010.
The food bank serves families in 22 counties in eastern Iowa andwestern Illinois.

Porn industry could leave LA if condoms required

2012-01-18T10:12:00.001-08:00

Some of the most prominent purveyors of erotic films say they'll start packing up their sex toys and abandoning the U.S. porn capital if authorities carry through with an effort to police film sets and order that every actor be outfitted with a condom.That effort took a serious leap forward Tuesday when the Los Angeles city council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement. The measure now goes to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for approval. Before the measure can take effect, the council has called for the creation of a committee to determine how it might be enforced.
"It's going to be interesting to see how in fact they do try to enforce it and who's going to fund it, and all of the time and effort they're going to spend," said Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Los Angeles-based Vivid, one of the largest makers of erotic movies.
"Ultimately I think what they will find is people will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles," added Hirsch. "That's a given."
His company would be among those that would consider leaving, he said.
Approximately 90 percent of U.S. porn films are made in Los Angeles, almost all of them in the city's San Fernando Valley, said Mark Kernes, senior editor of Adult Video News.
When films, Internet downloads, sex toys and admission to dance clubs are counted, Kernes said, it's an industry that produces about $8 billion a year in revenue. It has been battered in recent years, however, by the recession and the increased popularity of free Internet porn.
Kernes and others say requiring condoms would further erode business.
They say consumers, particularly those overseas, have made it clear they won't watch films when the actors use condoms, complaining that it is distracting and ruins the fantasy.
"The only thing that the city could potentially achieve is losing some film permit money and driving some productions away, but you can't actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn't want," said Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel, another of the industry's largest production companies.
Ged Kenslea, spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said the measure is needed because the industry has failed to properly police itself. For years, he said, filmmakers have ignored state health laws mandating the use of condoms when workers are exposed to blood-borne pathogens.
"Let's make one thing clear: Condom use on adult film sets is, and has been, the law in California under blood-borne pathogens regulations," he said. "It is just a law that has not been uniformly enforced or followed. This film permit ordinance that the city council approved today provides another enforcement mechanism to make sure that adult film producers are complying with existing California law."
The council's final vote to approve the law was taken without public discussion, on a day when most of the porn industry's major players were in Las Vegas preparing for Wednesday's opening of the Adult Entertainment Expo, their industry's largest trade event.
The industry already does its own policing, filmmakers say, requiring actors be tested for sexually transmitted diseases a minimum of every 30 days when they are working. They say no cases of HIV have been directly linked to porn films since 2004, adding they fear if the industry scatters to areas outside of Los Angeles, testing could fall by the wayside, exposing performers to more risk.
"If someone is going to catch an STD, it's usually out of the business because we are tested so often," said veteran porn actress and producer Tabitha Stevens.
In her 17 years in the business, Stevens said, she has worked both with and without condoms. Although she prefers to use condoms, acknowledging they do increase safety, she said the choice should be left up to the performers and not mandated by a government agency.
"If you want to wear them, wear them. If you don't, don't. That's up to the talent to decide. It shouldn't be up to the government to decide," she said.

Romancing history

2012-01-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

Author Indu Sundaresan at the Hyderabad Literary Festival 2012

Indu Sundaresan on how the past can come alive with a touch of imagination

She just finished submitting her book, The Curse of the diamond (The curse of the Kohinoor for Indian editions), based on the last 50 years of the Kohinoor diamond in India. Indu Sundaresan has carved a niche for herself as a historical fiction writer, weaving word after word using imagination, research and history. She brings alive princesses and palaces, kings and queens, the Mughals and the desert dwellers. She has written a trilogy titled Taj Trilogy including the The Twentieth Wife, The Feast of Roses and The Shadow Princess. The books contemplate the life of empress Nur Jahan.

History is made up of facts and Indu's forte lies in doing research; she approaches an idea for a book with her foot set steady in libraries, reading incessantly and taking notes as she goes. “I began with The Emperor's Memoirs for starters because I don't read Persian or Turkish, the original languages the memoirs were written in. The best source of information is also the numerous travellers' tales from India. They left a good snapshot of what Mughal India was actually like,” she says, speaking to us on the sidelines of the Hyderabad Literary Festival. Indu adds, “I write historical fiction but I borrow from my own experiences as well. In The Splendour of Silence, I have the characters visit a biradari in the desert. This stems from an incident when my sister and I went to visit such a place when we were younger and witnessed a cow collapse when a man hit it hard,” she says. The incident, she says, has no bearing on the storyline, but this is how she personalises her work.

Is there a scope for factual errors when fusing history and fiction? Indu says that she made an error in her trilogy, when she wrote of a Mughal recipe with tomatoes; in the time period that she was writing about, India hadn't even heard of tomatoes. “Mistakes are good; they keep you grounded and you'll be careful the next time” she says.

Moving away from the historical fiction genre, Indu has written a book of contemporary short stories, In the convent of little flowers. But she declares her love for research and reading with vigour, “I enjoy recreating this world of the past. To an extent it's a world that we don't know anything about apart from books and other people's narratives. It takes a little bit of more work to create it. I enjoy fusing it with the contemporary to feel the heat, dust and emotions.”

Vintage year for Genie Awards

2012-01-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

Rachel Weisz has been nominated for a Genie Award for best actress for her role in The Whistleblower.

The star-studded list of this year's Genie Award nominees includes Michelle Williams, Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Rachel Weisz.

"When we look at the nominees today and see so many of the great actors of the world working on Canadian films, that is a great success story," said Martin Katz, the Toronto-based producer of David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.
The acclaimed film, which looks at the early years of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, received 11 nominations Tuesday morning. However, it faces stiff competition for the prize of best picture - Jean-Marc Vallée's Café de Flore garnered the most nominations, with 13 nods. The Quebec writer- director's romantic drama stars Vanessa Paradis as a single mother raising a boy with Down syndrome.
Rounding out the best picture contenders are Ken Scott's comedy about artificial insemination, Starbuck, Larysa Kondracki's tense thriller about sex trafficking, The Whistleblower; and Philippe Falardeau's touching school drama, Monsieur Lazhar. (The latter is Canada's Oscar entry for best-foreign language film; it netted seven Genie nominations.)
"There is huge respect for our Canadian creators, which attracts the talent," Helga Stephenson, interim CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, said Tuesday following the announcement in Toronto. "2011 was a vintage year for Canadian films."
Paradis (Café de Flore), Weisz (The Whistleblower) and Williams (Take This Waltz) are competing for the award for best leading actress, along with French-Canadian stars Catherine de Lean in Nuit #1 and Pascale Montpetit in The Girl in the White Coat.
Fassbender and frequent Cronenberg collaborator Mortensen are nominated for best actors in a leading and supporting role for playing Jung and Freud, respectively, in A Dangerous Method.
Six years ago, Katz was developing a script with a U.K. playwright about clinical patient Sabina Spielrein and her relationship with Jung. "David called me one day, and he said, 'I'm working on one, too,'" Katz said. "We wished each other luck."
The film that Katz was working on eventually fell through, but Cronenberg invited the producer to work on his movie. Cronenberg faces Vallée, Falardeau, Kondracki and Steven Silver (The Bang Bang Club) for the best director award.
Meanwhile, in the race for best leading man, Scott Speedman's turn as a war veteran-turned bank robber in Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster pits him against Fassbender and Mohamed Fellag, who plays the title character in Monsieur Lazhar. Patrick Huard, as Starbuck's extremely fertile protagonist, and Garret Dillahunt, as a former soldier in Oliver Sherman, are also vying for the prize.
Speedman's co-star Kevin Durand is up for best performance by an actor in a supporting role against Mortensen, Starbuck's Antoine Bertrand, Café de Flore's Marin Gerrier and The Bang Bang Club's Taylor Kitsch.
"Every single category that this film is nominated in is their victory. They're the alchemists who put everything together," Durand said about Edwin Boyd's producers and director, Nathan Morlando. The film was nominated for best art direction/production design.
"I was so excited by the palate they were choosing, the muted colours," said Charlotte Sullivan, nominated for her supporting role in Edwin Boyd.
Sullivan's competition includes 11-year-old Sophie Nelisse, who played Monsieur Lazhar's precocious student, and Roxana Condurache, who played a trafficked girl in The Whistleblower.
The Genies will be on CBC March 8.

Review: Coming of age films come of age with Pariah

2012-01-18T09:52:00.000-08:00

Aasha Davis as Bina and Adepero Oduye as Alike in Pariah

There’s a scene in this startling little independent film where two teenage girls share a kiss, then make out, and then try to make sense of what just happened. “I’m not gay gay,” says one of them haughtily. From the look of hurt confusion on the other’s face, she’s clearly very much gay gay. Also clearly, coming-of-age films have themselves come of age since I did, way back in the 20th century.
Pariah is set in Brooklyn, where 17-year-old Alike (pronounced Ah-LEE-kay, or Lee for short) is trying to hide her lesbian leanings from her conservative parents, mostly by avoiding them. This is easiest to do with her father (Charles Parnell), a cop who works such late, lengthy hours that it’s obvious he’s hiding something, too.
Mom, played by Kim Wayans, is more problematic, a church-going woman who has her suspicions about her daughter but can’t bring herself to say them out loud. “God doesn’t make mistakes,” is the closest she comes to it; that and forcing her daughter into a friendship with another girl who will presumably scare her straight.
The film was written and directed by Dee Rees, building upon her 2007 short, also called Pariah and featuring many of the same actors, including Adepero Oduye as Alike and Pernell Walker as Laura, her best (and totally out of the closet) friend. Aasha Davis is new to the film as Bina, Alike’s parentally mandated new pal.
The expanded Pariah clocks in at just 86 minutes and could have benefited from a smidgeon more character development. But that shortcoming is also indicative of how quickly these characters impress themselves upon us; we want to know more about them.
Refreshingly for a film of this type, Alike is never conflicted about her sexuality. She’s naturally shy and awkward (show me the 17-year-old who isn’t when hormones are involved), but she knows what she wants. She just doesn’t want her parents to find out, though it’s clear that on some level they already know.
Pariah, which won the best cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011, features naturalistic performances and settings alike. Alike regularly visits gay clubs, both for the company and to avoid her mom, but the film neither glamorizes nor degrades her haunts; they are simply where she goes. (The music in them is great, by the way.)
Similarly, Pariah doesn’t play like a black- or gay-issues story, although Rees has said that perceived stigma made it hard to get the film made. (Spike Lee’s name pops up prominently in the credits as a producer, which must have helped.) This is simply the story of a young person trying to find herself. One way or another, we’ve all been there.

A Minute With: Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper

2012-01-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

The Sundance Film Festival kicks off on Thursday, starting ten days of movie screenings and providing the launching pad for some of the world's top low-budget features and documentaries at the largest U.S. gathering for independent filmmakers.

The 117 movies to be screened at the festival held in the ski resort of Park City, Utah were selected from 4,042 features submitted, including 24 in competition.
Festival director John Cooper, Sundance's chief programmer, spoke to Reuters about the tone of the films selected and how first time filmmakers can be hopeful with new technology making films easier to turn around and offering a variety of platforms for films to reach audiences.
Q. What are you seeing that's different in the overall tone of the films selected this year?
A. "What I am seeing in general is that the independent film movement or community is maturing a little bit. The bar gets set higher each year. It doesn't seem to be leveling off. Each year the films are coming in with more depth of quality and over arching completeness and vision. This bar is set and other filmmakers coming up through the ranks know that is there."
Q. Some thought that with technology improving cameras and editing and sometimes making it cheaper to make indie films it might go the other way -- that quality might diminish with a more crowded field, why do you think quality is improving?
A. "There are a lot of factors. There is more of a community base now as to how they work. I am noticing much more a sharing of cinematographers, of actors and ideas.
"Also what is a happening is that independent filmmakers are looking at a different artistic life for themselves. They are not quite as fast or may never really want to jump to the big Hollywood film or situation for themselves. What a lot of people have learned and what is coming back in the younger filmmakers especially is they want to work in a way that makes them excited and fulfilled."
Q. What about documentaries that premiered last year such as "Senna" which went on to be popular with critics and audiences? What about this year's batch, what themes are you seeing?
A. "They came in a little different this year. They came in a little more overarching and more comprehensive of the issues that are facing the world. Last year they seemed very character-driven with more of a personal perspective. And this year we shift back and forth a little bit, but there are more about issues like hunger, the war on drugs, about global warming and the healthcare crisis. They are very topical issues on a much bigger more comprehensive scale."
Q. Is Sundance still the place for first-time and second-time directors? How has that changed?
A. "It has ramped up I think. It is not just an event for the filmmakers, it is talent too. There are actors that are going to pop out of this festival. For example, the woman from 'Filly Brown,' - it is multi-level discovery."
Q. Investors began to flee the market beginning around five years ago, but last year Sundance saw a more optimistic mood and numerous business deals. Any predictions for this year?
A. "We had a very successful year last year so people are coming to the festival with expectations, which is scary to me sometimes, because it doesn't really mean that much to me. There seems to have been a bit of a market correction both on the filmmakers side with the cost to make a film and what they sell for. It is a little more realistic. But it's very hard to tell.
"What I do know is when I watch the audiences respond in the theater, there is a market for them. Not even a market - there is an audience for them. Now how we connect the right audience to the films -- and I know that these films aren't for everyone but they are for a lot of people - that is where we are still in a big flux."
Q. Are older distribution methods -- theatrical and DVD -- still the key to making money? What stage are we at with web streaming?
A. "I still think theatrical is very real. But it's trickier. Now the talk is not so much about delivery systems but marketing systems. That is the first big shift. And then it's going to be about how you get the films themselves."
Q. Sundance recently announced a new deal for films selected
to be streamed online on sites including iTunes and YouTube should the filmmaker wish. How should filmmakers feel about this going into the festival?
A. "I hope they will step into the festival and breathe easier knowing that there is this great opportunity for them."
Q. Is the divide between Hollywood and indie film growing or getting less?
A. "I think the divide is growing. As Hollywood has its problems with financial things and needs to make films of a certain size, you are splitting, where maybe 10 years ago there was a blending a little bit."

Selena Gomez’s Fashion Line Earned $100 Million Last Year

2012-01-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

In a recent report from Manila Standard Today(an international business news source), Selena Gomez‘s Dream Out Loud fashion line has earned(with the help of the brand’s creative director Tony Melilo) about $100 million last year. This is an impressive feat for singer/actress/fashion designer.

It’s awesome news that Selena’s fashion line for Kmart is doing great! I’m a fan of her fashion line and I think that most fashionable tweens and young women agree. Her clothes are easy to wear, super chic, and on-trend. Selena Gomez is one of those celebrity fashion designers who know what the customers want in terms of taste and style. She may not be considered an established name in the fashion industry yet, but I think that it won’t be much longer until she is.
Are you a fan of Selena’s Dream Out Loud fashion line? Have you purchased anything from her clothing line? I purchased a few lace-trimmed camisoles last spring and I still love wearing them. These camis look great with long skirts, denim, or underneath lightweight cardigans. And I think that’s another big contributing factor that makes her line successful: her clothes are wearable. We want clothes that are both fashionable and comfortable.

Naked models in Shoreditch hat show for London Fashion Week

2012-01-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

Welsh designer Robyn Coles has found a whole nude way of attracting attention to her fashion creations – by sending models down the catwalk completely naked.

Welsh miliner Robyn Coles admits the stunt was dreamed up purely to raise publicity for her designs, and says there will be “no tricks or hidden underwear.”
Robyn, a former fashion buyer for Browns who began making hats a year ago when she was made redundant, hopes all eyes will be on her first collection.
The models are a mix of friends and life drawing models, many of whom have tattoos and piercings, including comedian Jeff Leach from the BBC documentary entitled Confessions of a Sex Addict and former Miss Wales Sophia Cahill – who will be seven months pregnant.
“I thought it’d be a nice light hearted end to fashion week,” said 31-year old Robyn.
“I’m not a conventional designer so I thought it’d be foolish of me to use conventional methods - plus I can’t afford proper models,” she said.
The “tongue-in-cheek” show will take place in the White Rabbit Studios in The Arches, Dereham Place, just off Shoreditch High Street on February 21.

Exclusive! Diana Vickers talks YOU through her Very sexy fashion collection, radishes and all

2012-01-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

Diana Vickers has released a smoking hot new collection for Very.co.uk...

Diana Vickers’ latest fashion line for Very.co.uk is out, like NOW! To celebrate the launch, the singer slash designer has spilled all – talking addictions and inspirations behind the 16-piece collection - starting with, err, radishes…

“Vegetable prints were a highlight on the SS12 catwalks, which I thought was completely eccentric and so much fun.”
“I found this amazing old curtain in a radish print, and instantly thought that’s a really cool print, let’s include it in the collection!” Scroll down for video...

The campaign images for V’s v. nice Very collection are nothing short of stunning - loving the Rockabilly (pastry) quiff almost as the clothes

Dee V by Diana Vickers is the singer’s second collection for Very.co.uk and arguably her best selection yet (not that there was anything wrong with the last one mind).
With prices starting at £29 - and ending at just £59 - it’s an easy way to tackle those spring trends without having sell your flat / car / Nan.
Radish fan Diana continues: “I wanted to really play around with it [the radish print] - make the [radish] print bigger and better.
It [the radish print] has ended up becoming a gorgeous 1950s style full-skirted dress which I’m in love with.”
1950s-style full-skirted dresses are an even bigger trend that radishes this spring - so someone (Ms Vickers) clearly knows what they’re doing.
Radishes aside, is there anything else that Diana’s addicted to at the moment?

Coat junkie Diana has designed a cream number for her SS12 line and wants us to bare our midriffs too *gulp* (lollipop = model's own)

“I’m obsessed with coats and jackets at the moment!”
That’s that one cleared up then…hang on, there’s more…
“I can’t stop shopping for jackets and trying on other people’s jackets! I’ve invested in a good few recently, but I still really want a good long black jacket to wear in spring, so I’m still searching.”
Erm, maybe you should design one yourself Dee V? Then we can buy that too. Then you can try ours on and all.
Diana ignores us and continues: “My inspiration came from the 1950s and early 1960s retro style. I love all those old fashioned vintage shapes: lots of quirky prints and bright colours.”
Ms Vickers may be a relative newcomer to the world of fashion but she’s certainly making waves – thanks in part to her Rockabilly new look.

Vickers says she loves bright colours and quirky prints - here's the proof

Indeed the SS12 collection is brimming with bow-ties, thigh-high socks, midriff-baring crop tops and radish prints – all of which would look right at home on anyone from Rockabilly-luvvie Rihanna, to print-cess Carey Mulligan and even Park Avenue favourite Olivia Palermo.

We'd like to see Rockabilly fan Rihanna in Dee V's clothes

But who would Diana most like to see wearing her latest collection?...Dee V? Dee? V? Diana?!
Nevermind. First one to check out the Diana Vickers clothing range is a great big stylish radish.
Before you do that, why not watch Diana Vickers in moving pictures - this time talking us through her first ever Very collaboration. Fun.

Frugal Fashion: Golden Globes 2012 accessories

2012-01-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

Watching the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards show last Sunday was a reminder of the power of a single accessory to transform a look.
Emma Stone, Charlize Theron and Michelle Williams expertly used accessories to add an extra touch of style and whimsy to their red-carpet gowns.
Stone accentuated her maroon and fuchsia pleated Lanvin gown by cinching the waist with a bold leather belt with jewel-encrusted buckle in the shape of an eagle. The belt, looking like something you might expect from a biker, was unexpected and a playful contrast to the ethereal quality of her gown.

Add a similar punch of style to your next red-carpet gown with the Eagle belt buckle from Hotbuckles.com for $17.95 or the Rhinestone eagle belt buckle, also from Hotbuckles.com, for $19.95.

Theron wore a small Cartier museum piece jewel fastened to her Dior couture gown, proving that brooches aren't just for the over 50 set. They can be timeless pieces that add a hint of sparkle and elegance to any outfit, regardless of the generation.

For a similar piece, get the Monet brooch, crystal flower pin from Macys.com for $25 or the Austrian Crystal brooch - dogwood from Silverandjewelry.com for $49.

Williams looked 1920s glam with her jeweled, vintage Fred Leighton headband and Jason Wu gown. The small detailing on the headband was a perfect addition of sparkle to her pixie-cut strawberry blond hair and petite earrings.

Headbands can be a fun way to dress up a T-shirt and jeans or, like Williams, to add a youthful touch to an evening gown. For a similar piece try the Full Tilt rhinestone infinity headband from Tillys.com for $7.99, Candie's rhinestone headband from Kohls.com for $8, or the Cara Accessories masterpiece headband from Nordstrom.com for $32.
Have an outfit you're dying to buy but need a frugal alternative? Email us a picture. We're up for the challenge.

Northern Ireland Fashion Spy: Beyonce is very stylish

2012-01-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

Kerry McKittrick takes a look at the fashion on show in Belfast city centre.

Laura Abraham (21), Student, Dungannon
My leather jacket was £125 at Topshop and my scarf was about £15 in Oasis. My shorts were £10 in H&M and my tights cost £6 from Next. I got my bag in House of Fraser for £160 and my pumps were £16 from Topshop. My style is best described as random because I don’t follow fashion. I don’t really wear trousers so most of the time I go for shorts or skirts. My style icon is Natalie Portman because I think she has her own individual style and doesn’t copy anyone else. I don’t like Katy Perry’s style as it’s too out there. My monthly spend is about £100.

Kirsty Croft (20), Student, Belfast
My T-shirt cost £6 and my head-band was £3, both from Primark. I got my cardigan in Exhibit for £20 and my leggings were £20 in Republic. My jacket cost £60 in Bank and my Ugg bag and Ugg boots were both presents. My style is normally trendy and I go for bright colours and patterns. I like to keep an eye on what’s in the shops. My style icons are people like Cher Lloyd and Beyonce because they’re both really stylish. I don’t like how Fearne Cotton dresses. I actually think her style is too old for her. My monthly spend is £200.

Valerie McCann (53), Social Worker, Belfast
My jacket came from a boutique that closed years ago for about £150. I got my cardigan in Oasis for £25 and my cords were £20 in Dunnes Stores. I got my boots in the Clarks sale for £60 and my Marks & Spencer bag came from a charity shop for £5. My scarf was £7 in the Accessorize sale.My style is normally quite co-ordinated and I tend to go for clothes that are a bit different instead of following trends. I would say my style is more vintage than anything else. My style icon is Helen Mirren. For an older woman she always manages to look glamorous and very elegant. I don’t like how Denise Welch dresses as I don’t think her style does her any favours. My monthly spend

Sexy Fashion for Temptation -- Milanoo Choiceness Sexy Collection

2012-01-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2012, Milanoo.com, one of the leading firms in the marketing field of trendy products, has updated its choiceness sexy collection in which must-have items for temptation are available.
"As quality of life improves, the awareness of dressing sexy is aroused, which not only expresses confidence in sexuality, but is also a signal of a person in need of attention. To help our customers be sexy is our duty, and in this collection, we release sexy dressing seriously as purple temptation, passion flame, pure angel, just love black, shining gold and naughty girl to meet customers' needs for special occasions," Gu, manager of Milanoo Procurement Center.
Sexy Wearing in Milanoo choiceness sexy collection contains seductive mini dresses, glamorous club dresses, attractive lingerie sets and special mini skirt sets for women to tart up their lifestyle. The design of these dresses follows the modern sexy concept "The tighter, the better; the shorter, the racier". While high heel shoes always play an important role in the very sexy way of dressing you up. Ranging from Heel height of 5 3/4'' to 7 9/10'', Milanoo sexy shoes for 2012 present the latest styles of platform lace-up, back buckle and red lace. It is a unique sexy collection which you will come to admire.
Sexy is about enticing and showing enough to stimulate the imagination. Milanoo 2012 sexy collection could help you find the sexy and attractive way of dressing up. To know more about Milanoo and Milanoo sexy styles, please feel free to log in to the site at http://www.milanoo.com/.
Milanoo.com is one of the most established websites where people can find latest trends in fine jewelry, Cosplay items and wigs as well as women's lingerie, formal wear, wedding attire, shoes and handbags. Milanoo.com's inventory also includes men's fashion and accessories, bedding, housewares and yoga essentials. The site is developed especially for those having passion for fashion. Being the leading online retail shop for fashion, it always strives to bring something new and unique to fashion lovers. Amazing discount offers is one major attraction of Milanoo.com that make more and more fashion enthusiasts to visit and purchase from the site.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/18/4196169/sexy-fashion-for-temptation-milanoo.html#storylink=cpy

London Fashion Week designers launch shoes with Aldo Rise

2012-01-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

Preen for Aldo Rise, available at Selfridges.com.

J.W.Anderson, Mark Fast and Preen launched their capsule collections with Aldo Rise in Selfridges last night.

If you'd been wondering through London's Selfridges last night, you might have stumbled upon the launch of one of the most exciting high street and designer collaborations to date.

Bringing the catwalk to the masses, US shoe brand Aldo has created affordable and covetable collections with not one, not two, but three London Fashion Week hot designers.
Up and coming fashion world favourite J.W.Anderson, knitwear maverick Mark Fast and Preen twosome, Justin Thornton and Thea Bragazzi, came together as the guests of honour yesterday evening, in Selfridges' French restaurant Aubaine to celebrate each of their capsule collections, which were only made possible by the shoe brand's Aldo Rise scheme.
Helping emerging fashion brands produce their catwalk shows, the scheme not only helps with the show's promotion, but helps designers create their perfect shoes to go with their current collections; shoes which have today hit the famous Selfridge's Shoe Galleries in a one-month pop-up store of sartorial dreams.

Left to right: J.W.Anderson and Mark Fast for Aldo Rise

Irish designer J.W.Anderson was not only thrilled with his collection, but thinks collaborations like this are the future of fashion: "I have no issue with collaborations. They represent modernity. At this time of year and with the today's fashion market, they make so much sense" the designer told Vogue . "Collaborations help so much. Aldo offers incredibly quality for the high street - they helped me design shoes in a way I couldn't have done on my own, from production to marketing."
For those who want to get their hands on these one-off creations, the prices range between £125-£135, and they will be available at the pop-up store and at Selfridges.com only, for the next month. But if you can't move that fast, never fear, because Asos.com have snapped them up from February 22. Failing that, (for those who really can't get their acts together), they'll be hitting Aldo stores worldwide from March 8 onwards as well, so there's no excuse not to snap up this covetable slice of catwalk style.

Golden Globe fashions were full of blush (Fashion Conscious)

2012-01-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

I’m still blushing, thanks to the red carpet style at the 69th annual Golden Globes in Hollywood Sunday night.
There seemed to have been an invasion of the blush-colored body snatchers! Or perhaps it was the battle of the blush-colored beauties! There were so many starlets in neutrals that I wish they could have lined them all up and called an impromptu style-off!
That would have been cool.
Anyway, many of them, like Best Supporting Actress nominee Charlize Theron were simply stunning. Her Dior Couture gown was accessorized by Cartier jewels and a vintage Cartier diamond headband.
How much do you wanna bet she smelled like J’adore? Don’t you just love that commercial? Anyway, Theron is an unmatched, statuesque beauty that usually gets it right. ¶
From Kate Beckinsale’s strapless Roberto Cavalli column gown and Jessica Alba’s Gucci to Diane Lane’s beige chiffon design with gold beading by Reem Acra, many ladies worked the natural color palettes with star-studded style.
"Modern Family" actress Sarah Hyland had to be sewn into her vintage Dolce & Gabbana gown right in the middle of the red carpet. But, kudos to the young beauty who showed true Hollywood class and glamour in spite of the wardrobe malfunction.
Some red carpet nudes were noticeably a mess, however. Andrea Riseborough (star of Madonna’s movie, W.E.) wore a nude Vivienne Westwood gown that reminded me of the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz. Amanda Peet’s one-shoulder lace tiered dress looked like a bad set of draperies. While supermodel Elle Macpherson is still a stunner, her ivory silk tiered Zac Posen was just too busy. And Nicole Kidman’s body-hugging Versace gown with metallic embellishments was just not a flattering hue for her.
Of course I’m going to say something about Angelina Jolie ... wait for it, wait for it ...
Ok, I’m usually not a fan, but Sunday she truly looked like Hollywood royalty. From the moment she and Brad Pitt stepped out of their limo, all eyes were on them. This time, they deserved it, except for Brad’s hair. (I think he’s way too cute for that look.)
Angie may have gone home without a Golden Globe (her directorial debut, "In The Land of Blood and Honey," was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film ), but she was the showstopper of the evening. Her fitted one-shoulder ice-white gown by Atelier Versace featured a red foldover trim at the neckline that matched her bag and lipstick. I spotted other stars in the audience taking her photograph with their cell phones when she graced the stage — not everybody gets that!
When it came to color, everything from Bigbird yellow (a la Paula Patton), emerald green, royal blue and red were seen along the red carpet.
Dressed in dark blue, "Modern Family" actress Sofia Vergara was, as usual, the sexy siren. She just can’t help herself — she’s a natural scene-stealer.
The Best Supporting Actress nominee wore a mermaid-inspired Vera Wang design with $5 million worth of Harry Winston diamonds. She even stole the show when the popular TV comedy took home its first Golden Globe Sunday night and she accepted the award with show producer Steve Levitan.
Levitan comically repeated Vergara’s words in English, with many liberties, of course, in the translation.
When it came to color, racy reds were chosen by "Glee" star Dianna Agron and presenter Reese Witherspoon. Agron’s Giles Deacon design, which featured laser-cut swans on the bodice and a tiered skirt, looked busy and confusing. Witherspoon’s sexy strapless Zac Posen gown made it difficult for her to walk.
Speaking of bad choices, wasn’t it sweet that Sarah Michelle Gellar let her 2-year-old daughter, Charlotte, pick out her dress.
"I put out all of the choices and she said, ‘Mama, wear this,’" Gellar said on the red carpet.
Sorry mom, but the strapless ruffled gown, a cobalt and white design by Monique Lhuillier, looked a lot like child’s play. Did sweet little Charlotte paint and color this dress too?
Typical black gowns were nearly extinct Sunday evening, but black and white appears to be a popular new combo. Claire Danes and Kate Winslet (who also accepted prizes) both looked great — not to mention occasion-appropriate — in their black and white columns; Danes’ was J. Mendel and Winslet’s was Jenny Packham.
Can’t wait to see if there’s more of that combo at the Oscars.

Berlin kicks off fashion week

2012-01-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

Markus Schreiber

A make-up artist prepares a model for the fashion show of Austrian fashion brand Lena Hoschek at the Fashion Week in Berlin, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012.

Berlin's twice-yearly Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has opened its doors, with an Austrian designer giving her collection a low-key look at a time when Europe faces economic gloom.
The Berlin event, running Wednesday through Saturday, is seen as one where young designers who might struggle to get noticed in traditional fashion centers can highlight their creations.
Austrian designer Lena Hoschek, known for vintage looks centered on the 1940s and '50s, gave her collection a new note of simplicity reflecting the financially troubled times.
She said: "The design of my creations (is) simpler and cheaper, although my creations here might be not cheaper, but at the least the shape of my collection is more low-key."
Hoschek's was one of the first shows at the event near Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate.

Golden Globe Fashion: Madonna Wears a Sexy Metallic Gown

2012-01-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Material Girl accepted her Globe for Best Original Song without wearing a gown by a major luxury brand designer.

Madonna was able to wrangle gowns from Dior and Vionnet -- as well as multi-million dollar jewelry from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels -- for W.E., her film about the iconic fashion couple, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But to accept her Golden Globe for Best Original Song for her movie, she wore Reem Acra.

Not that there's anything wrong with this designer. She's got a fab website and is growing increasingly popular in Hollywood after dressing Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, and Beyonce, to name a few.

On the Globes carpet tonight, Acra also dressed Modern Family's Julie Bowen, who described her ultra feminine dress as "my girly moment" and the always elegant Diane Lane, who starred in HBO's Cinema Verite. So maybe Madonna will boost her prior profile -- she's known as a glorified wedding gown designer -- much higher.
But perhaps our expectations were simply too high. We had imagined a major luxury brand such as Dior, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Lanvin, Vuitton, Valentino, Prada or Jean Paul Gaultier. But maybe the big houses are not willing to cough up enough moola for her to wear their designs. Or perhaps they may think she's not their demographic any more.
Anyway, Madge's W.E. young star Andrea Risenborough wore a stunning and fittingly over-the-top statement-making Vivienne Westwood gown. And backstage after her win, Madonna talked about her Globes dress: "I love it because I feel like I’m wearing chain mail and I’m ready to go to battle."

What do you think of Madonna's big return to Hollywood designer gown? Be honest.

Kids’ fashion comes of age

2012-01-18T08:52:00.001-08:00

Toddling in a green-hued Sonali Mansingka dress, four-year-old Samaira Sethi looks like a million bucks. In between stylishly striding the ramp for designers and preparing backstage (at the India Kids Fashion Week in Mumbai yesterday), she wraps her shapely, cuddly little arms around her mother Geetika Sethi and receives a warm, admiring hug. Mom says Samaira, for all her age, already has a fast-developing sense of fashion.
Samaira belongs to the digital-age tykes who know their fashion and love it too. Some 150 of them converged on the three-day event, organised by Craftworld, just to sashay down the ramp, in honour of Indian designerssuch as Rocky S, Malini Ramani, Nishka Lulla, Nandita Basu, Gaurav and Ritika. Backing them were brands like Mineral, Kidology, Coochhie Coo, Beebay, all out to woo top-end retail buyers (who in turn are confident there are Indian parents willing to spend up to Rs25, 000 on a designer dress for their darling daughter / super-son).
Neha Sachar Mittal, joint managing director, Kidology, a high-end occasion-wear brand for kids, says a new market segment, comprising increasingly discerning, well-travelled and high-incomeconsumers, has formed in India. Soon after Kidology set up shop in Delhi two years ago, kids’ fashion wear priced in the Rs 3,500-12, 000 range started selling fast. Kidology now works directly with designers. It has also expanded to Mumbai and at least three new stores in other cities are planned.
“Well-heeled Indian parents are willing to spend, as long as the product is exclusive and of good quality. We could even go higher on pricing as consumers demandhigh-end kids’ fashion wear,” says Mittal.
Such consumers descended on the Mumbai fashion parade in hundreds, touching-feeling the mind-boggling range of kids’ fashion, from the glitzy and the classy to the punky and the funky.
Well-developed fashion-quotient of their kids, they say, is something they take pride in. As brands fill up the kids’ wardrobes, retailers are salivating over a potential 35% year-on-year growth.
Such high growth appears inevitable as kids’ apparel grows up from images of super-heroes and cartoon characters to concepts such as occasion-wear and party-wear. Why, even designers are now keen to partner with brands that can manage production and marketing while they themselves focus on the final product.
New brands, mostly individual start-ups, are set to enter the kids’ retail market, says Kumar Rajagopalan, chief executive officer, Retailers Association of India.. “In three years, we might have as many as 20 new brands. The toddler segment is still untapped and offers a huge opportunity.”
Plans are afoot to bring designers and large retail firms together, in a bid to make kids’ fashion affordable. Economies of scale could spell huge growth in a huge market like India, says Mumbai-resident Anil Patel, proud of his status as the father of 12-year-old Yash who walked the ramp for Narendra Kumar. Today’s kids, he says, demand ‘funky’ and ‘expensive’ apparel and footwear. His wife (and Yash’s mom) Hetal says finding that perfect pair of clothes for her son is no easy task. “It is difficult to find an appealing collection at stores, especially for boys this young.”
To make life easier for Hetal and other such moms of fashion-conscious kids, Manan Apparel has decided to re-orient its kids-wear business from exports to the domestic market through its own brand Oh My Gosh. “Today, a father can walk into a kids’ apparel store and buy a ` 1,200 shirt for his daughter. I’m certain we will have enough takers,” says Sanjay Gogia, Manan’s director.
Like Manan, long-time exporter Akriti Apparels has launched its own brand Beebay through exclusive outlets and an online store. Its director, Avanish Jain, says, “The kids’ retailing market in India is becoming lucrative as consumers are willing to pay more for branded products for their children.”Agrees designer Sagarika Mittal Goyal who haslaunched Coochhie Coo, a luxury kids’ fashion brand. “The growth opportunity is enormous. Consumers are particularly willing to spend on fashionable party-wear.”
Estimates suggest that kids-gear will likely snowball into a Rs85,000 crore market by 2014. And 80% of it will be apparel, followed by footwear (10%), toys (4%), accessories and merchandise (6%). That is not all. The infant segment (0-3 years) is untapped, according to analysts. They are convinced Indian babies in designer wear will look like a billion bucks.

Arts and culture in Miami

2012-01-18T00:11:00.000-08:00

Just some of the bright and colourful buildings found in the "Magic City". Picture: Lonely Planet Images

SOUTH Florida is a land of dreams. Miami is known as the Magic City. Whichever way you cut it, imagination and innovation are big here, manifesting themselves in art, architecture and festivals.
You see it from the extravagance of Lincoln Rd to the ephemeral neon beauty of Ocean Drive; from the cloud-kissing skyline of downtown Miami to the shells of empty condominiums that bankrupted their speculators; from the pink castle walls of a Coral Gables mansion to the dark, sexy lounges of Overtown; and from the Faberge-egg interior of the Vizcaya Museum to an experimental art piece in Midtown.
Stay in Miami long enough and you might believe magic is real.

Art deco apartments on Miami's waterfront in Florida. Picture: Supplied

> > Arts and the edge
In Miami proper and Miami Beach, the newest neighbourhoods are the districts where the creative community is opening the best restaurants, bars and clubs (and here "the newest" and "the best" often go hand in hand).
Sometimes this takes the form of massive public investment realised in architectural masterpieces such as the Adrienne Arsht Centre and the New World Centre, two impressive performing arts spaces that have spruced up Miami and Miami Beach respectively.
Sometimes it takes the form of young artists using open houses, gallery nights and special studio shows to gentrify entire swathes of neighbourhood. In both ways, greater Miami is growing, physically and culturally.
> > Ah, Florida
If Miami is full of culture, fun and urban beauty, South Florida is full of natural beauty, especially the spectacular wetland ecosystem of the Everglades and the island jungles and waterways of the Keys. If you took America and shook it by its sides, all its eccentricities (and quite a few eccentrics) would tumble into the southeast corner pocket that is South Florida.
What happens when these folks mix with the region's considerable immigrant population? Fun, diversity and the occasional chicken sacrifice to a voodoo god. Outside the city? In the Everglades you'll find alligator wrestlers and Bigfoot hunters sharing a beer at crab shacks where panthers prowl the backyard. Head out to the Keys and you'll meet drag queens working as insect exterminators and islands named No Name inhabited by miniature deer.
All of this delightful sense of place is ensconced within considerable natural beauty: shimmering bays, serene tidal flats, fecund cypress groves, emerald islands scattered over a teal sea and a bed of ancient-looking wetlands.
> > Top experiences
Miami nightlife
Miami is a fun, good-looking city, and the best way to accept this truth is to head out on the town. In places like Midtown, Overtown and Coral Gables, you can find laid-back bars (even dives!) where clientele is glamorous, sexy and shiny, yet friendly and down to earth.
Even the megaclubs on Miami Beach, with their occasional restrictive red ropes and sky-high cover charges, are worth checking out for their sheer dedication and innovation in the field of creating excess.
Everglades alligator-spotting
South Florida loves to embrace the new in fashion, culinary trends and whatever the world thinks is hip. But look beneath the region's surface (literally) and you find a landscape and inhabitants that are ancient.
How old?
It doesn't get much more primeval than alligators, designed by nature to be perfect, leathery carnivores; predators whose engineering was so flawless, they haven't seen fit to change much since dinosaurs roamed.
Spot dozens of gators from the boardwalks of the Royal Palm Visitor Centre (State Rd 9336; opening hours: 8am-4.15pm).
Exploring Calle Ocho
Little Havana, heart of Miami's Cuban community, is populated by more than Cubans. There are Spanish speakers from all over lining Calle Ocho, otherwise known as "8th St", one of the most colourful, culturally vibrant thoroughfares in the country.
It helps to speak some Spanish but it doesn't matter if you don't. Just grab a cigar, a tall fruit juice and place your finger on Miami's multicultural pulse.
The Biltmore's ghosts
Miami doesn't lack for impressive buildings, and some say the grandest jewel in the city's crown is the Biltmore in Coral Gables (even the name rolls aristocratically off the tongue). Built in 1925, this hotel encapsulates the two vibes of the Jazz Age: brilliant flashiness and elegant dignity.
Today the well-to-do and the ghosts of guests past prowl the majestic grounds, and we don't just mean that the Biltmore captures the essence of its heyday; some say spirits haunt the halls.
Check out Art Deco giants
Like all great cities, Miami and Miami Beach have a distinctive architectural style. Actually, Art Deco isn't just distinctive in Miami. In places like South Beach, it's definitive. Whatever your take on deco may be, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better concentration of it outside of Miami and Miami Beach.
Coral Gables' mansions
Coral Gables is called the City Beautiful with good reason. America in general and Miami in particular are often associated with gaudiness, but Coral Gables takes this cliche and turns it on its head.
Yes, houses here are opulent and some are admittedly over the top, but many are gorgeous executions of a Mediterranean-revival style that blends the best of Iberian villas, Moroccan riads and Roman pleasure domes; we highly recommend gawking.
Camping on Bahia Honda
Everyone assumes the Florida Keys are ringed with beautiful beaches, but this is actually not the case. The Keys are mangrove islands and, as such, their coasts are often a tangle of bracken and vegetation pretty, but hardly a traditional beach.
Not so at Bahia Honda, where a pretty smear of buttery sand is spread along the coastline.
Book early and you can camp here, waking to perfect saltwater breezes and the glimmer of a new day dancing on the nearby waves.
Overseas Highway road trip
The Florida Keys are linked by Highway 1, also known as the Overseas Highway. Heading over the road's many bridges and pulling over intermittently to admire the Gulf of Mexico or Florida Bay is simply one of the great pleasures of Florida travel. If you don't feel like driving, you can cycle much of the 205km route; most of the way is flat, shoulder lanes are established throughout and more than 112km of the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail are there for cyclists to enjoy.

Gallery audience shares thoughts, art pertaining to Martin Luther King Jr.

2012-01-18T00:05:00.000-08:00

Douglas Fullard remembers being in Fayetteville, N.C., when he was about 13 years old and seeing Martin Luther King Jr.King was involved in a demonstration and Fullard, of Martinsburg, W.Va., said he could see the famed civil rights leader off in the distance.Fullard, speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr., remembrance event at the Contemporary School for the Arts & Gallery on West Franklin Street, said he also remembered having a teacher in Mullins, S.C., who went to school with King.In the classroom, the teacher often veered from her curriculum to talk about King so students would realize "what we were embarking on," Fullard said."It was such a beautiful part of my life," Fullard told about 25 people seated in a room at the school Sunday afternoon.
Fullard spoke when people in the audience were invited to step to the front of the room to talk about anything on their mind as the nation prepares to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day today.
Among those who came forward was Andy Smith, a member of Brothers United Who Dare to Care who has worked on health problems facing minorities.
Smith recalled attending a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conference in Atlanta that centered on a racial and ethnic health disparity. While there, Smith said he met Bernice King, King's daughter.
Smith said if anyone killed his father, he would be looking to "get even." But Smith said he was struck by how Bernice King, while lamenting how it had been tough growing up not having a father, was continuing to work for the issues that her father championed.
The appearances at the front of the room ranged from thoughts to the arts.
Aaron Worthy, a musical instructor at the school at 4 West Franklin St., performed "We Shall Overcome" on a saxophone, while C.L. Carey read some of his poems.
Carey, who grew up in Kearneysville, W.Va., said he began writing poetry at age 12. He said he once took a drink to see how that affected his writing, but he didn't like it. Today he only writes with a clear mind.
"God gives you these talents and gifts. I'm just a good instrument that he allows it through," Carey said of his poetry.
Carey, who has completed a book of his poetry and is currently working on a children's book, reflected on his drinking days and when he thought he was cool.
It was a time that Carey considered himself "on strike" from God.
"We as humans, we go on strike. We want a better deal. We want better benefits," Carey said.
Carey read his poem "If God Should go on Strike," in which he gives thanks that God never went on strike "for being treated unfairly with the things he didn't like."
Carey considered the idea of God going on strike by running the oceans dry, allowing no more rays from the moon and cutting off the Earth's oxygen "until every breath is gone."
"Surely he would be justified if fairness was the game, for no one has been met with more abuse or met with more disdain. We say we want a better deal, so out on strike we go," Carey read.
Local artist Kevin Watson unveiled a piece of art showing King in a heavenly background. The art was auctioned to raise money for the school, and Fullard bought it for $100.
Yvonne Jenkins, a pharmaceutical representative who lives in Martinsburg, talked about the history of King.

China Arts Awards recognizes country's culture

2012-01-17T23:52:00.000-08:00

The Chinese National Academy of Arts bestowed the first China Arts Awards on 23 Chinese creative individuals who have made big splashes in their fields.
The winners range in age and art form from 29-year-old pianist Lang Lang to 101-year-old film director Tang Xiaodan.
Tang was among 11 elderly artists, including painter and calligrapher Fan Zeng, vocalist Wang Kun and dancer Jia Zuoguang, to win a lifetime achievement award and 1 million yuan ($158,105) in prize money.

Nine young and middle-aged artists, including kungfu movie star Jackie Chan, actor Pu Cunxin and vocalist Peng Liyuan, received the arts awards and 1 million yuan apiece.
Lang, and dancer Huang Doudou and thangka (Tibetan Buddhist scroll paintings) artist Niangben, took the youth awards and 600,000 yuan.
"This is the highest honor I have received, because the award means recognition from my country," Lang says.
"It will encourage me to contribute more to Chinese piano music."
Niangben believes the award demonstrates greater attention to the country's ethnic cultural heritage. It also went to ethnic Bai dancer Yang Liping, who is celebrated for her performances of the traditional peacock dance.
Minister of Culture Cai Wu says the awards contribute to the fulfillment of the obligations of those who work in cultural and artistic fields - namely, of inheriting art traditions and of developing 21st century China's culture.
"I believe the China Arts Awards will contribute to building China into a stronger cultural power," Cai says.
The jury comprises senior artists and scholars. The jury's general secretary Jia Leilei says the awards should be high-level academic honors, comparable to the Grand prix de Litterature de l'Academie Francaise or the Academy Award.
The China Arts Awards will be presented annually and are open to artists from the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. The awards will also be open to foreign artists in the future.
"The China Arts Awards represent the aesthetics and values of contemporary Chinese culture and art," Vice-Minister of Culture and president of the Chinese National Academy of Art Wang Wenzhang says.
The awards are financially supported by China Oceanwide Holdings Group.

Elizabeth Taylor's incredible art collection of masterpieces by Van Gogh, Pisarró and Degas to go under the hammer

2012-01-17T23:50:00.000-08:00

When the Elizabeth Taylor Collection went under the hammer at Christie's New York last month, sales of dazzling array of Taylor's possessions fetched a staggering £103m, far exceeding Christie's pre-sale expectations.
Bidders across the world bought up every one of the 1,778 lots of jewellery, clothing, decorative arts and film memorabilia.
Now, the remaining works from Taylor's art collection are to go up for auction, with 38 masterpieces from the Hollywood icon's personal collection to go under the hammer.

Augustus John's Portrait of Poppet in Black Hat is one of a clutch of John paintings in Taylor's collection, offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale on 8 February. Estimate £40,000 to £60,000

Among their number are paintings by suchmasters as Vincent Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir - and many by celebrated British artist Augustus John,including Poppet in Black Hat, which is a painting John did of his daughter.
The three most valuable works are VanGogh's Vue de L'Asile de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy, painted in 1889 in Saint-Rémy, with an estimate of £5-£7million; Camille Pissarro's Pommiers à Éragny, signed and dated 'C.Pissarro.94', which has an estimate of £900k to £1.2m; and Degas's autoportrait, painted in 1857-1858, and with an estimate of £350,000 to £450,000.
These three will be offered in an evening sale of the Impressionists and Modern Art on 7 February.

The rest of the paintings will be split between two sales on 8 February, Impressionists and Modern Works on Paper Sale, and Impressionists and Modern Day Sale.

Taylor's The Vue de l’Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy by Vincent Van Gogh has an estimate of £5m to £7m

Taylor's enduring passion for art is thanks in part to her father Francis Taylor, an esteemed art dealer who had an art gallery on London's Old Bond St.
From an early age, he instilled a deep appreciation of the arts into his daughter, who went on to freely indulge in her passion, particularly for impressionist and modern art, when she was financially independent.
Mr Taylor was in fact close friends with Augustus John, and bought the Taylor's family home in Hampstead (where Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932) from the Welsh artist.
When they moved in, many of John's works still hung on the walls. Elizabeth went on to inherit these works from her father.
At the start of the Second World World War, Mr Taylor transferred his family and business to California, setting up shop in the Beverly Hills Hotel where celebrities such as Greta Garbo, Vincent Price and Hedda Hopper invested in works for their collections.
Mr Taylor continued to stay in touch with Augustus John after moving to the U.S., acting as his American agent, and corresponded with him frequently, in one letter referring to Elizabeth Taylor's shining Hollywood debút.

Camille Pissarro's Pommiers à Éragny, signed and dated 'C.Pissarro.94', has an estimate of £900k to £1.2m

Elizabeth Taylor, left, with her art dealer father Francis Taylor and mother Sara

In a missive marked 25 June 1943, Francis Taylor wrote to Augustus John: 'We have settled down to living in California and our young daughter is by way of being a movie star, if you see a picture of Lassie Come Home which will be released in September, she is in that.

'Also she may get the lead part in National Velvet. Even if you are not a movie fan see the Lassie picture it is in colour and is beautiful'

Giovanna Bertazzoni, International Specialist Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, at Christie's, said: 'Elizabeth Taylor was as passionate about buying art as she was jewels.

'Advised by her father, Francis Taylor, who was a very successful art dealer, she bought extensively in the 1960s, concentrating on the names of the zeitgeist: Van Gogh, Degas,Renoir, Utrillo, Rouault.

'She was careful to purchase pieces that were as eye-catching as the marvellous Van Gogh, as well as more demanding and academic works such as the Degas self-portrait.

'Having grown up surrounded by fine art and surrounded by her own canvases until the end of her life, this collection of paintings was very important to Miss Taylor and provides collectors with not only a very interesting insight into the icon herself, but also an exciting opportunity to acquire important works by leading Impressionist and Modern artists.'
Marc Porter, the Chairman and President of Christie's Americas, extends the invitation of The Elizabeth Taylor Trust - to Miss Taylor’s many admirers in Europe - to visit the complete group of pictures to be sold from her collection, which will be on view for the first time in London between 2 and 7 February.

An autoportrait of Edgar Degas, stamped with the signature 'Degas', painted in 1857-1858, has an estimate of £350,000 to 450,000

Art dealer arrested over fraud

2012-01-17T23:46:00.000-08:00

Locked down ... Mr Coles's gallery at Kenthurst.

ONE of Australia's former leading art dealers, Ronald Coles, faces up to 10 years in jail after he was arrested and charged yesterday with 87 offences relating to an alleged multimillion-dollar investment art fraud scheme.
At the height of his success in the mid-'90s, the flamboyant Sydney dealer drove a Bentley, mixed with celebrities and boasted an annual turnover of more than $20 million.
But for 18 months, the 64-year-old has been avoiding disgruntled creditors and driving taxis on the central coast while awaiting the outcome of an ''extremely protracted and legally intricate'' investigation by NSW Police into his business affairs.

Di Allen ... a creditor.

Mr Coles was ordered to attend Gosford police station yesterday. He was charged under the Crimes Act with 77 counts of larceny as a bailee and another 10 counts of cheating and defrauding as a director.
Police will allege that Mr Coles sold more than 30 paintings stored at his Kenthurst gallery without the permission of the owners of the works.
It is also alleged he created multiple owners of the same works, selling paintings to investors while not divulging details about the numerous other owners. The 87 charges relate to losses of more than $8 million to 43 clients nationwide.

One creditor, Di Allen, bought a Norman Lindsay painting in 2008, unaware that two other people had also allegedly bought it from Mr Coles. She was overcome with emotion when she heard of Mr Coles's arrest.
"A lot of people have lost a lot of money and while I think we all know we're never going to get it back, I'm delighted we're finally going to be heard in court."
Ron Coles … arriving at Gosford police station.For more than 30 years, Mr Coles specialised in fine art by some of Australia's most celebrated artists, including Arthur Streeton, Eugene von Guerard, Brett Whiteley and Lindsay.
He advertised on national radio and television, offering clients an opportunity to boost
their life savings by investing in art, which he bought, exhibited and sold on their behalf - using their superannuation funds.
But under the requirements of the Superannuation Industry Act, artwork bought with super funds may not be stored by the purchaser. So in most cases, Mr Coles retained the art.
The police set up Strike Force Glasson in January 2009 after a Fairfax investigation unearthed two Supreme Court actions and dozens of investors who were missing millions of dollars worth of art and money, all allegedly held by Mr Coles who had been unreachable for some time.
Police raided his boarded-up gallery at Kenthurst and two other addresses, seizing more than 400 paintings, worth an estimated $6 million. As fraud squad detectives chipped away at the complex inquiry, angry investors continued their search for Mr Coles. By now receivers were so desperate to claw back cash, at one stage they wrongly placed a caveat on the home of a Queensland woman who had the same name as Mr Coles's wife.
Individual creditors had grown so impatient at a perceived lack of police progress, they hired private investigators to find Mr Coles.
In October 2009, The Sun-Herald tracked him down to a central coast hideaway. "Why do you think I'm living like this in a small flat doing night-time taxi work?" he asked. "I'm also a victim in all this.''
After a brief appearance in Gosford Local Court, Mr Coles was granted conditional bail of $100,000 without deposit but is being held in Corrective Services custody until his family produces proof of funds.
Police will retain his passport and he will appear before Parramatta Local Court on March 15.

New York City's American Folk Art Museum celebrates optimistic future with 50th anniversary

2012-01-17T23:42:00.000-08:00

Vestie Davis, Luna Park, 1964. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York. Photo: Gavin Ashworth, New York.

NEW YORK (AP).- The American Folk Art Museum, long plagued by financial problems, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a new exhibition, renewed optimism for its future and its collection intact.

At a preview of a new exhibition celebrating its anniversary Tuesday, museum officials discussed its financial status and projection of its future.

The museum in September received a $2 million pledge from a longtime trustee and an additional $1 million commitment from other trustees and supporters, said Monty Blanchard Jr., president of the museum board of trustees. Those pledges gave the museum "significant runway to continue the operations of the museum and built it to new heights of artistic greatness," Blanchard said.

In addition, he said, the museum has received $500,000 from the Ford Foundation.

As late as this summer, the board had been in discussions about possibly turning its collection over to another institution but with the goal of keeping it in New York City.

But "the pledges and other money we had put us in a financially solvent position," Blanchard said. "The pledges provided that ballast for future operations" and allowed the museum to make the decision to remain independent.

He identified the long-term trustee as Joyce B. Cowin.

The museum, founded in 1961, houses traditional folk art dating to the 18th century, including 5,000 quilts, weather vanes, textiles, sculptures, paintings and decorative arts in a 6,000-square-foot space in Lincoln Square, across from Lincoln Center. It also has a large collection of works by self-taught artists, including thousands of drawings, watercolors and unpublished manuscripts by Henry Darger.

The institution has faced financial challenges for a long time but they took a turn for the worse in 2009 when it defaulted on a $32 million debt. The museum had taken out the money to build a new midtown Manhattan museum, on the same block as the Museum of Modern Art.

To pay off the debt, it sold the building to MoMA in July, but continued operating at its Lincoln Square branch, a location it has owned since 1989.

The folk art museum is searching for a new director and recently added a new member to its board of trustees. It anticipates adding up to two other new members by June. Several previous members had left during its financial trials.

The museum's other strategic plans include long-term loans to other institutions and collaborative arrangements with other museums.

"Our first goal is 'get the art out there,' to develop collaborative opportunities for positioning the art that we love within or with other institutions," Blanchard said.

The museum currently has 14 iconic pieces on extended loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new American Wing galleries for paintings, sculptures and decorative arts.

A traveling exhibit, "Kaleidoscope Quilts: The Art of Paula Nadelstern" will be shown at Endicott College in Massachusetts in the spring. A number of other works are currently on loan at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass., and the museum is in active talks about a possible exhibition this summer of works from its collection at the South Street Seaport Museum.

"These are examples of activities we are doing to fulfill our mission of getting our art out there," Blanchard said.

He said there are no plans to reduce staff and, in fact, once a new director is hired, the number will probably rise and the museum will embark on a longer-term fundraising plan that would involve raising endowment money.

Blanchard anticipates operating costs to range from $2.5 million to $3 million annually.

The anniversary exhibition that opened Tuesday, "Jubilation/Rumination: Life, Real and Imagined," features nearly 100 highlights that represent the scope of traditional folk art and outsider art, or works by self-taught artists.

It includes a Darger illustration, "Gigantic Roverine with Young" from his 15,000-page manuscript, "In the Realms of the Unreal," and a metaphorical self-portrait by Nellie Mae Rowe titled, "Cow Jump Over the Mone."

"We have been ruminating on our past," he said, referring to the exhibition title. "But we are jubilant about our future and the art that we present."

American art takes the stage at the Louvre Museum

2012-01-17T23:38:00.001-08:00

PARIS (AP) — American tourists fill the galleries of the Louvre Museum, yet American art is surprisingly scarce.
Paris’ premier museum and three U.S. art institutions are seeking to change that with an exhibit tracing the birth of American landscape painting and its influences.
“As soon as I arrived at the Louvre, I noticed that American art was not displayed at the level it merits,” said Louvre director Henri Loyrette.
Even the exhibit’s English-French melange of a name breaks tradition: It’s called “New Frontier: l’art americain entre au Louvre,” or “American Art Enters the Louvre.”
It focuses on Thomas Cole, a pioneer of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters of the 19th century.
The other partners in the exhibit are Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and Chicago’s Terra Foundation for American Art.
Curator Guillaume Faroult described how Cole and fellow painter Asher Durand drew inspiration from a 19th century visit to the Louvre, home of centuries of artwork by European and other masters. The exhibit includes paintings that influenced Cole’s work.
The show includes conferences and projects aimed at improving the French public’s knowledge of early American art. The exhibit, which opened Saturday, runs through April 16.

Dubai is a state-of the-art miracle stadium... without a crowd

2012-01-17T23:37:00.000-08:00

None of England’s 915 previous Test matches, at 64 different venues, has taken place in a setting quite so strange as Dubai’s International Cricket Stadium.

Green army: a small, loyal contingent of Pakistan fans cheer England's capitulation in Dubai

When Wilfred Thesiger became the first explorer to walk across Arabia from west to east little more than 60 years ago, he ended up in these parts - and the UAE, apart from a few mud-brick houses around Dubai Creek, was no different from the Empty Quarter he had just crossed.

So this stadium has been built in what was desert and is now a sandy construction site on the southern fringes of Dubai. The nearest buildings are tower blocks that have been left incomplete or uninhabited, and which heighten the effect of strangeness, as we tend to associate buildings with people.

The stadium inside is a £50 million state-of-the-art miracle in the face of nature. It seats a capacity crowd of 25,000 more comfortably than any other ground in world cricket - if only there had been a crowd.

Instead, the stadium contained about 1,000 England supporters on Tuesday, watching their team seize up against Saeed Ajmal and his fellow spinners. Chris Tremlett had not been able to see the ball because of an inflammation in his right eye, and his condition seemed to have infected England’s entire top order. In total, perhaps 1,200 spectators attended.

At the start of play, however, Pakistan supporters in the stadium numbered exactly 21. The ‘crowd’ supporting what was officially the home team grew to about 200 during the day, when the temperatures were perfect, neither too hot in the sun nor too cool in the shade. But when this series began, Pakistan supporters numbered 21.

You could seize on this figure as evidence of the decline, or imminent death, of Test cricket. But it would be fairer to observe that, back in Pakistan, Karachi and Lahore have not drawn Test crowds since the Seventies, and Faisalabad only did so in the Eighties because the municipality ran the Test match and forced local factories to buy tickets.
Before 1980 in Pakistan, as in India, a capacity crowd would turn up every Test match day, even if a stultifying draw was a foregone conclusion, because no other form of mass entertainment except the cinema existed.
It was also the opportunity for a mass protest, in front of foreign media, against the latest military dictator.
Mudassar Nazar scored the slowest Test century of all time, against England at Lahore in 1977, in front of a crowd of 50,000. He is now a coach at the ICC Global Academy down the road from the Dubai stadium and laughs about his unwanted record, saying he wished Geoff Boycott had never retired.
Once television and limited-overs cricket were popularised in Pakistan, the Test match crowds went home and have never returned – not that they have had a chance to return since March 2009, when terrorists struck at the Sri Lankan team in Lahore.
So if you think yesterday’s crowd was small, I would wager it was bigger than on any day of the Pakistan v England Test at Lahore in 1987 – the Test when Mike Gatting had his first, sour, taste of local umpires, who were under strict instructions to make sure Pakistan saved face after losing their World Cup semi-final in Lahore.
If you think the crowd yesterday was small, I would wager – with the permission of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, of course – that it was bigger than the one on the last day of the Karachi Test of 2000.
This was the day of England’s thrilling run-chase that ended Pakistan’s unbeaten Test record in Karachi, in the dark.
As Pakistanis who work in the Gulf are almost exclusively manual labourers, working on construction and driving taxis at all hours, they are about as likely to find the time and spare money to attend a day of Test cricket as Victorian factory-workers before the Factory Acts – even though prices start at £4 for this Dubai Test, and at zero for the second in Abu Dhabi.
In an ideal world, free of guns and bombs, Pakistan would now be hosting England in a five-match series: perhaps in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Faisalabad or Multan, and Karachi. Both sides, in every sense, would get to know each other better.
As it is, though, people were watching the Test match yesterday, not at the ground but on television in Pakistan.
Figures for this match will not be known until its end. But it is known that for Pakistan’s last ‘home’ Test series, against Sri Lanka in the Gulf, the television audience in Pakistan was an average of 1.8 million per day, and five to six million for the one-day and Twenty20 internationals.
It is safe to assume that ratings will be higher for this series, and that at least two million people in Pakistan were watching their spinners bamboozle England, which is pretty healthy. And maybe Pakistan’s cricket, like the tower blocks outside Dubai’s stadium, will one day be whole and complete.

African Art Collection to Land at Brooklyn Museum

2012-01-17T23:35:00.001-08:00

William Siegmann's love of travel turned into a stint in the Peace Corps and led him to Liberia where he developed a passion for African art. Now, some of the pieces he collected will go to museums around the country, including the Brooklyn Museum, where Mr. Siegmann once worked.
Mr. Siegmann, who died this past November, was born in Minneapolis in 1943. That he developed a passion for collecting and travel is not surprising. His father, a doctor, was an avid stamp and coin collector and his mother, a nurse, enjoyed travel. Mr. Siegmann's brother, Arthur, recalls that his brother became hooked on travel after a trip to Finland during high school.
In 1965, Mr. Siegmann joined the Peace Corps and went to work in Liberia. He fell in love with the country's culture and people and made art from Liberia and Sierra Leone the focus of his work.
"He lived and breathed Liberia," said his brother, Arthur Siegmann.
Mr. Siegmann would continue to visit and work in Liberia throughout his life, earning two Fulbright fellowships to study in the country. He was a professor at Cuttington University in Monrovia, Liberia, and started its Africana Museum. Later, he worked to oversee the renovation of the National Museum of Liberia. Beginning in 1997 and lasting for two decades, Mr. Siegmann worked as a curator for the Brooklyn Museum and helped to acquire some 1,600 pieces for its African and Pacific collections.
He especially liked masks and had an extensive, valuable collection of items used in initiation rituals for young women. He collected statues, carved stone, wood objects and metal figures. His collection spread throughout his Brooklyn apartment—his bedroom was a wall of carved masks—and overflowed into a warehouse space. He loved jewelry, textiles, games and everyday items like spoons and bowls, which he gifted to family members and used in his own kitchen.
The bulk of his collection, valued at some $750,000, will go to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which is working to develop a traveling exhibit of his collection. The Brooklyn Museum and Atlanta's High Museum of Art, among others, will also receive pieces.
Like most collectors, there's never just one passion. Mr. Siegmann's family says that he also loved cooking and food. He was his family's historian and curator of the family Christmas ornaments. He enjoyed music and attended the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village.
In the last few weeks, Arthur Siegmann says that the outpouring of photos and memories from his brother's work in Liberia has been overwhelming.
"He has had a service in Liberia, Minneapolis and New York. I don't know too many people who have multiple services including one in Liberia," said Arthur Siegmann. "A lot of people we know, but others are coming out of the woodwork. People loved and respected him and the great work he had done to promote the art and people of Liberia and Sierra Leone."

Tim Lincecum shatters Derek Jeter’s record, asks Giants for a $21.5 million salary in 2012

2012-01-17T23:34:00.000-08:00

Tim Lincecum could make as much as $21.5 million in 2012

Of all the different times of the baseball year, arbitration season has to be my least favorite. It's not even close, really. There's way too much sound and way too little fury as players, teams and agents do a dance that will most likely end with an inevitable and snooze-inducing "so-and-so avoids arbitration" headline. I know a lot of people like to get all hot and bothered over the numbers, but it does little to tide me over until actual on-field action begins.Especially when all the implied drama is almost guaranteed to never happen. Only three eligible players actually went to arbitration last offseason and none of them ended in particularly compelling stories. The same will likely happen this season with none of the big names looking like they're headed to a mudfight at the bargaining table.
Case in point: Tim Lincecum's reps and the San Francisco Giants were required to submit their suggested salaries for the pitcher's services in 2012 on Tuesday afternoon. Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reports that Tiny Tim's guys said they felt the two-time Cy Young Award winner should be paid $21.5 million to throw a baseball next season. The Giants said they felt that $17 million was more of a fair figure. Either one would count as a very nice raise, of course: Lincecum made $13 million in 2011.
Now, don't get me wrong here. The above details do make for a worthwhile headline. Both amounts shatter the figures that were requested by Derek Jeter ($18.5 million) and the New York Yankees ($14.25 million) in 2001.
But just like the Captain and the Yanks — who settled on a 10-year, $189 million extension 11 years ago — it looks like Lincecum and the Giants will settle long before an arbitrator is ever forced to pick one number or the other. Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Giants are comfortable with both numbers and confident that they can find a resolution before an arbitration hearing in February. Both sides were able to avoid arbitration the first time Lincecum was eligible, settling on a two-year, $21 million deal in 2010, just minutes before the arbitrator showed up to hear their cases.
Now it looks like history is repeating itself with the Giants already open to hammering out a one- or two-year deal in the coming weeks. Lincecum will hit the free agent market after the 2013 season.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

We just got off the phone with (Giants) vice president of baseball operations Bobby Evans, who said, "I'm overall optimistic we can find common ground without a hearing room." And given the numbers that they exchanged, there is reason for optimism. That spread is even smaller than in 2010, when Lincecum and the Giants were $5 million apart.
When I asked about the enormousness of the numbers we're talking about, and how he feels when he jots those numbers down, Evans said, "I usually leave off the final three zeroes because it's easier to calculate on an Excel spreadsheet."

Indeed, as Evan notes, they're all just figures. Framing figures much bigger than most of us will ever make in a lifetime, but figures all the same. At some point, Lincecum and the Giants will agree to something and all the headlines and speculation of the past few weeks will immediately fade into various Internet caches. Other than bullpen catchers, the arbitration stories might be the most expendable commodity in baseball.
But whether Lincecum's eventual deal is short-term band-aid (likely) or a long-term extension (not), the important part is that we'll be one step closer to the actual reason we watch baseball: Seeing The Freak pitching himself in a position where a $21 million salary request doesn't seem that outlandish. It's why I like to get this time of year over and done with as quickly as possible.

A tribute to Muhammad Ali

2012-01-17T23:32:00.001-08:00

New Delhi: One of sports' greatest legends, boxer Muhammad Ali, who could move like a butterfly and sting like a bee, turned 70 on Tuesday.

A fund raiser was organised on the occasion and the proceeds will go the Muhammad Ali Centre in Ketucky that fights for various social causes.

"I am the greatest fighter of all time," Ali had once said.

Muhammad Ali has been fighting a nearly 30 year long bout with Parkinson's, and hardly ever gets out of his Kentucky home. But he made it a point to attend Joe Frazier's funeral last year, with whom he fought many a memorable bout with.

Ali had 37 knockouts out of 57 career wins and an Olympic gold. But it's not just the numbers that made Ali the legend that he is. It was also his trademark soundbites.

"The man don't know nothing and I'm going to show everybody out there watching the show and the whole world and the world will bow and admit that I am the greatest of all times when you see what I do to George Foreman. I'm just getting hot thinking about it," he had once said.

He can't talk much these days, but stories about his exploits will be told for years to come.

DRB Open to Selling Sports Carmaker Lotus After Proton Takeover

2012-01-17T23:31:00.001-08:00

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysian billionaire Syed Mokhtar Al-Bulkhary’s DRB-Hicom Bhd. said it’s open to selling unprofitable sports-carmaker Lotus Group International Ltd. after taking over parent Proton Holdings Bhd.

DRB-Hicom is “open to options,” Managing Director Mohd Khamil Jamil told reporters today in Selangor, outside of Kuala Lumpur. “We can’t do due diligence on Lotus earlier so will need time to look into Lotus.”

Khazanah Nasional Bhd., the Malaysian government’s investment arm, this week agreed to sell its controlling 42.7 percent stake in Proton to DRB-Hicom for 1.29 billion ringgit ($414 million). DRB also accumulated an additional 7.7 percent stake in the open market, according to an exchange filing yesterday, taking its total holding beyond the 50 percent threshold before its mandatory general offer.

Proton, which makes sedans and taxis, hasn’t made any profit from Lotus since acquiring the sports carmaker in 1996. The British manufacturer, which has struggled to compete against Porsche AG and Ferrari SpA in Europe, has hung on to relevance in the auto industry partly because of its decades-long expertise in designing lightweight frames.

“We need to sit down with Lotus management, looking at their plans before arriving at a definitive decision,” Mohd Khamil said. “It has been there for years and has done some good things.”

Sale Speculation

Lotus’s sale has been the subject of speculation. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. last month denied an Edge newspaper report that said China’s largest carmaker is interested in Lotus. Three months ago, Proton denied a report by the Star newspaper that it was selling its Lotus stake to Luxembourg- based Genii Capital.

DRB-Hicom rose as much as 3.3 percent to 2.17 ringgit in Kuala Lumpur trading today. It pared gains to 2.14 ringgit at 11:25 a.m. local time, compared with a 0.2 percent drop in the benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index. Proton rose 0.4 percent to 5.43 ringgit, shy of DRB’s 5.50 ringgit-a-share takeover offer.

DRB-Hicom plans to delist Proton and make it a subsidiary after completing a general offer, Mohd Khamil said. DRB doesn’t plan to sell any stake in Proton to partners, though the company is open to collaboration with global car manufacturers like General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG, he said.

DRB is holding talks with General Motors, Proton Chairman Mohd Nadzmi Mohd Salleh said on Jan. 6, while DRB already assembles vehicles for Volkswagen.

Malayan Banking Bhd. will arrange loans to finance the purchase, Mohd Khamil said. DRB-Hicom’s financial position is “very healthy,” he said.

Clijsters, Li Into 3rd Round at Australian Open

2012-01-17T23:30:00.000-08:00

Defending champion Kim Clijsters cruised into the third round of the Australian Open and then showed just how much support she has at Rod Laver Arena by getting the crowd to sing 'Happy Birthday' to her younger sister.
Clijsters only needed 47 minutes to beat Stephanie Foretz Gacon of France 6-0, 6-1 on Wednesday, showing no signs of a hip problem that forced her to retire during a semifinal against Daniela Hantuchova at a warmup tournament two weeks ago.
She will meet Hantuchova in the next round here, and has a potential rematch of the 2011 Australian Open final with French Open champion Li Na in the fourth round.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer took differing paths against German rivals to the next stage. Nadal beat Tommy Haas 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 in the last afternoon match on Rod Laver Arena. Second-seeded Nadal had his right knee heavily taped again after hurting it while sitting in a hotel chair on the weekend, but it didn't seem to restrict him.
"Much better, I am very happy about how the knee is improving," Nadal said. "I am playing without problems, so that's OK."
Federer, who has won four of his 16 Grand Slam titles in Australia, got a walkover into the third round when Andreas Beck withdrew from their scheduled Hisense Arena match due to a lower back injury. It deprived Federer of a different view at Melbourne Park, where he has played every match in Rod Laver Arena since the third round of the 2004 Australian Open.

Eighth-ranked Mardy Fish became the first top 10 player on the men's side to lose, falling 7-6 (4), 6-3, 7-6 (6) to Colombia's Alejandro Falla.
No. 7 Tomas Berdych advanced 6-1, 6-0, 7-6 (4) over Olivier Rochus of Belgium, 2009 U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro, No. 18 Feliciano Lopez and No. 30 Kevin Anderson all advanced.
On the women's side, 10th-seeded Francesca Schiavone was eliminated 6-4, 6-3 by fellow Italian Romina Oprandi and No. 16 Peng Shuai lost 6-2, 6-4 to Iveta Benesova of Czech Republic. Former No. 1-ranked Jelena Jankovic beat Chang Kai-chen of Taiwan 6-4, 6-2.
Clijsters and No. 20 Hantuchova, a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 winner over Lesia Tsurenko, have been playing each other for years.
"When the injury happened, it happened against Daniela," Clijsters said of the hip muscle spasms she had at the Brisbane International. "She's been playing well this season so far.
"We both go back a long way — we grew up playing under-14s together. Now almost 30 — still battling it out."
This was Clijsters best run at a major since the last Australian Open — she lost in the second round at the French Open and didn't play Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.
Li is also returning to form, going further than she has a Grand Slam tournament since her breakthrough win at the French Open. She next plays No. 26 Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain, who beat Olga Govortsova of Belarus 6-1, 6-0.
Li said she loved being back on Rod Laver Arena, where she burst onto the global tennis scene last year, while Clijsters still clearly feels at home on a court where she's still known as "Aussie Kim" long after her relationship with Lleyton Hewitt ended.
In a post-match TV interview, she asked presenter Rennae Stubbs a favor, saying her brother-in-law phoned her from Belgium to ask if she could convince the crowd to sing a birthday song for Elke, Clijsters' younger sister.
The crowd obliged, after Clijsters kicked it off.

Using social media? Know your legal risks

2012-01-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

Always know what people - and your own staff - are saying on social media.

If one of your employees posted a dodgy comment on Facebook, or a customer tweeted a false claim against your business, would you know your legal rights?
The benefits of social media are becoming increasingly obvious to many SMEs, but the medium comes with its own array of risks - unless you develop a robust media policy and thorough staff training, experts say.
Reducing the risks
Adam Franklin, marketing manager of web strategy company Bluewire Media, says reducing the risks of social media starts with training on the appropriate use of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
“It's also essential as the business owner, you have access to the enterprise's social media accounts and all the passwords that relate to them so you can change them and access the accounts if you need to,” he says.
Franklin says it's also important to have a plan in place so that if something does go wrong - for example if a blogger posts negative information about the business - there's a process in place to deal with that situation.
The plan should include information about the correct steps to take in response to a negative post, such as whether to leave a comment on the blog, and when it's appropriate to seek external public relations advice.
“It's also critical to have an open culture in the business, so that if something does go wrong, or if a staff member makes a mistake using social media, staff feel comfortable volunteering this information so something isn't left to fester on social media that the business doesn't know about or staff are too scared to tell management about,” says Franklin.
Keep your eyes peeled
Malcolm Burrows, legal practice director at Dundas Lawyers, says the key to mitigating the risks of social media is real-time, constant and consistent monitoring of the main platforms.
“You need to be monitoring, because if you don't know what's going on, you can't hold your employees accountable. And if an employee is being negative about his or her employer on social media, it can be construed as grounds for dismissal,” Burrows says.
He points to a case between the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and allergy business Allergy Pathway Pty Ltd to show the importance of monitoring social media and removing any incorrect statements about the business, even when the statements are made by a third party.
The ACCC brought misleading and deceptive conduct proceedings against Allergy Pathway, which resulted in the business making various undertakings, including that it would not publish claims about its products' abilities to reduce the effect of allergies across a variety of media.
When client testimonials supporting these claims appeared on its website, Facebook page and Twitter feed, the court found Allergy Pathway had breached their undertakings and ordered directors to pay a $7500 fine.
Aside from stringent monitoring on what third parties are saying, Burrows says employers need to be conscious that improper use of social media by employees can leave them open to sexual harassment legal actions – even if posts are made outside working hours.
“Employer policies and duty of care extends to that environment,” he says.
Reputation is everything
Vivienne Storey, general manager of law firm BlandsLaw, agrees that staff training is key to mitigating not only legal risks, but also the risk of damaging or ruining a business' reputation.
“Social media is just another tool – and just like driving a car, you need rules to make it safe to use," says Storey.
"Businesses have to understand that social media is a very public medium and that what's said on social media platforms is permanent. Smart companies educate their staff about this and once people understand that, there's usually a shift in the way it's used.”
Storey says it's essential for every business to develop a social media policy and highlight privacy and confidentiality issues to staff.
“As the laws in this area are still developing, it's important to have an ongoing discussion about what the company's policy is,” she says.
Storey uses BlandsLaw's own social media policy as an example.
“Our policy is very free. We allow staff to access social media at any time during work hours and everyone here is allowed to talk on behalf of the organisation and about the organisation. But there are only six of us in the firm. If you're a larger business, you probably don't want everyone to talk on behalf of the business,” she says.
“Social media is just a tool, but it is a high risk, high benefit tool. What's important is trying to help people understand how to manage those risks through education and clear policies.”

Digital media opportunities explored at GLMV breakfast

2012-01-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

Mundelein Tuesday 01.17.12. Lance Adeszko, Sun-Times Media Vice President - Digital Advertising, speaks during a GLMV Chamber of Commerce and Sun-Times Media Group joint breakfast event on Tuesday, January 17, 2012, at the DoubleTree Hotel in Mundelein. | Buzz Orr~Sun-Times Media

MUNDELEIN — Digital media is giving local businesses the ability to market themselves in ways never dreamed of 20 years ago.

Officials from Sun-Times Media spoke about “Local Advertising in the Digital Age” at a breakfast meeting of the GLMV Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. About 65 people attended at the Doubletree Hotel in Mundelein.Rick Surkamer, president and chief operating officer of Sun-Times Media, said in addition to the company’s many newspapers throughout the Chicagoland region — including the Chicago Sun-Times, Pioneer Press newspapers and the Lake County News-Sun — the Sun-Times Media network has a large and growing digital audience.

In Lake County, the company’s network boosts a monthly print and on-line readership of 343,690. In the Libertyville, Mundelein and Vernon Hills area, monthly print and on-line readership is estimated at more than 30,000, Surkamer said.

“All of these areas are very important to us,” said Surkamer, who grew up in Libertyville.

Lance Adeszko, vice president of digital advertising for Sun-Times Media, said readers are increasingly getting their information from a variety of media sources, including traditional print media as well as via computers, cellphones, mobile devices and tablets.

In 2011, the amount of time people spent on mobile devices increased by 30 percent, and the time they spent on the Internet was up 7.7 percent, he said. Adeszko said more people are using mobile devices to look up content online and more than 60 percent of mobile content is local.

“Mobile is big every day of the week,” he said.

For advertisers, that means more opportunities to reach customers through a variety of digital sources.

Brian Garrigan, local sales manager for Sun-Times Media, said some of the new marketing options available to businesses are banner display ads that are posted on media Web sites, as well as targeted online banner ads based on demographic, geographic or other factors.

Other digital advertising options include targeted email blasts that are sent out to a list of people with promotional messages from local businesses, and search engine marketing, where paid ads are placed next to Web sites based on keyword searches.

Alese Campbell, executive director of the GLMV Chamber of Commerce, said the meeting was a chance for local businesses to learn about new digital marketing options.

“I thought it was a fantastic opportunity for the Chamber members to get exposure and education on all the different media options that are available,” she said. “I think the seminar got businesses to look at that it may not be feasible anymore to use just one type of advertising for their business.”

Apple devices drive majority of non-PC traffic on web

2011-10-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

Almost seven percent of the total digital traffic in the US is driven by smartphones and tablets, most of which can be attributed to devices running Apple's iOS

"The popularization of smartphones and the introduction of tablets and other web-enabled devices – collectively termed 'connected devices' – have contributed to an explosion in digital media consumption," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile in an October 10 report titled "Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits."

Apple iOS device owners are voracious digital media consumers, accounting for 43.1 percent of the connected device traffic during the three months ending in August 2011.

Google's Android platform is biting at Apple's heels with 34.1 percent of the connected device traffic share -- a figure that looks likely to increase in a few months when the impact of Amazon's soon-to-be-released low-cost Kindle Fire Android tablet can be measured.

Research In Motion’s (RIM) smartphone market share may be slipping in the US but the Canadian BlackBerry maker still accounts for 15.4 percent of the total audience among mobile and connected devices said comScore.

One of the reasons non-PC traffic is increasing so quickly is because tablets and smartphones make it easy for people to consume media on-the-go. Smartphones still account for approximately two-thirds of traffic from connected devices, but tablets are gaining steam.

Apple’s iPad has eclipsed the iPhone in terms of internet traffic (46.8 percent vs. 42.6 percent of all iOS device traffic) and accounts for a colossal 97.2 percent of the entire tablet traffic in the US.

"As these devices gain adoption, we have also seen the rise of the 'digital omnivores' – consumers who access content through several touchpoints during the course of their daily digital lives," revealed Donovan.

Services such as Amazon's WhisperSync and Apple's soon-to-be released iCloud are making it even easier for people to start consuming on one device and pick up where they left off on a second.

According to comScore half of the total US mobile population consumes mobile media and nearly three out of five tablet owners use their device to consume news.

Los Angeles Claims Its Place on Art World Map

2011-10-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

Frederick Eversley's untitled work, left, and "Red Concave Circle" by De Wain Valentine, right, at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, part of the massive Pacific Standard Time art festival.

LOS ANGELES — For the next six months, Southern California will be awash in celebrations of Southern California art: close to 170 separate exhibitions at 130 museums and galleries stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time, as this festival is known, is an exhaustive accounting of the birth of the Los Angeles-area art scene, but it is also a statement of self-affirmation by a region that, at times, appears to feel underappreciated as a serious culture center.
This multi-museum event, in all of its Los Angeles-like sprawl, suggests a bit of overcompensation from a city that has long been overshadowed by the New York art establishment, a place that — arguably unfairly — still suffers from a reputation of being more about tinsel than about serious art, and where interest in culture starts and ends with movie grosses and who is on the cover of Vanity Fair.
“It’s corny,” said Dave Hickey, an art critic and a professor in the art and art history department at the University of New Mexico. “It’s the sort of thing that Denver would do. They would do Mountain Standard Time. It is ’50s boosterish, and I would argue largely unnecessary.”
Still, for many Los Angeles artists and critics, this exhibition is a long-needed accounting of the emergence of the region as an art capital in the same league as New York, Berlin and London. Indeed, Los Angeles these days has more than its share of ambitious museums, adventurous art galleries, wealthy collectors, top-notch art schools and — perhaps most important — young artists drawn here by relatively cheap rents, abundant light and an atmosphere that encourages experimentation.
“Since 1980 the art world has become global — New York is not the epicenter,” said Peter Plagens, a painter and essayist who has worked extensively in Southern California and who was here for some of the openings. “So L.A. is kind of doing this joust: ‘We want our art history to be in the books.’ ”

Art Collectors Beginning to Hone in On 19th Century Oriental Rugs

2011-10-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Looking for Specific Types; Demand Exceeds Availability For "Best of the Best"

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --Jan David Winitz, president/founder of Claremont Rug Company, today said that certain types of antique Oriental rugs are experiencing a significant upsurge in attention among collectors and investors.Globally-recognized as the world's leading dealer of art level 19th century carpets from the "Second Golden Age of Persian Weaving," Winitz says that inquiries for the "best of the best" pieces have become a staple of his interaction with clients."The rug world has evolved dramatically since we opened Claremont in 1980," he said. "Collectible antique rugs which were available then were often treated almost as commodities by some dealers. From the beginning, we have been telling our clients that not only were the best of these rugs severely undervalued, but that there was also a much smaller supply than people thought."He also noted that the recent trend of acquiring antique Persian rugs for use as wall art and to place under glass had influenced the market. Fully 60% of Claremont multi-rug transactions now include carpets being bought for display and private collections. The rugs are primarily from the 1800s. Winitz said, "This was the period when the masterful use of vegetal dyes yielded an extraordinarily wide range of exotic hues and when the carpet-centric village life supported the levels of skill and dedication required to produce the finest, most original rugs.

"Throughout the years, our counseling about which weaving groups and styles would become the most collectible has proven extremely accurate," he said. "For instance, during the 1980s, when 19th century Caucasian rugs were little more than an afterthought to the vast majority of dealers, I was stressing that the best of these rugs were among the most art-worthy and fascinating of all rugs. While others were hesitant because of their looser weaves and geometric lines. I was fascinated by their astonishing use of color and their asymmetric, archetypal designs, which were a precursor to much of modern Western abstract art.

"In the last several years, we have put significant energy and resources into seeking out art-level examples of rugs from the Caucasus Mountains through the network of long-time collectors and art aficionados that we buy from. Now, the situation has shifted to the point the demand far exceeds the supply for the finest pieces."

Among classical Persian rugs, Winitz cites the finest antique Persian Laver Kirmans, Hadji Jallili Tabriz and Ferahan Sarouks as the styles he predicted would take on the central position they are reaching today.

Claremont began establishing "waiting lists" for the rarest rugs three years ago and has continued the practice. When especially rare new acquisitions arrive, Winitz first offers them to clients on the wait lists. "When we release highly collectible pieces," said Winitz, the author of The Guide to Purchasing an Oriental Rug, "we immediately receive inquiries from potential buyers who view them electronically over the Internet or in emails. Significantly more than 50% of sales are now conducted without our client ever visiting the Gallery."

Winitz also cited ten collectors (seven domestic and three international) who have acquired more than 100 art level carpets each from Claremont, who have never been to the Gallery. "These men and women are serious, seasoned connoisseurs who understand the dynamic nature of the antique rug market," he said. "They know great rugs and they recognize that the availability of the best pieces is diminishing rapidly."

Rugs at Claremont are valued in the range of $15,000 to more than $500,000 per piece.

With an inventory of more than 4000 19th century antique Oriental rugs, Claremont stands alone among galleries because of the depth and breadth of its collection as well as the provenance of its carpets. Nearly 900 of the rugs are available for viewing on the Gallery's website.

Winitz also expects that the opening of the new galleries devoted to Islamic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York would spark interest in Oriental carpets. The section is scheduled to open on November 1, the culmination of eight years of planning and it has already been featured in an extensive article in the New York Times.

"For the past three decades, we have told our clients that premier 19th century Oriental rugs continued to be significantly undervalued," he said. "In the last several years, an increasingly number of art collectors have literally caught on and we would expect that the attention given to the new Met permanent gallery will serve to further the appreciation of this truly remarkable art form."

The art-level rug market has also benefited from the global economic conditions. Recently, Reuters reported that wealthy families who had "hedged" against the recession with gold were now turning to the art market.

Reuters wrote, "While many of these families have been holding gold for a decade or more, building positions of up to 15 percent of their investment portfolio, they are now taking profits and putting the money to work in the art market," said Andrew Nolan, a director of wealth management and advisory firm Stonehage, that manages $2 billion and advises around 100 families with total wealth of around $30 billion.

"Families were well ahead of the market on gold. A lot of them were sitting on large amounts of gold for quite a while," said Nolan. "They are putting more into the art market, which held up far better through the crisis than a lot of other assets...".

Winitz says it is not coincidental that this occurring. "Aficionados who are also savvy investors understand the principle of precious tangible assets, which the best 19th century Oriental rugs most assuredly are. The fact these pieces also bring an incomparable level of balance and harmony to their homes is an additional attraction, which a bar of gold simply can't accomplish."

David Hockney, Philip Pullman, Kirsty Wark: my favourite masterpiece

2011-10-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

A detail from Still Life, by Francisco Zurbaran, as chosen by Amanda Levete Photograph: Norton Simon Collection/Bridgeman Art Library/The Bridgeman Art Library

What makes a great artwork? We asked some of the great and the good in the art world to pick something they considered to be truly special. Here, our art critic introduces their responses by asking what a masterpiece really is

What is a great work of art? The question asks itself when you leaf through The Art Museum, a colossal new book that gathers together an ideal collection of superlative sculptures, paintings, vases, embroideries and installations. Amanda Renshaw, who conceived this mammoth project, spent 10 years working with other editors to build the book for art publishers Phaidon.
What does it mean to call a work of art "great"? It's a lot stronger than saying you like or even love it, or naming your favourite. Those judgments are subjective. If I say my favourite work of art is the gold funeral mask of Tutankhamun in the Egyptian Museum on Cairo's Tahrir Square, that is just a personal enthusiasm. If I call it the greatest work of art in the world, I am making an objective statement. I am saying it does not matter if you or I like it that much; I am saying it is a work of profundity, power and originality.
As it happens, the mask of that boy king exhibits another quality: beauty. The proportions of his face, the perfection of the gold skin, the clarity of his eyes – all have the harmony and grace we call beautiful. So why not simply say this is one of the world's most beautiful works of art? Because to modern ears this does not sound as serious or impressive as a "great" work.
Five hundred years ago, the highest praise would have been to call something beautiful; that changed in the Romantic age, with the birth of the modern world. The idea that art existed to delight and entertain was shunned by the composer Beethoven, the poet Coleridge, and the artist Goya, to name just a few Romantic radicals. And, essentially, we still see art as they did: as an arduously serious and dangerous imaginative adventure, driven by emotional forces that lead the artist to the very limits of representation and beyond.

Philip Pullman, Author
Claude Monet's The Four Trees (1891)

For a work to be great, I think it must signify influence as well as have a self-contained perfection of form. I can only talk about western art because, while I can see beauty in, say, a Benin bronze, I have no idea whether it was influential in its own culture, or typical, or what.
So I've chosen a painting by Monet, who changed the way painters in the west saw and depicted light, and light is the subject of every representational painting: light falling on flesh, on stone, on cloth, on water. The Four Trees, one of a series of paintings of this stretch of the river Epte, is great because it conveys the sense of a bright morning with freshness and brilliance (the delicious golden light on the curve of trees in the distance); and because it's formally thrilling (I pity anyone who didn't feel a shock of delight at seeing that grid of dark lavenders over pale blue and gold); and because it's part of impressionism's great project of teaching the 20th century a new way of seeing.

Amanda Levete, Architect
Francisco de Zurbarán's Still Life

The depth of understanding and observation in this work is extraordinary. The artist creates a kind of hyper-reality: when I see a bumpy, thick-skinned lemon at a stall, I feel I am looking at an image from this painting. Great art stops us in our tracks, gives us an insight into reality, makes us think, helps us understand the structure of things. That a painting can do this with the humble lemon, some oranges, a rose and a cup of water is testament to its power and greatness. How I would love to be able to look at such a work every day, to discover another nuance, to be reminded that there is sublime beauty in the ordinary.

David Hockney, Artist
Picasso's Mother and Child (First Steps) (1943)

There's not much art I don't like, although I am indifferent to some (indeed, quite a lot) today. I could say the Fra Angelicos in San Marco in Florence are my favourite works, or Rembrandt's great drawing, in the British Museum, of a family teaching a child to walk. But why not Picasso's treatment of that same subject, which is only dealt with by the greatest artists?
It is a totally universal subject that everybody has experienced and witnessed. Today, thousands of depictions will be made of this all over the world, most with a camera: uncle Charlie teaching little Edna to walk, photographed by mum. But most will not be able to show us what Picasso does: the child, both thrilled and frightened; the anxious mother, whose supple hands clasp the child's still awkward fingers. Cubism allows him to give us that detail. In great works of art, form and content are one. It is a wonderful, touching work. Great stuff. There are not many great paintings on this subject.

Tim Marlow, Art historian, director of exhibitions at White Cube
Hans Holbein's Dead Christ (1521)

This stark, life-sized image of Christ in the tomb is one of the great depictions of death and decay in western art. It's as if you are peering into a sarcophagus set into the wall. The vicious and visceral wounds are surrounded by gangrenous flesh, and the body is beginning to decompose towards the point of putrefaction.
It's a painting that seems to assault the nose as much as the eyes, a pathological vision that famously caused the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky to remark that it "could rob a man of his faith". Aside from Christ's extended, goitrous jaw, the other astonishing feature is that Holbein was not yet 25 years old when he painted it.

Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive, Royal Academy
Paintings of the Italian Renaissance

When I received Phaidon's huge, new, tombstone venture which commemorates all the greatest works of art from all round the world, I lugged it to the table in order to examine its coverage of the Italian Renaissance. There are whole page spreads devoted to Piero della Francesca, Botticelli and Mantegna, including some of the greatest works of art in the world. What makes them great? I haven't lost the ideas explored by 19th-century art historian Jacob Burckhardt in the – that great works have the capacity to encapsulate ideas about the world. They will have a quality of ethereal and spiritual poetry (as in the works of Botticelli); or a quality of intelligent, mathematical authority (Piero); or a sense of the passing of time and of the culture of the past (Mantegna). Great works must be transcendent: that is, the artists are striving to communicate to their own age, but in a language understandable visually to other ages that do not share the same values.

Cornelia Parker, Sculptor
Bernd and Hilla Becher's Water Towers (1988)

Great artists make you look at the world differently. Think of Monet with his haystacks, or Turner with his sunsets: once you've seen their paintings, you can never look at those things in the same way. That's exactly what Bernd and Hilla Becher have done for industrial architecture. The German artists spent decades travelling around, obsessively cataloguing those grim, ubiquitous structures – gas cooling towers, pitheads, pylons – that most of us think of as ugly. In the Bechers' work, they become like people, each with their own character.
I can't look at any such structures in real life without thinking of their photographs. I have several pinned to the walls of my studio. As a sculptor, I'm fascinated by their patterns and rhythms, their shape and form. The best works of art allows space for the viewer to bring their own interpretation. I remember once being at the Venice Biennale, when the Bechers were representing Germany. I was struck by the simplicity and beautiful framing of their work. It made me laugh and it made me cry.

Isaac Julien, Artist
Cindy Sherman's Untitled 153 (1985)

This untitled photograph by Cindy Sherman is a disturbing, arresting work. It looks like a crime scene or something from a film by David Lynch. Is it a picture of a dead woman, or is it a film still? She is not just simply there. And, by always using herself as a subject, Sherman complicates things further. Photographed over the decades, in "pictures" that are never titled and so never able to take on a fixed meaning, her ever-changing self has become an artwork in itself. She's a celebrity, yet her work is a critique on the construct of celebrity.
In fact, her pictures pose so many questions, they end up questioning the entire medium. It is astonishing to be able to do that, to be able to unfix meaning; to go beyond your moment. That's what marks out great art: it should transcend its time and genre.

Julia Peyton-Jones, Co-director, Serpentine gallery
Gerhard Richter's Abstract Painting (1995)

My question is: what makes a great artist? An artist's reputation rests beyond a single work, and a great artist's reputation never rests on a single work. In the current Gerhard Richter show at the Tate, you know you're in the presence of greatness in the first room.
I chose this painting, but I could have chosen almost any work in the show. The sheer range shows not only an astonishing level of enquiry, but also a relentless exploring: Richter is always pushing his own boundaries.
In his abstract paintings, he builds up the surface with a visceral sensuality, in the abstract expressionist tradition. The surfaces are ever varying and complex: a densely layered experience of colour, form, texture. You're drawn into the paintings and you can see for ever: there are islands there, your eye is brought in and out of focus. You feel this depth as much as you see it. In life, it's very rare to stand somewhere and accept absolutely, the mind not clouding with questions.
Time and time again, I've found myself looking at the show with a sense of wonder. It contains only works I already knew, yet I'm seeing them with a new emphasis, a new appreciation. I knew he was good, great even. But this is something of a different order.

Kristin Scott Thomas, Actor
Gustav Caillebotte's Paris Street: Rainy Day (1877)

The brilliant thing about this picture is its composition. The sharp division created by the lamppost makes it like a scene from a film. It throws you into Haussmann's Paris with its wide boulevards and grand buildings.
On the right, a couple walk towards us at a clip. His coat flaps open as if he'd just enjoyed a good lunch. Her arm is linked through his as they watch something beyond the lamppost that surprises him and amuses her but that we cannot see. On the other side of the black post, life is slower, lonelier and wet.
The slippery shining cobbles give me cold toes, and I can smell the damp wool from all those coats. It's isn't a cold day, but a miserable, rainy late autumn afternoon. I feel a twinge of envy as I think about this comfortable, affectionate couple going home to tea and a warm fire. Don't we all feel like that sometimes?

Edmund de Waal, Ceramicist and author
Hans Memling's The Donne Triptych (1478)

This beautiful and clever work was commissioned by a Welshman living in Calais from an artist in Bruges: an example of the internationalism of 15th-century art. I love its formality. The figures [in the detail shown] seem suspended in these almost abstracted spaces. There are landscapes beyond, a winding river and a mill, a stray peacock, a slightly mordant servant hidden behind a pillar. And the group of Madonna and very cheerful Christ child, angels and saints, with Sir John Donne of Kidwelly, his wife and daughter, all held below a red canopy as rich as a Barnett Newman stripe.

Ed Vaizey, Culture minister
Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)

I've been fascinated by this painting ever since I came across it as a child in a book. The thing I love is the mirror. You're right there with the couple having their portrait painted, and you can see the workings of the scene reflected in it. The painting has a lifelike quality: the pattern on the carpet, the brickwork, the way her dress is constructed, the chandelier, the fruit, the window.
I often go to the National Gallery to see this work. To a contemporary eye, it is undramatic. The faces are almost alien, but this mystery allows you to bring your own interpretation to the work. Of course, art historians have gone into enormous detail about who the couple are. To me, they're just a man and a woman in a snapshot of their time.

Kirsty Wark, Broadcaster
Diego Velázquez's An Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618)

Lots of things make a work of art great but sometimes it's just sheer genius. That's the case with this work by Velázquez. And he wasn't even 20 when he painted it. We don't know the full story, but I would assume Velázquez knew the woman well because he has captured her so beautifully. What is she thinking?
I love the way Velázquez plays with with light, having it pick out kitchen utensils: the shadow of the knife on the white dish, the way the shape of the egg in her hand echoes the shape of the wooden spoon. And you can almost feel that melon. Notice, too, the way the woman has put the eggs in one after the other: the egg on the left is more formed than the one on the right.
When I look at the painting, which hangs in the Scottish National Gallery, I see the joy of cooking and the joy of the kitchen. It gives you so many clues about the way people lived and how little has changed.
Interviews by Dale Berning, Andrew Gilchrist, Theresa Malone and Laura Barnett

Art and money: the sharks behind the showpieces

2011-10-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

By transforming filthy lucre into art, rich American financiers such as Steven Cohen earn more prestige than any yacht could buy

Something fishy ... Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991). Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Following on from yesterday's ruminations on art and money, it might be fun to look at the career of Steven Cohen, owner of Damien Hirst's shark, in more detail.
Cohen leapt up the ranks of contemporary art collectors not just because he bought this iconic work of the late 20th century, but because he arranged to lend it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I was amazed to accidentally come across The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living in this august museum. The timeworn leathery body of the tiger shark hung in its blue liquid near a window overlooking leafy Central Park.
In having his catch displayed in America's greatest art museum, Cohen achieved something even Charles Saatchi never has. So what makes Cohen so good at swimming in the waters of high culture? The answer may tell us something about how the art world works.
Cohen put some works from his art collection, then valued at £320m, on view at Sotheby's in New York in 2009. They were not for sale, and they exuded an aura of immense cultural – as well as economic – capital: no pickled sharks here, but paintings by Van Gogh, De Kooning and Picasso. As with his loan to the Met, he once again displayed a command of the heights of art.
In 2010 he gave an interview to Vanity Fair. In it, we learn that he lives in a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is America's 36th richest man. At the time, reported Vanity Fair, there were

persistent rumors that Cohen's fund, SAC Capital – one of the biggest movers of the stock market in the world; responsible, in better days, for as much as 3% of all trading on the New York Stock Exchange – is engaged in illegal information-gathering, rumors which have been stoked anew by a federal crackdown on another hedge fund, the Galleon Group, which employed several former SAC traders before collapsing.

The rumours persist. This May, the Wall Street Journal reported that "prosecutors are examining trades made in an account overseen by hedge fund titan Steven Cohen that were suggested by two of his former fund managers who have pleaded guilty to insider trading".
These reports caught my eye when I was following up Cohen's art collecting, but regardless of such stories there is a bigger picture. Before the 2008 crash, hedge fund managers were often seen as modern geniuses, yet today they are more likely to be vilified as a symptom of the madness of modern finance. A hedge fund supposedly "hedges its bets" and protects its investors by playing the markets in such a way as to be protected against a downturn. But this apparently cautious image is far from how hedge funds evolved in the 1980s and 90s.
Adept and fast-moving gamblers – Cohen told Vanity Fair that student poker-playing was the inspiration for his career – were lauded in the credit-boom years as the new heroes of global finance for the innovative ways in which they made billions. Today, such non-traditional finance looks like part of a festering problem.
Is art, for a billionaire, just something to do with your money, or is it a way to turn wealth into more satisfying forms of power? By translating wealth into art and culture, art collectors give themselves a stature in society that a big yacht won't buy. The wealthy in America have been good at this for a long time, and their efforts to turn filthy lucre into civilised prestige have given that nation its great museums.
Cohen seems to be bidding to become a great American collector whose appetite for the new is enriched by a respect for art history. As such, he is on his way to a stately fame. Or is he? That entire model of capitalism – the one where it works – is shuddering and juddering, and many blame wacky financial inventions such as hedge funds for getting us into this mess. If the money machine breaks, so does the art machine, presumably. Or perhaps what breaks is our deference to the idea that money makes taste.
I feel a bit sick. I need to stop thinking about art and money now.

Jay Jopling: Big space, big art, big ego

2011-10-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

The gallerist Jay Jopling is a seemingly unstoppable force in British art. As he opens Europe's largest commercial gallery, Rob Sharp examines his influence

A colossal south London warehouse packed with art worth millions: when White Cube Bermondsey opens today it will become Europe's biggest commercial art gallery – and cement yet another victory for the gallery's mercurial owner.

Jay Jopling, 48, is the founder of London's White Cube gallery empire, which has launched its third outpost in the capital to coincide with the Frieze art fair. It will see thousands of the world's wealthiest collectors flock to London over the next three days. Last night Jopling hosted hundreds of VIPs at the Bermondsey gallery's lavish official opening party – with many luminaries attending a small gathering at his Marylebone home afterwards. This week, London auction houses will sell 25 works by Jopling's most famous artist, Damien Hirst, emphasising the gallerist's standing as one of a small group of elite overlords in London's aggressive commercial art world.

Jopling's buoyancy exists despite widespread economic uncertainty. One London-based art collector said yesterday that some poorer galleries are currently "walking on eggshells" because of the financial downturn. Yet Jopling's mixture of charm, savvy and bullish behaviour will make him this week's most surefire victor.

"Jay told me a long time ago that if he couldn't be the best at what he does he wasn't interested," says White Cube's exhibitions director Tim Marlow. "The Bermondsey gallery is an affirmation of that. He wants a complex of galleries that will allow him to do the best shows with the best possible artists."

Jopling – "JJ" to his friends – is recognisable by his signature thick-framed specs and tailormade black suit and crisp white shirt. He exudes success, which creates the impression that his enterprises cannot fail – a useful trait in the tempestuous art world.

Throughout his career he has hit headlines – not least because of high-profile marriage to the artist Sam Taylor-Wood and short-lived fling with singer Lily Allen – along with a knack for representing attention-grabbing artists such as Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers, expanding while others contract through two financial downturns over the past 20 years.

Marlow says that part of his success is that White Cube owns all of its properties – alongside Bermondsey, White Cube has spaces in the West End enclave of St James's and once-edgy, now commercialised Hoxton – meaning Jopling is in little debt. The man himself rarely gives interviews, preferring – it seems – to let the stratospheric sums fetched by his artists around the world and the endless photographs of Jopling and his famous friends do the talking.

He has endured three eventful decades in the art world. The son of Tory baron Michael, he became interested in art as a teenager, reading Gilbert and George's 1974 book Dark Shadow in assembly while a pupil at Eton. "He genuinely loves art," says cultural commentator Michael Bracewell. "I think he's genuinely passionate about it". He studied art history at Edinburgh University and when there flew to New York to convince artists including Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat to participate in a charity auction. He reportedly began selling fire extinguishers as a sideline, demonstrating their effectiveness by setting fire to his sleeve.

When he moved to London in the 1980s, he became inextricably linked with the rising in-crowd of Young British Artists (YBAs). He dated Californian fashion designer Maia Norman, who introduced him to Damien Hirst, with whom she now has three children. Jopling and Norman hosted legendary dinner parties at Jopling's flat, attended by the likes of YBA Marc Quinn, whom like Hirst, Jopling now represents. Quinn and Hirst later provided Jopling with two of his most lucrative sales: Hirst's shark The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and Quinn's sculpture of his head created from his own frozen blood, Self.

"Every cultural epoch throws up a figure who becomes a cultural ambassador for those times," adds Bracewell. "Jay came along in the 1980s and related to a new generation of artists. I met him when I was still working for the British Council and the art world was still incredibly academic. And here was this charming and smooth operator."

Jopling founded his first London gallery, White Cube, in St James's in 1993. He named it after an influential collection of essays by Irish author and artist Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: Ideologies of the Gallery Space, which emphasised that the blank walls of modern galleries had become "the archetypal image of 20th-century art". According to Melanie Gerlis, art market editor of The Art Newspaper, Jopling's "business-like" approach appealed to bankers with loose wallets "who wanted to put art on bare walls". "He's astute, he runs galleries like a business, not a cottage industry," she says. This sentiment continued through White Cube's expansion. Jopling founded his Hoxton gallery in 2000. A fourth is planned in Hong Kong early next year.

Art buyers put his success down to his polish. "He's very charming," notes collector Kenny Schacter. "He didn't get to where he is without being a very effective communicator."

He also has a reputation for looking after his artists. "He's great, he's got good energy, and he works with creatives across different generations throughout the process," says the Serpentine Gallery's co-director Hans-Ulrich Obrist. "He does get a kick out of doing unusual things and doing them with absolute conviction," adds sculptor Antony Gormley, whom Jopling represents. "You know he wants to push what's possible, and understands an artist's interest in that, as well as being a very good businessman. That's a very rare combination". Gormley says that Jopling supported him with proposals that had "zero commercial prospects" including Gormley's Trafalgar Square One & Other fourth plinth project,.

However others have criticised him for loving life in the limelight. A rare public-relations misstep was his short-lived "holiday romance" with Lily Allen. She was 22 years his junior and the daughter of his close friend, actor Keith Allen – the coupling followed the breakdown of his 11-year marriage to Taylor-Wood, the mother of his two daughters, in 2008. The break-up of Jopling and Taylor-Wood, it is said, was at her instigation. Both sides, diplomatically, refuse to discuss the divorce.

"He's all surface," said one gallery owner in a 2009 interview. "It's very much an operation that arose in the era of art meeting celebrity culture. Will that continue? I'm not sure." However, it is almost impossible to find a dissenting voice when it comes to Jopling – testament, perhaps, to his importance for the art world. His ability to pull off feats worth column inches is indisputable. "He moved artists from the arts pages to the news pages," critic David Lee has said. "After all, who cares what the critics think?" Some estimates put his fortune at £100m, though secrecy surrounds his exact wealth.

The proof, as ever, will be in his sales. As well as Bermondsey's first major exhibition, "Structure & Absence", the new gallery will exhibit work by photographic artist Andreas Gursky and Damien Hirst this week. Neither of which has a reputation of failing to fetch huge sums, and Hirst's performance at auction will be watched closely. "The art market is universal," concluded Marlow. "For that reason it is resilient. We have had momentum over the last 20 years and there's no reason to think at the moment that this will not continue."

Six galleries that shook the world

The Saatchi Gallery (UK)

Opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 to show his private collection to the public, the gallery currently sits in Chelsea. The comprehensive collection incorporates some of the formative pieces of the Young British Artist movement. Frequently, Saatchi buys work from relative unknowns and his endorsement is still seen as a launch-pad for artists.

The Gagosian Galleries (Worldwide)

One of the most important figures in contemporary art, the American dealer Larry Gagosian has opened galleries in New York, London, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva and Hong Kong. The original is the Los Angeles outpost, which opened in 1979 and has exhibited Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman.

The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture (Russia)

Dasha Zhukova – one-time editor in chief of Pop magazine and partner of Roman Abramovich – opened The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow in 2008. Based in the famous Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, it has become one of the country's most famous art spots.

The Goodman Gallery (South Africa)

One of the pioneering forces behind the seminal "Art Against Apartheid" exhibition in 1985, the Goodman Gallery has been a go-to destination for new African art since 1966, when it was set up by Linda Goodman (now Givon). It has three sites: two in Johannesburg and one in Cape Town.

50 Moganshan Road (China)

The hub of Shanghai's vibrant art scene is this collection of once-deserted warehouses near Suzhou Creek in the north of the city. As well as housing various galleries – including the famous ShangART, run by the Swiss-born Lorenz Helbling, and Eastlink, the space is also home to several top-flight artists such as Zhou Tiehai and Ding Yi.

The Guggenheim (Spain)

Designed by Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim in Bilbao is one of the most famous pieces of contemporary architecture in the world. Part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, it features a comprehensive collection of contemporary Spanish and international art, as well as high-profile visiting exhibitions.

Merry Christmas to all

2010-12-24T09:21:00.000-08:00

Screen Saver (Merry Christmas)

2010-12-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

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2010-12-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

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Heat, mud and rock 'n roll

2010-06-11T13:11:00.001-07:00

Music, art and a new appreciation for showers has brought me into day two of the ‘roo. As the somewhat pre-weekend day to prepare for what’s to come, Thursday allows campers to get settled while getting to know the scene and friendly neighbors.

It all began with a line of traffic as far as the eye can see through cow fields and farmland. Through the long line, roo-goers celebrated day one with smiles and cheers, excited for the weekend ahead.

At Bonnaroo there is something for everyone, whether you want to meditate at 6 a.m. or stay up until the dawn hours jamming to LCD Soundsystem (scheduled to rock out until 4 a.m. Saturday morning). So many aspects of the festival can lead the avid wanderer dizzy with options. Get a hair wash with a runway show at the Garnier Fruitis tent? Join a lively drum circle? Cool down on a slip-n-slide or in the giant mushroom fountain? (Which, by the way, is rumored to turn red while GWAR plays Saturday night.)

Music, of course, is the main objective. An incense of pot smoke floats through the venue while hoola-hooping hippies move to the tunes, which on Thursday included Local Natives, Miike Snow, Neon Indian, The Dodos, The Temper Trap and The XX, among many other excellent acts.

Here We Go Magic worked “This Tent”, while Diane Birch brought her smooth melodies to the stage of “That Tent”. Hundreds of people packed underneath both, with Magic’s dancy psychedelic tunes, at times comparable to Explosions in the Sky, and Diane’s silky voice lulling fans to enjoy the finesse of her sound in the dusty grass.

The sweltering heat died off as the dusk settled in the hills of a muddy yet community-loving Bonnaroo. The XX finished my day as they packed in thousands under “That Tent”. All dressed in black, the British band brought with them a somewhat sullen presence with a good beat, and a great head-bopping following.
Just before The XX took the stage, fans sang along to the smooth yet upbeat tunes of The Temper Trap, saving the crowd-pleasing favorite, “Sweet Disposition”, for one of the final songs.

While some decided to dance to the music in their head (more like headphones) in the Silent Disco, others hit the comedy tent or the cinema to check out the classic Jaws 3 in the final hours.

Today will be long, but enjoyable, starting with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Tenacious D, She & Him, Les Claypool, among so many others, ending with The Flaming Lips performing Dark Side of the Moon and LCD Soundsystem.

Gen X author revamps Roots

2010-06-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

: Roots is launching a collaboration with Douglas Coupland on a limited-edition collection. (CNW Group/Douglas Coupland)

Roots has teamed up with best-selling Canadian author Douglas Coupland to design a limited-edition clothing line that pays tribute to Canada's telecommunications systems.
Coupland, best known for his novels Generation X and Microserfs, said the partnership is an extension of his life-long exploration of what it means to be Canadian.
"This partnership with Roots is an amazing opportunity to keep that dialogue going with an even wider, more diverse audience," he said in a release.
The "Canada Goes Electric" collection will feature clothes, accessories, leather good, furniture and art.
In a video posted on the line's website, Coupland said his inspiration was Canada's enthusiasm for the electric and communication innovations of the 1950s and 1960s.
"It was just this period where everyone said 'Wow, look what this TV set can do, look what that thing can do, let's name it.' So instead of birch bark and moose and Mounties and all that stuff, I thought 'Let's take that vision of the future forward.'
"What really links Canadians together is that we're all far apart," he said.
Coupland was born on a Canadian Air Force base in Germany and his family later settled in Vancouver.
Though he is internationally known for his 13 novels, he is also a trained visual artist and sculptor who has studied at B.C.'s Emily Carr College of Art and Design as well as design institutes in Italy and Japan.
It is the first time Roots has used an outside designer.
Roots co-founder Don Green said Coupland's designs show "his trademark humour and brilliance."
The pop culture collection includes shirts with TV test patterns bars, circuit boards and pixelated maple leaves and beavers. A patch shows hydro towers and a re-imagined Canadian shield features a moose and bear alongside satellites and communication dishes.
The products will be available on July 8 and carry price tags ranging from
$3.99 to $1,973.

Why Videogames Matter

2010-06-11T13:08:00.001-07:00

They’re big business, but they’re also a big time suck. A gamer makes a grown-up case for the medium.

Pantheon

Blowing a zombie’s head off with a sniper rifle is one of life’s simple pleasures. But is it art? Though videogames have become a massive industry, bringing in tens of billions annually and occupying more than an hour of 8- to 18-year-olds’ time each day, the medium still struggles for recognition from cultural critics. In Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, author and game critic Tom Bissell plumbs his years of button-mashing to make the case that games are, in fact, a legitimate creative medium—but one that needs to be evaluated by its own standards, not those of fiction or cinema.

This is not the writing of a fanboy. Bissell is harshly critical of bad games, and even the bad parts of games he largely admires. Of BioShock, one of the games most commonly regarded as approaching the level of masterpiece, Bissell says he still “would hesitate to call [it]…a legitimate work of art.” For a theory-heavy book that tosses off references to blog posts with titles like “Ludonarrative Dissonance in ‘BioShock,’ ” Extra Lives is surprisingly accessible to nongamers, raising basic questions about what it means to experience art in different media. Bissell recently spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Nick Summers about the way videogames have changed the art of storytelling, as well as new business models for the industry. Excerpts:

BISSELL: I meant that it showed how evocative, how immersive a videogame could be. It showed the really interesting ways that videogame storytelling could work; it could suck you in; and at same time, the dialogue, storytelling, and characterization were just so hideously clumsy. It was evocative of everything a game could do—if someone had taken the time to learn any of the finer points of dramatization.

So it sort of gave game designers permission to be bad?

People say about game stories and characterization and narrative: “It’s just a game. That’s not why we play games.” And in one sense it’s true. It’s very clear that games can’t handle narrative the way a movie does. So my view is, I don’t want game stories to be good the way movie stories are good; I want game stories to be good in the way games tell stories. Game designers for a long time just copied these Hollywood storytelling processes and went nowhere. Now I think we’re starting to see a lot of designers say, “OK, none of that stuff worked. Let’s start again and figure out the ways of storytelling that are native to this medium.”

You write that a lot of progress in game development has been in reaching new heights of realism, but that it might be a dead end—like, if you realistically blow someone’s arm off, no one wants that. Does that mean that a lot of the history of videogame progress has been a waste?

I don’t know. I think that’s a completely open question. I wouldn’t presume to know where the path is going to go. But I do think that as much as I like games like Uncharted 2 that give you this really interactive, cinema-like experience—as much as I like that school of game design, I do think that’s a dead end creatively. As one of the guys in my book, Clint Hocking, says, the best that that kind of game can be is as good as, or slightly better than, a movie. He’s more interested in a game experience that doesn’t feel like a movie. Can there be an experience that surpasses movies? And I think there are a zillion ways to do that game. Realistically, nonrealistically, it’s completely open territory.

In part of your book, you write about public-relations reps who are bigger control freaks than their military counterparts and coders who drive Ferraris. What other crazy aspects about the world of game-making did you want readers to know about?

The secrecy is a big one. I really have no clue what purpose that serves at this point, but everyone in the industry seems to accept it. Also: how smart a lot of these people are, how thoughtful they are about design decisions, and how seriously they take the aesthetics of the medium. The medium does have rules and principles, and they are really interesting.

The subtitle of the book is Why Video Games Matter. Do you think you make your point?

I think games will take their place beside fiction and filmmaking as a standing member of the storytelling alliance—as long as enough people like Clint Hocking stick to their guns and decide to do stuff that satisfies them creatively, more than satisfying their company’s bottom line. If enough people maintain their fierce individuality as artists, the games will be like film [economically]—they’ll have a popular commercial side, and a more interesting artistic side. Although, yeah, it could just become a big toy factory.

Is one problem that games make too much money? That it’s so easy to make millions with crap that no one takes time to make quality stuff?

That doesn’t feel quite right to me. But it is right in the sense that it’d be hard to go before the board of some game company, which publishes, say, Modern Warfare 2—which I think is a creative failure but is the single most profitable entertainment property of all time—and say to the board, “Yeeeah, we want it to be different, because we aren’t feeling fulfilled creatively.”

Should the major studios be funding more artistic, indie-game shops?

That’s probably where a lot of the creative fire and the really formally ambitious stuff will be—in smaller games. I do think there’ll always be a few big triple-A game designers who just aren’t interested in doing Modern Warfare 2. I take it upon myself as a game consumer, and as someone who thinks and writes about games, to support those [more artistic] games at every possible opportunity. We as thoughtful videogame consumers can try to create the world we want to live in, by courting the designers that don’t want to do, you know, Modern Warfare 12.

Braid is a game that you lavish praise on when you write, “Its puzzles are not just difficult but meaningfully difficult”; it “feels like art,” “like a poem.” Yet Braid was created by one guy with a vision. Should the big studios be more like Braid? Can they?

So many studios these days are in such economic trouble that it’s hard to imagine the people in charge wanting more Braids in the world. I just don’t know how that happens. I know [Braid creator] Jon Blow is making another game right now, and I hope it’s hugely successful.

Some big developers that have been renowned for their experimentalism and their interest in innovation now seem to be more interested in making more profitable games. And I think that’s kind of a disaster. For instance, Deadspace 2 is coming out. I loved the first Deadspace. It’s a beautiful game. And I’ve heard that in the second one, they’re trying to correct all of the things “wrong” with the first one—by, for instance, having cut scenes. I hope to God that’s not true. If someone looks at a game as beautiful and heart-poundingly intense as Deadspace and figures out ways to “fix” it because it wasn’t commercially successful, I don’t think there’s any hope at all for any of us.

Reception opens Galins’ show today

2010-06-11T13:05:00.001-07:00

Mirror Lake .

Works by local artists Chris and Arnold Galin go on display today opening with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Siena Arts Gallery, 405 W. Dominick St.
Galin has developed a photographic technique, which he calls "Nature in Motion," through the use of panning, zooming, tilting and other camera techniques. All of the "special effects" are performed during the shooting. He has won awards at the Utica Art Association Tri County Show, Vineyard Art Gallery in Syracuse, Munson Williams Proctor in Utica, and Cooperstown Art Association.
Chris Galin is experimenting with photographing glass objects and colored bottles, creating a photograph that renders the original "object" abstract. She wants the viewer of her work to question exactly what they are seeing and to ponder how the resulting image was created. She began to photograph flowers behind glass pieces allowing the prisms and designs of the glass to deconstruct the flowers into abstract colors and patterns. She has also incorporated slide montages into her photography. Her work is exhibited in venues around central New York and has received many awards including Outstanding Artistic Achievement from CNYAC Annual Art Exhibition.
The Galins’ images are marketed under the business Creative Images, and are available in many forms including prints, images on tile and on glass. Their photographs have been exhibited in art galleries in Delmar, Skaneateles and Syracuse. This is their first showing in Rome.
Gallery owners Michael Brown and Kenneth Pace will host today’s reception. Refreshments will be served.
The exhibit will continue through July 18.Gallery hours are 4-8 p.m. Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and 1-6 p.m. Sundays.
The gallery specializes in the promotion of Central NY artists. Artists are encouraged to attend openings and submit their work for consideration. The owners will take appointments at 888-485-6270.

SFist Tonight

2010-06-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

ART I: Muni Diaries presents Outbound, featuring a group mixed media exhibition portraying SF's beloved public transit in the form of paintings, graffiti, and more. There will also be a storytelling tent set up outside, so bring a story to tell! 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. // Secession Art and Design (3361 Mission St) // free
ART II: SF Arts Commission launches the Chinatown Art in Storefronts series, featuring an art walk, live music by Diskarte Namin and the San Francisco Pacific Chinese Folk Music Group, with light refreshments provided by local restaurants Z&Y, Four Seas, and Charles Phan of the Slanted Door (who grew up in Chinatown), as well as tea tasting provided by Vital Tealeaf and drinks donated by Metromint and Hansen's.
5 to 7 p.m. // Wentworth Alley (Wasington St and Grant Ave) (free)
FILM: The 6th annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival opens tonight with their "Romantic Resonance" series screening, featuring "yearning hands, ardent minds and hearts aching with diatonic frequency rocksteady to the beat of new beginnings." The screening will be followed by a Q&A panel with the filmmakers, and there's also an opening night party at Medjool at 10:30.

Buenaventura Press closes its doors

2010-06-11T13:02:00.001-07:00

Kramers Ergot #7 Some sad news today out of Oakland ... Alvin Buenaventura announced today that he shut down his company, Buenaventura Press, in January.
"I was forced to let go of the dedicated employees who had worked so tirelessly for so little money in order to create art that we all believed in," Buenaventura posted on Blog Flume earlier today. "This meant that I had to abandon all current and future projects and discontinue sales and distribution. I deeply regret having to take these actions, but the press experienced a devastating financial blow that made it impossible to continue. (I will release more details about this problem in the future.)"
Robot 6's Sean T. Collins reached out to Buenaventura today, and he added that the situation comes down to a single problem that is legal in nature.
Buenaventura Press published many independent comics, high-end anthologies, graphic novelsand prints by creators like Ron Rege Jr, Ted May, Kevin Huizenga, Eric Haven, Lisa Hanawalt and Matt Furie. Back in 2008 they received a lot of attention when they published the massive Kramers Ergot 7, an "olympic-sized" anthology that included contributions from Matt Groening, Daniel Clowes, Seth, Gabrielle Bell and many more. They also published Comic Art Magazine.

Robert Crumb's 'Genesis' Exhibit Comes to Portland [Pics]

2010-06-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

"The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis," a touring exhibit of original art from Robert Crumb's 224-page graphic retelling of the first book of the Bible, has finally arrived in the Northwest comics mecca of Portland, Oregon at the Portland Art Museum where it will be on display until September 19th, and local comics artists like Steve Lieber, Erika Moen, Jesse Reklaw, and Craig Thompson will be on hand every Sunday from 2-4 pm to either discuss his work with patrons or demonstrate their own.

"The Book of Genesis Illustrated" stirred up some controversy after it was first published in 2009, with some complaining that the visualization of the religious text (and the incest, rape, and murder within in its pages) sensationalized its R-rated elements. Despite Crumb's well-deserved reputation as a counterculture satirist, however, "Genesis" is unblinkingly faithful to the original text. It was, as he explains in a hand-lettered introduction blown up to something like 8 feet tall on a museum wall, "a straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes."

It's easy to see how the exhibit of 207 identically-sized black and white pages could have been a sterile, monotonous affair, but instead it is a visual delight, alternating plain white walls with vivid, dramatic shades of red, green and blue, and oval portraits of Biblical characters hung like cameo pins over the art. "I broke it up into chunks and put some color behind it, and gave it a chance to flow," said Bruce Guenther, the chief curator of the Portland Art Museum and Crumb.

Check out more pictures from the exhibit after the jump.

A life-sized cut-out of Crumb greets museum-goers at the entrance to the exhibit.

Cain and Abel as cameos.

Crumbs hangs with museum patrons.

Crumb's source materials and photo references.

A sketch of God, as he appeared to Crumb in a dream.

More source materials and photoreference, particularly of camels.

Skinny cows.

The evening festivities to celebrate opening night, complete with oversized Crumb characters.

'Wikipedia says fashion designer is not an artist'

2010-06-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Mumbai: The income-tax (I-T) department insists that fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani is not an artist and to support its claim it relies on Wikipedia -- a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Submitting definitions of the words design, art and artist, the I-T department's advocate Anamika Malhotra told the court that "design" was applicable to applied arts and not fine arts or performing arts. "An artist under section 80RR of the Finance Act, 1969, refers to fine arts and not applied arts," Malhotra told the Bombay high court on Friday.
Justice DY Chandrachud, however, asked, "How reliable is Wikipedia? Isn't it subject to user modification?" Tahiliani was seeking a tax exemption under section 80RR on his declared taxable income of Rs83.90 lakh in his returns submitted to the IT department on October 31, 2000.
Arguing further, Malhotra said, "Design itself is more about technicality than art. A fashion designer designs, he does not perform an art."
The court asked whether a person like Bhanu Athaiya, the first Indian to win an Academy award for costume designing for the film Gandhi, would still be entitled to an exemption even though it was for a Hollywood film?
Tahiliani's counsel argued that the person who stitches a dress is not an artist, but the one who conceptualises it certainly is.
He cited the definition of an artist from Webster's dictionary and a Sanskrit text where vastra-gopan (dress designing) was enlisted among 64 types of kala (art) and not vidya (science).
The court will pass an order in the case on June 14.

Indian artist's work gets $3.5M Cdn at auction

2010-06-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

A Christie's employee stands next to Indian artist Syed Haider Raza's canvas Saurashtra in London in June. The large-scale painting sold for nearly $3.5 million Cdn Thursday, setting a sales record for a contemporary Indian artwork.

A brilliantly coloured abstract canvas by Indian-born artist Syed Haider Raza has set a new record for the sale of a contemporary Indian artwork after fetching nearly $3.5 million Cdn at auction, Christie's has announced.
Saurashtra, a large-scale square canvas Raza created in 1983, sold for the equivalent of about $3.45 million Cdn, including buyer's premium, at a London auction on Thursday evening.
"The painting is one of [the] most ambitious works he has ever created as an homage to his homeland," Yamini Mehta, Christie's London's director of South Asian modern and contemporary art, said before the auction.
"Its size, scale, and expressive brushstroke radiates the brilliant colours of India and has a deeply spiritual subtext."
An unnamed buyer purchased the acrylic-on-canvas work from a French collector, who had acquired it directly from Raza.
Though based in France since the 1950s, 88-year-old Raza continues to maintain strong ties with his homeland.
Though Raza's Saurashtra was the record breaker, Thursday's auction also saw lofty prices paid for other works by South Asian artists, including Francis Newton Souza and Tyeb Mehta.

Outdoor Art Show Along Schuylkill Ends Saturday

2010-06-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia's newest arts festival is fast becoming a hit with artists and visitors. The "Art in the Open" festival, along the Schuylkill River, wraps up Saturday.
Christopher Pierro from New York (right) does what he calls "street art" -- or what some less charitable might call graffiti. He says he's been enjoying his time in Philadelphia, working in the open and talking to interested passersby:
"People always assume that this kind of art is done by hoodlums or done by kids. And here I am, a 40-year-old dad of three, who still does this and does it creatively. So to be able to explain that to people, that part of it to me is important."
New York artist Joe Mangrum (in top photo) created a fantastical sea creature out of sand at the Waterworks:
"I enjoy the process and the people that I meet in the process, and it's bringing something beautiful to people."
Ed Bronstein is part of the creative team that founded Art in the Open:
"We told them in them in advance that if they didn't like people they shouldn't apply to this. But these are all really eager to engage, and it's been fascinating."
Art in the Open wraps up Saturday along the Schuylkill, between the Waterworks and Bartram's Garden.

Darien Art Show draws a crowd for large exhibit

2010-06-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

(Douglas Cavers photo)

The Darien Arts Center celebrated its 52nd annual Art Show and Sale one of its largest exhibits at its Town Hall space. Lesley Sandison, lead organizer of the Art Show, called it a great success. “It brings all ages together to celebrate the arts,” she said.
The show, which opened Saturday features 317 pieces of artwork, submitted this year, Sandison noted, a significant increase from last year.
Orthodontist David Osherow sponsored the student awards. Nancy McTague-Stock judged student art submissions.
High school first prizes were awarded to Eric Kanigan for photography, Kelsey Harrison for sculpture/ceramics and Joe Maccarone for other media.
Also winning first prizes were students Katherine de Haas, George Thompson and Greta Hoffmeister.
Mackenzie Jones, a high school senior, received the Darien Art Center Ginny Wright Scholarship, a full four-year scholarship to study art. She received the scholarship based on a portfolio of her work. Her brother won the award three years ago, and Mackenzie was “pleasantly surprised” to win it this year.
She said that travel serves as a large inspiration for her art; the gritty portraits that she took while on a trip to Costa Rica demonstrate this interest.
Mackenzie will attend the University of Vermont next year, and is planning to double major in art and environmental science.
Helen Klisser During judged the adults’ pieces. First place prizewinners were Anne Anderson for oils & acrylics, Robert Carley for color photography, Pierre Lahausssois for black and white photography, Pat Atkin for sculpture, Stan Pastore for watercolor, Lori Glavin for mixed media and Lisa Thoren for pastels, graphics & drawing. Mary Morant won best in show with her piece “Chocolate Cake.”
Glavin said that she liked “the mixture between kids and adults” that the Art Show displayed. She explained that much of her art is inspired from being a mom and from finding beauty in the everyday objects of domestic life.
Thoren, who will become president of the Darien Arts Center next year, said she was happy to be represented among the towns best artists and to be part of the “phenomenal growth” that is occurring in the Darien Arts Community.
The art from the show will stay open for public viewing until Saturday, June 12.

Home is where the art is

2010-06-11T12:52:00.001-07:00

A writer often needs to get away — to a sanctuary where the calm allows ideas to emerge from their depths and assume the form of a story or a poem. To a visual artist, a residency provides this space, says sculptor Andrew Connelly, a professor at the California State University, Sacramento.
The month Connelly spent as resident artist at the Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi, helped him produce an enormous amount of work in a short time. One of his installations will be on display at the Shridharni Gallery from June 15 in a show with Amitesh Verma.
“I spent most of my time at the Sanskriti grounds making installations. Later, I would venture out into the city to view exhibitions, musical performances and art festivals,” he recalls.
For artists of the Khoj Peers Residency 2010, too, the sights, sounds and smells of Delhi — the city they were staying in — worked as a muse.
NIFT graduate Agat Sharma, 26, one of the five artists at the residency, has explored the link between consumerism and big-city superficial sentiments. In his installation, the idea takes the contours of a cosmetic cream. “I feel ‘squeeze’ is a word from the city. How about tubes that squeeze out ready-to-use empathy or squishing ‘jealousy re-dux cream’ on the palm, mixing it with ‘liquid guilt’, and applying it on the face. Only to wash it off later?” he asks.
Neha Thakar, from MS University, Baroda, wants to depict the ephemeral nature of life through air, smell and ice. “Haldi, chilli and mogra at the Khari Baoli spice market inspired me to create a smell-pump installation.”
Bhavin Mistry, 26, has earlier represented the theme of claustrophobia in his drawings. He now creates a cloak — with essentials to survive in a big city. Think food sachets, toothpaste, a clothes hanger and a sleeping bag.
Delhi’s maze of power structures has tripped over Rabindra Patra. The 27-year-old Fine Arts graduate from Dhauli College, Bhubaneswar, repaired electronics goods before his arts foray. His installation draws on his erstwhile vocation. “The power structures which emerge in negotiating a big city are like a sculpture with resistance wires.”
Graphic novelist Sajjad Malik’s animation film on the Kashmir conflict is seen through the eyes of a child playing hopscotch and an undulating line drawn through its margins which turns into barbed wire. “The line is a metaphor for anxiety and the playful quality of hopscotch,” says Latika Gupta, a curator at Khoj.
For the four positions available at the Bengaluru Artist Residency One’ (BAR1) Collective, run by Bangalore’s artist community, the organisers get more than 100 applications every year, says founder-artist Surekha. “Emerging artists perceive it as a non-competitive space to incubate novel ideas.”

Sunil Sethi: Two sides of Tagore's art

2010-06-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

An inveterate traveller all his life, the poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1930 visited Dartington Hall, a 1,200-acre estate in Devon established by his long-standing Anglo-American camp followers Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst as a Santiniketan-type institution in England. The hosts and their guest had an old association: in the 1920s Elmhirst, an agricultural economist from Cornell, had been invited by Tagore to run his farm project near Santiniketan as an experiment in rural reconstruction; later, he acted as Tagore’s personal secretary on his travels in China, Japan and Argentina. Tagore was instrumental in persuading Elmhirst (who married the daughter of American railroad millionaire and financier William C Whitney) to buy the Dartington Hall estate in 1925.
Revisiting Dartington in 1930, the 69-year-old poet asked for some bottles of coloured ink and, according to Elmhirst’s diaries, “when these arrived, there began to emerge a series of paintings and sketches”. A rare cache of 11 of these drawings are the highlight of Sotheby’s auction of South Asian art in London next week. They are mostly works in watercolour, pastel and ink on paper (not large, on average about 15 to 25 inches) and typical of Tagore’s art — mostly lugubrious long heads with limpid staring eyes and a couple of blurry, vaguely impressionist landscapes. Put up for sale by the Dartington Hall Trust, their estimated prices range between $27,600 and $61,500 each (approximately Rs 11 to Rs 25 lakh each). It will be interesting to see how the bidding goes on June 15; if the estimates on Tagore’s art are exceeded, it should come as a welcome revaluation of what was, after all, a sideline in the Nobel laureate’s vast output that chiefly centred on verse, song, drama and prose writings.

As coincidence will have it, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi has a special display of several dozen of Tagore’s artworks on at Jaipur House at the moment. The exhibition occupies a couple of large rooms and commodious corridors but what a poor and inadequately curated show it is! In 12 pages of its small catalogue, Sotheby’s gives us more information about a small slice of Tagore’s life, philosophy and art, together with excellent colour reproductions than India’s premier art gallery run on public funds. The NGMA show is accompanied by the thinnest information — there is no reappraisal of Tagore’s work or worth as an artist 70 years after his death; no scrutiny, in light of the wealth of new Tagorean research, of when and how these were created, or how they came to be acquired; nor any effort to place them in the context of a polymath’s life. On the contrary, it is Sotheby’s sale catalogue that attempts to succinctly answer many questions using multiple sources — Tagore’s own history of Santiniketan, accounts by his biographers, the Dartington Hall archives and critical studies of his art. From these we learn that Tagore began by doodling on his working manuscripts and his career as an artist became an obsession after 1930. “It is thought that in the last 10 years of his life he produced over 2,000 pictures. His work was publicly displayed for the first time in Paris in 1930 followed by an exhibition in Calcutta in 1931.” The present lot of drawings on sale were first exhibited in London’s Calmann gallery in 1938 before being gifted to his friends the Elmhirsts.
Each of the London Tagores carries a detailed description, including an ink portrait that is said to resemble his friend Lady Ranu Mukherjee, wife of the industrialist Biren Mukherjee. Most eloquently, here is Tagore himself on his art: “People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain.” Unfortunately, the NGMA show has taken Tagore’s word to heart for it tells us almost nothing.

Art for the Cash Poor? Hey, That's Us!

2010-06-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

So, we're going to have a table at this weekend's eleventh annual Art for the Cash Poor event! Come say hi at Crane Arts and find out more about this year's Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.

From what well does this sea of affordable work (all under $200) from about 120 artists spring, you ask? Eleven years ago, it was the first-ever public event from InLiquid.

"25 artists had 10 pieces each, all under $50," says Rachel Zimmerman, InLiquid's executive director. "It was free for artists, free for attendees. It was a great way of making a statement."

A NYU/Tisch-trained photographer, Rachel started InLiquid to help promote Philadelphia's visual artists.

"There's this idea that people don't really buy art in Philadelphia," Rachel says. "We need to change that. A lot of people see New York as a place to go in general when they shop. [Philadelphia's] most high-end boutiques are in King of Prussia, not downtown.

"There are major collectors in the city. A big part is educating people that it's OK to buy locally. It's OK that it's not in New York."

As an arts community, Rachel says, "we talk about visitorship and ticket sales, but we never talk about art sales. How do you reimagine it and get more buy-in? There's not a lot of arts press in Philadelphia. When something gets acknowledged [elsewhere] people take it more seriously."

Art for the Cash Poor has emerged as a social event as well, with visual artists, art buyers, musicians (six bands are performing this year), neighborhood residents, and arts fans from throughout the region catching up over the weekend. Rachel says that the social aspect also lowers perceived barriers to buying art.

"It's not so hard to buy art. It's not that scary." And with prices under $200, Rachel says, "It's not a frightening amount of money."

Part of the motivation for Art for the Cash Poor was Rachel's own experience with the challenge of selling work.

"I was so tired of throwing away photos. I do a lot of palladium and platinum prints. Instead of these things sitting in a box, maybe somebody would want them."

But this isn't an inventory of cast-offs. The likes of fiber artist Amy Orr, Space 1026 member Justin Myer Staller, and glass artist Marina Borker will peddle original works. Rachel wants you to come (and we want you to hang out with us), and also take your involvement in the arts to a new level.

"We want people to buy artwork, put it in their homes, and give it a good place to live."

Work of Art' on Bravo: What did the critics think?

2010-06-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

The new reality show "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" arrived on Bravo this week on a cloud of publicity and advance buzz. It no doubt helped that the show comes with a bona fide celebrity in the form of executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker, who put in a brief appearance in the first installment on Wednesday.
Bravo is the cable station that originally aired "Project Runway," which has since moved to Lifetime. "Work of Art" hews closely to the "Runway" formula -- it features a benevolent but firm-handed mentor figure in the form of auction-house big-wig Simon de Pury, and a svelte model-host in the form of socialite China Chow.
"Work of Art" brings together 14 contestants whose artistic abilities range from amateur to professional. Throughout the season, they will be tasked with creating original works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture and photography.
In each episode, one contestant is sent packing to the sound of the show's signature catch phrase: "Your work of art didn't work for us."
The judges for the show include critic Jerry Saltz and gallerists Bill Powers and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. The winner will get his or her own solo show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art plus a $100,000 cash prize.
While it's still too early to say if "Work of Art" will gain a cult-like following on a par with "Project Runway," critics are already chiming in with their assessments of the cable series. (Tweeters have also been busy posting their reactions.) A sampling of some of the major reviewers shows a diversity of opinions, ranging from admiration to dismissal.

Christopher Knight of the L.A. Times was less than impressed with "Work of Art," writing that the show "isn't as much bad as merely dull. Bad we could love; dull just sends us wandering off to the fridge, where inner essence consists of leftover meat loaf... Rather than making art, the cast is charged with dramatizing the act of making art."
The New York Times' Ginia Bellafante took a kindlier view of the show, praising the critic Jerry Saltz, who serves as a judge on the show, and complimenting gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn on her looks. "You could more generously analogize the project to traditions of the ancien régime," wrote the reviewer. "Beginning during the reign of Louis XIV, the Prix de Rome awarded money and prestige to artists who proved themselves through similar contests of elimination."
David Hinckley of the New York Daily News called the show "modest fun," adding that "Bravo has been doing reality long enough to understand the importance of a snappy pace, and 'Work of Art' delivers... Now it will be interesting to see if one not-particularly-good artist sticks around because she is a loud character who can be relied on to trash everyone else's creations."
Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker gave the show a "B+" and wrote that it "attempts to make contemporary art palatable to a broad TV audience... That's where the fun of 'Work of Art' resides, in convincing viewers that egomaniacal kooks can make good and bad art, and yes, there are standards besides split-second opinions."

Works by Picasso and Monet drive art sales

2010-06-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

Art lovers are bracing themselves for what could be the most valuable auctions yet held in London, which are estimated to fetch more than £500m.
Masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Edouard Manet are among the highlights of impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales this month that will attract the attention of the world’s collectors.

The record for a series of sales was set before the global recession in June 2008, when auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s sold £528m worth of art.
The market slumped after that, only to bounce back strongly. In February, a bronze sculpture by Alberto Giacometti fetched £65m at Sotheby’s in London, unexpectedly becoming the most expensive work of art sold at auction.
That record was broken last month when a painting by Picasso sold for £70m at Christie’s New York, and could be threatened again at Christie’s impressionist sale on June 23.
Two paintings – a Blue Period Picasso, “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto” and a water-lily work by Monet, “Nymphéas” – are estimated at £30m-£40m, but may fetch much more, owing to the new-found depth and breadth of the market, which has the effect of driving prices up on the night.
The sale of the Giacometti in February, for example, saw 10 initial bidders, six of whom continued to bid after the £20m mark, and two of whom fought a fierce battle over the telephone after the £30m mark, taking the bidding past the world record figure.
The same could happen in the forthcoming auctions.
Jussi Pylkkänen, president of Christie’s Europe, Russia and the Middle East, described the Picasso portrait as “one of the most important works of art to be offered at auction in decades”. The painting is being offered by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, a charity established by the composer to promote the arts, culture and heritage in Britain.
The Monet work is another rarity to come on the market. The artist’s water-lily paintings were exhibited in 1909 to great acclaim, and the one on offer remained in the collection of the Durand-Ruel art-dealing family for many decades.
Other works in the Christie’s sale include paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Gustav Klimt, both of which are estimated at £8m-£12m.
The highlight of the Sotheby’s sale on June 22 is a self-portrait by Manet, which is estimated at £20m-£30m, and is the only self-portrait by the artist in private hands.
Melanie Clore, who co-chairs Sotheby’s impressionist department worldwide, said the high quality of the works consigned for the auctions reflected renewed confidence in the art market.
She said the sale of the Giacometti in February proved a watershed: “People realised that there were still a lot of collectors around willing to step up to the plate.”
Global competition was another factor in pushing prices up.
“There are Russian, Chinese, south-east Asian and Middle Eastern buyers who are competing strongly with the established buyers. There have always been new faces in the art market, but there are more of them than ever right now.”
The entry of new buyers may have proved an unwelcome shock to traditional participants in the art market “but ironically it is the depth in the market which has instilled confidence in sellers, and has seen all these great pictures come on the market”, said Ms Clore. The quality of the works also made them sound investments in times of financial uncertainty.
“They are masterpieces, not something that has just come into fashion. Anyone buying one of these works is not being speculative – they are buying into something with a highly esteemed history.”

Of Picasso and Provenance

2010-06-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK — There is much to be said in favor of art shows without a theme.
If the Metropolitan Museum of Art had not decided to display together the 34 paintings, 58 works on paper, two sculptures and sundry items including prints that make up its Picasso collection, some truths and questions that many would prefer to remain unspoken about the most important figure of 20th century Western art might not have been aired.
“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ” running through Aug. 27, is both the title of the exhibition and the highly important catalog, which provides a detailed history of each work in the show. In the introduction to that volume, the eminent museum curator Gary Tinterow writes that “the Metropolitan’s collection developed by happenstance rather than by design. The result is that it is strongly skewed toward Pablo Picasso’s early work.”
Happenstance? From the institution’s perspective, perhaps, but hardly on the part of the great collectors who donated or bequeathed to the Met the Picassos they treasured.
Take the famous portrait of Gertrude Stein, painted in 1905-06, which she left to the museum in her will in 1947. It was the Metropolitan’s first Picasso.
Mr. Tinterow observes that while Gertrude Stein only gave this one painting to the Met, “She can be held responsible for many more.” With her brother Leo, the American writer played an important role in the financial backing that Picasso received in Paris. Nudged by them, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard bought 27 paintings from the artist in 1906 and went on to buy batches of pictures twice a year until 1911.
So great was Leo and Gertrude Stein’s admiration for the painter that they amassed the largest group of Picassos anywhere until they split up their joint collection in the winter of 1913-14. But Gertrude Stein, a connoisseur of Picasso’s art if ever there was one, never owned any of the one-day cartoon-style pictures in which the artist later indulged.
Neither did another of the most perceptive collectors of Picasso’s work, Florene Schoenborn, whose donations and 1995 bequest brought to the Met several of the most powerful masterpieces by the Paris school painter. Yet, the diversity of the pictures that she acquired with her first husband, Samuel Marx, rules out any suggestion of conformism.
In 1953, Florene Marx, as she was then known, settled for one of Picasso’s most uncharacteristic works. The 1906 portrait of an innkeeper called Josep Fondevila stands apart from all others. According to Picasso’s companion Fernande Olivier, it was “lifelike.” However, it conjures memories of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breugel the Elder’s admirable panels in the Prado, where the Spanish-born artist was a frequent visitor.
On Jan. 24, the couple bought an even more unusual Picasso. “Bust of a Man” of 1908 had belonged to Gertrude and Leo Stein. The powerful likeness conveys a feeling of intense distress. The big nose, the mouth open as if to scream and the almond-shaped eyes that are empty holes send back a rare echo to the art of pre-Columbian Mexico — Aztec sculpture to be precise, particularly the earthenware figures.
The Chicago couple was equally attracted to Picasso’s Cubist period, in which figuration is stylized beyond recognition. Their very earliest recorded choice was “Guitar and Clarinet on a Mantelpiece,” dated 1915, which they bought on Jan. 17, 1944, for what was at the time a very high price — $8,500.
In 1952, the couple acquired an example of Picasso’s version of Surrealism. “Nude Standing by the Sea” is indebted to Giorgio de Chirico for the clear-cut form and the light, and to Yves Tanguy for the idea of a nondescript shape making a human gesture.
The closest the Marx couple came to buying the art of distortion cultivated by Picasso from the 1930s on is “Reading at a Table,” done in March 1934. Memories of the painter’s early Analytic Cubism period may be recognized in the juxtaposition of the woman’s profile and the other side of her face seen three-quarters.
But Florene and Samuel Marx do not appear to have bothered about the strange compositions in big black curving lines that characterized the year 1932, such as “The Dreamer.” Bought in 1973 by Klaus Perls, this nightmarish vision never sold. In 1997, the famous New York dealer donated it to the Met.
Neither did the Marxes buy any of the artist’s cartoonlike pictures in pseudo-childlike style that he executed in one day, in apparent fits of rage and derision, such as “Dora Maar in an Armchair,” dated Oct. 26, 1939. Had she wanted to, Florene Marx, who lost her first husband, Samuel, in 1964, could have acquired it any time from 1965, the year Mr. Perls bought it, until her death in 1995. But “Dora Maar in an Armchair,” which entered the stock of the Perls Galleries as No.6581, never found a taker. In 1998, the dealer and his wife donated it to the Met.
Some of the other great collectors among the museum’s donors likewise shunned Picasso’s outrageous cartoons. Walter Annenberg had none, but it was he who part-donated in 1992 “At the Lapin Agile” (1905), the Met’s second most famous Picasso, and bequeathed in 2002 the financial stake that he had retained in it.
Long before Mr. Annenberg acquired “At the Lapin Agile” at Sotheby’s New York on Nov. 15, 1989, for $40.7 million, the picture belonged to another eminent American connoisseur of modern painting. Joan Whitney Payson reportedly bought it in 1952 for the then staggering price of $60,000. She kept it until her death in 1975 and it only tumbled into the market at her daughter’s 1989 sale. In a telling thumbs-down vote, both Mrs. Whitney Payson and Mr. Annenberg ignored the one-day cartoon pictures. Those in the Met collection were given later by other donors.
A generational taste shift? Or a judgement made by great connoisseurs likely to stand in history? The latter, I suspect.
Their disregard may partly be explained by the genesis of the cartoon style. The show unintentionally provides striking visual evidence that Picasso’s creative process was triggered by his response to the art of others, past and present. His aptitude at absorbing every possible influence and at metamorphosing it through his own vision was phenomenal.
While he reacted to the Old Masters he saw in the Prado, young Picasso also closely studied the avant-garde painters of his time.
In the 1901 pastel “Woman in Green,” Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec have their share in equal measure. In “Woman in Profile,” one of his earliest masterpieces, the brushwork betrays awareness of Cézanne’s technique while the colors are those of nascent Fauvism. And without Georges Braque, with whom he shared a studio at the time of Analytic Cubism’s inception, Picasso’s version of the style might have looked very different.
The ease with which Picasso switched from one aesthetic vision to another reflects this versatility, unparalleled in art history. Only Picasso could have executed within weeks the strictly figural portrait of Antoine Vollard sketched in pencil in impeccably classical manner that calls to mind Jean-August-Dominique Ingres and the virtually abstract “Guitar and Clarinet on a Mantelpiece.”
Was this artist with unrivalled mastery bereft of deep-rooted aesthetic convictions? One may well ask. A cynic at heart, who saw no contradiction in courting throughout his life the wealthy establishment while denouncing oppressive capitalists during his stint with the French Communist Party, Picasso was capable of picking up with equal zest (and equal lack of constancy) whatever crossed his path in art as in his relationships with women. Once artistic novelties no longer kindled the flame of his creative genius, the painter reacted in sheer fury. It was aimed as much at art that had nothing left for him as at the bourgeoisie who made the money-conscious painter a millionaire, but whom he despised.
Picasso’s cartoons, when successfully sold by him, were like so many slaps in the face of the establishment. Ironically, like everything in his oeuvre, even these take their source in someone else’s ideas. They go straight back to Marcel Duchamp’s “Dada,” the art of the absurd that left an indelible impression on the young Spanish artist newly arrived in Paris.

Royal College of Art fashion show

2010-06-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Craft and technology combine in Royal College of Art fashion graduates show.

Designs by Morten Underbjerg Olesen, Nabil El-Nayal and Frances Conteh at the Royal College of Art fashion show

Colour, embellishment, craftsmanship and a high-tech approach to fabric manipulation characterised the Royal College of Art's MA graduate collections shown in London today (June 10). Thirty-three students from the RCA’s prestigious School of Fashion - the world’s only wholly postgraduate fashion department - presented their collections to press and industry heads; ten students from menswear, and eighteen from womenswear.
The menswear collections took inspiration from J.G.Ballard’s novel, ‘Crash’, chavs, Spanish matadors fused with hip-hop culture, soldiers and skinheads. Designs included copper and silver metal yarn woven into tailored suits, smocking techniques to creative unusual shapes and volume, and a bling-bling hybrid of Pop-Art and bubblegum colours, fur and golden embroidery.
The womenswear collections included tunics and robes embellished with thousands of porcupine quills, hand-crocheted dresses with pom-pom hems, silken gowns decorated with handmade silk roses, and mini-dresses made from bands of fabric joined by metal rods. Zara Gorman’s hats made a dramatic accessory statement, being fashioned from leather, wood and plastic, cut in the manner of windshields, Venetian blinds and shells.
Other accessory designs were featured in the RCA’s static display, including footwear made with Perspex, PVC, latex, silicone and digitally-printed satin; together with artisan-influenced bags employing techniques such as basketry, and weaving and knotting, using bamboo and leather.
The RCA’s Fashion department was founded in 1948, by the former Vogue editor, Madge Garland. Among its most famous graduates are Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb, Philip Treacy, Antony Price, Julien Macdonald, Christopher Bailey and Erdem. More recent graduates who are creating a buzz are Holly Fulton, Heikki Salonen, David Longshaw, Rachael Barrett, the shoe designer Camilla Skovgaard, and the milliner, Jusatin Smith. The head of the School of Fashion is Professor Wendy Dagworthy.

Louis Comfort Tiffany's business sense and glass art on display in Richmond

2010-06-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Inventive: This blown-glass vase in the form of a Persian water sprinkler was created by Tiffany around 1898.

Leaded glass: Tiffany created "Bella Apartment Window" around 1880.

Blown glass: A jack-in-the-pulpit vase made in 1915 by Tiffany.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was one of this country's greatest artists and just about the first to make a big splash abroad. After his smash success at the 1893 Chicago world's fair, museums across Europe rushed to acquire his glass. Americans were just as eager: In 1896, the New York sugar baron H.O. Havemeyer presented 56 Tiffany pieces to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Tiffany: Color and Light," a major new survey of the master's work, is now at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, its only American venue. It gives a fine overview of Tiffany's glorious vases, leaded-glass lamps and work in stained glass.
It also lets us in on something strange: Tiffany was not an artist in the traditional sense. The man responsible for some of the most innovative handicrafts ever created barely set his hands on the objects he signed. The man who gave new life to blown glass never blew glass; he didn't even come up with the iridescent surfaces that were his trademark. The man whose lamps went on to inspire the lighting in restaurant chains across America entrusted their design to a team of uncredited women.
None of this makes Tiffany a less important figure. On the contrary, it makes him a true radical. Instead of working in any of the traditional materials of art or craft, he worked in material that was more original, and more exquisitely American, than that. His art supplies were other people; the masterpiece he built with them was a corporate entity called Tiffany Studios. Each of the tens of thousands of objects that entity turned out was just a small part of the total work.
Tiffany learned his corporate craft at his father's knee. In 1837, Charles Lewis Tiffany founded a little stationery and fancy-goods shop that grew into the great silver and jewelry emporium of Tiffany & Co. The father's money helped fund many of the son's ventures. Tiffany Sr.'s moneyed customers were natural clients for Tiffany Jr.'s wilder offerings. When Tiffany & Co. started to have a lavish presence at world's fairs, the son's Tiffany Studios could mount a display nearby and share in the attention.
Making a mark

Louis made a stab at rebellion. In the late 1860s, he trained in Paris as a painter but never made a mark. He only came into his own back in New York a decade later, with a shift into interior decor. Tiffany crafted eclectic, over-the-top interiors that mixed Victorian exoticism (rafters hung with Middle Eastern lamps and pots, Persian carpets on top of elaborately tiled floors) with arts and crafts nostalgia (pseudo-medieval stained glass and hobbit-ish carved wood).
One of the most impressive objects in this survey is from that period and comes from the 30-something Tiffany working more like a fine artist than he ever would again. For the lavish vestibule of his own home Tiffany made a stained-glass window that could count as an ancestor of modern abstraction. Using pieces of sheet glass, he built a composition that was nothing more than a bizarre swirl of shapes and hues. Lacking any kind of ornamental structure, it has an avant-garde edge.
The next time Tiffany came up with something that original, it was under his more corporate umbrella. After a tour through Europe in 1889, and exposure to the innovative glassware of Emile Gallé, Tiffany came home and founded a glassmaking factory. To run it, he hired a pioneering British glass technician named Arthur Nash. Nash's experiments in iridescence captured the look of antique glass dug up after centuries. His colors were denser and more varied than almost anyone's. His amalgamations of hot glass gave stunningly varied effects.
Under the guidance of Nash, and the corporate supervision of Tiffany, hired glassblowers came up with designs that were bold yet stunningly graceful. They jettisoned the fussy hand-cutting and curlicues of so much earlier glass. They replaced it with asymmetrical, nature-inspired forms that foreshadow the biomorphs and streamlined shapes of the 20th century.
And they weren't afraid to go ugly. A tiny, pearlescent bud vase looks like melting glop. It's one of this show's gems. The vessels from the company's "Lava" line are gloriously wacky: They take fields of a foamy black glass that looks like molten stone, melt on smooth ripples that could almost be a dark mother-of-pearl, then throw in glass blobs and a few swipes of gold.
These masterpieces weren't the work of Tiffany. They were definitely the work of "Tiffany," a collective of designers and makers given various amounts of leeway by the corporate master who oversaw them. He also worked out a business model to support their experiments.
Nash and his underlings deserve a lot more credit than they originally got. But "Tiffany" wouldn't have existed, as a powerful force in the history of art, without Tiffany.
Of course, any businessman knows that to survive long term, you need a range of product lines.
At Tiffany Studios, there was Nash's fantastic glass, trademarked Favrile. But there were also lines so different from Favrile that, in any normal case, they couldn't be from the hands of the same artist -- and of course, in the case of "Tiffany," they weren't.
I find Favrile irresistible. I'm not sure I've seen a piece of Tiffany stained glass I could stand, except for that early abstract panel. Where the best of Favrile seems to float above its era, its stained-glass cousins look dated and Victorian, fussy and genteel. The designer of the best of them, a Tiffany employee named Frederick Wilson, was a minor disciple of some of Britain's stodgier pre-Raphaelite painters. The Richmond show includes a series of his windows from a recently deconsecrated church in Montreal. Looked at from very close, their innovations amaze: They use folded glass to represent rippling fabrics and layers of dappled "confetti" glass for foliage. But once you're far enough away to see the pictures as a whole, you want to turn away.
(Disclosure: I may have a bias. Every Sunday morning through my teenage years, I took care of the toddlers at the church next door to my parents. That's where this exhibition's windows come from. It was not a pleasant feeling to enter a gallery in Richmond, 30 years and 700 miles from my adolescent self, only to find Jesus and his disciples staring me down once again. They made me want to deny, for the umpteenth time, that I was the one glimpsed necking with a girl in the chapel.)
I feel just as cool toward Tiffany's leaded-glass lamps. After Tiffany introduced the line in 1897, the American public went mad for it, and the lamps became crucial to his bottom line. Even the most absurdly luxurious models of these hand-made lamps, which could go for $600 -- more than a Tiffany worker might earn in a year -- were produced by the hundreds, thanks to the Women's Glass Cutting Department that designed and made them. The cheaper versions ended up in homes across the country, and for about 40 years, thanks to knockoffs, in every T.G.I. Friday's.
I'm more impressed by Tiffany's ability to sell his lamps than by the products themselves. I like to think of them as part of Tiffany's great work as a corporate performance artist. In an age of industrial production, Louis Comfort Tiffany took the public's nostalgia for one-off objects coming from a single maker's hand and eye, and satisfied it with a range of products by a man he advertised as "Tiffany."

A Grand Tour of European art festivals

2010-06-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

There’s always a Picasso blockbuster going on somewhere. This year it’s at New York’s Met.

This summer, a strong loonie and even stronger roster of art exhibits in Europe makes a Grand Tour as tempting as it is within grasp. Indeed there are so many great art shows this summer that, après le deluge (OK, apres le ash clouds), Gauguin, Basquiat and Monet might define Europe’s summer of 2010.
Herewith, the best of the fests, ranked by cultural significance and an entirely idiosyncratic assessment of the art I HEART.
Normandy
Who doesn’t like the soothing paintings of Impressionism? It’s kind of saying you don’t like puppies. The unusual light of Normandy was a catalyst for the school, and this summer Normandy returns the love with the Normandy Impressionist festival. Every harbour town from Rouen to Honfleur is on board, with an Opera about Monet, and an outdoor cinema series featuring the grainy movies of the time. Noteworthy is “Impressionism Along the Seine” at Giverny, the former home of Monet, whose lovely gardens and waterlily-filled ponds figure in many of his paintings. This show explores the river that inspired such artists as Rousseau, Monet, Caillbotte and Renoir to leave their ateliers and breathe in the plein air. Curator Marina Ferretti calls the Seine “the birthplace of new painting in the second half of the 19th century.” To sept. 26; normandie-impressionniste.fr.
Paris
The Grand Palais is presenting Claude Monet’s first major retrospective in 30 years, tracing the 19th-century painter’s long career, from his first landscapes in Normandy to Giverny. From Sept. 22; grandpalais.fr.
London
A compare-and-contrast opportunity comes later in the summer with “Gauguin: Maker of Myth” at London’s Tate Modern. This blockbuster aims to show Gauguin through a modern prism, not least as a canny self-promoter.
Years before John Lennon, Gauguin compared himself to Christ, in his 1889 Self-Portrait as Christ in the Garden of Olives; a social agitator and master bohemian, he exploited the artist-muse relationship. From Sept. 30; tate.org.uk/modern.
Paris
Fashion junkies are penciling two exhibits into their Hermes agendas: “Yves Saint Laurent: Retrospective” is an expanded version of the YSL show at the Fine Arts Museum in Montreal two years ago with YSL’s seductive feminized “smoking” tuxedos and revolutionary street-inspired ready-to-wear line-up against a Belle Epoque backdrop. No probing questions about whether fashion is art trouble the minds of Parisians, who have been lining up for hours to get in. To Aug. 29; paris.fr.
Alsace
The second, “3 Grands Createurs: Cristobal Balanciaga, Givenchy et Philippe Venet,” at the 18th-century Château de Haroué, in France’s Alsace region is curated by Givenchy himself. The designer, who retired from his fashion house in 1995, spent years chasing down the seminal Givenchys on show — including the black dress to end all black dresses: the one Audrey Hepburn wore in the opening scene of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Among the superlative Balenciagas is the wedding gown for the Queen of Belgium. The pieces by Venet show his talent as a master tailor. In many ways the three couturiers created today’s red carpet culture. To Aug. 13; chateaudeharoue.fr.
Riehen
“Basquiat” at the Fondation Beyeler in nearby Riehen is a retrospective of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the American painter and graffiti artist, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his birth. Basquiat started making graffiti in Brooklyn and quickly found himself at the centre of the frenetic ‘80s New York art scene before dying of an overdose 27. His art incorporated Bible stories, voodoo, cartoons, advertising posters and the iconography of jazz and rap into a genius or garbage synthesis, depending on your view. To Sept. 5; beyeler.com).
Monaco
Some might call Damien Hirst this decade’s answer to Basquiat. The British artist has been called a trailblazer and has also been accused of crass commercialism. Indeed, he has made a fortune faster then you can preserve a cow corpse in formaldehyde. So it’s possibly fitting that he has a retrospective in the billionaire’s paradise, Monaco. “Cornucopia,” at the Oceanographic Museum, features Hirst’s spin paintings, skulls and controversial formaldehyde pieces as well as recent works that include a pickled shark, made for this exhibit — terror frozen in an aquarium. To Sept. 30; oceano.mc.
Paris
If you prefer Hirst in smaller doses, the Musee Maillol offers “That’s Life: Vanities from Caravaggio to Damien Hirst.” In Etruscan times, skulls (aka Vanitas), were painted into portraits as a reminder that our days are numbered. They’ve since inspired four centuries of artists. A woman cradles a skull in a painting by de la Tour, a saint kneels contemplating another in a Zurbaran. As the show’s name promises, there’s even a rare Caravaggio, Saint Francis in Prayer, (though not the master’s most forceful work), a Cezanne, Picasso, Braque and offerings by today’s It Brit artists, such as Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Migraine, a skull with vampire teeth and lolling tongue. Strangely, Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull famously offered at auction for millions in 2007 is not there but other Hirsts skulls are. An oddly life-affirming show. To June 28; museemaillol.com.
Zurich
There’s always a Picasso blockbuster going on somewhere. This year it’s at New York’s Met, but a show in Zurich might hold its own. “Picasso” is a recreation of the Spaniard’s first ever retrospective, at the Kunsthaus in 1932, which was curated by the artist himself. Some of the 60 major works that were part of the original exhibition will be back. From Oct. 15; kunsthaus.ch.
Metz
A satellite Pompidou Centre is opening in industrial Metz, in Northern France, this summer. The inaugural exhibit, “Chef d’Oeuvre?” sounds, judging by the description, like a grab bag of art-world names, albeit many rarely loaned, such as Alexander Calder’s Josephine Baker IV, meant to lure us to the new building whose design is as out there as the original Pompidou was when it opened in 1977 in Paris. Architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines are already garnering comments for its undulating roof, which looks like a Chinese hat. To Oct. 25; centrepompidou-metz.fr.
Munich
In this World Cup year, are sports stadiums works of art? Pinotek der Moderne, Munich’s modern art gallery, thinks so. The museum is presenting “From Cape Town to Brasilia: New Sports Stadiums” by von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, the prolific and well-regarded stadium architects. Too bad it doesn’t include drawings and prototypes of recent stadium wonders by such architects as Herzog and de Meuron’s Beijing bird’s nest and Munich’s own colour-changing Allianz Arena. To June 20; pinakothek.de.
London
Urban Africa is a contemporary view of Africa at the Design Museum via the photographs of hip Ghanian-English architect David Adjaye. To Sept. 8; designmuseum.org. Must stop, Venice for the architecture biennale.
Istanbul
The city’s modern art scene has exploded in recent years, thanks in part to the opening of the beautiful Istanbul Modern Museum, where Turkish photographer Murat Germen and German snapper Thomas Radbruch are having side-by-side exhibitions. Thomas Radbruch: Rusty End; Murat Germen Way. To Sept 19; istanbulmodern.org.
Moscow
With all that new money, it’s no wonder Moscow’s art scene is also growing. The Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is a sprawling event with sites all over the city. Worth a stop amid the creative mayhem — including nude models posing in the city’s streets and a conceptual piece involving the cross-breeding of live chickens — is the Garage Centre Gallery, opened recently by Dasha Zhukova, the gallerina girlfriend of billionaire Roman Abramovich. The Garage is offering “Mark Rothko: Into an Unknown World,” the first ever Rothko exhibit in Moscow.

Speed Painting tests artists' ability

2010-06-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

Amanda Ridenour stopped and watched wide-eyed as a blob of paint intended for her board veered toward the watching crowd before landing safely on the plastic sheeting below.

"I was really concerned I was going to get paint on someone," said Ridenour, who herself was covered in paint from head to toe.

She had spent the past minutes throwing, blowing and squirting paint onto a 4-by-8-foot piece of plywood at Thursday's Speed Painting event at the Decatur-Macon County Fair.

Ridenour was one of three artists commissioned at this year's fair for what the Marketing Manager Ayn Owens calls "agriculture meets art."

Starting at 5:30 p.m., Ridenour and Andrew Blesse, both of Mount Zion, rushed to complete their paintings before 6 p.m., while people passing through the Midway stopped and watched in amazement.

In the corner, another piece of art that already was finished lay on a table, too heavy to hang on the wall. With reactions like "cool" and "that's neat," people filing by stopped to take a second glance at the 3-by-4-foot mosaic portrait of Abraham Lincoln made entirely out of soybeans.

"In some ways, the beans made it easy, in some ways it made it more difficult," said the artist, Ted Keylon.

Keylon works as an actor at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum complex in Springfield, where he portrays Francis Carpenter an artist who frequently painted Lincoln.

Despite the unusual surface, Keylon was more comfortable working on the large-scale piece than he expected.

"That's what I liked about doing this, the soybeans did a lot of the work for me," Keylon said.

While working on it over the past several months, Keylon was reminded of when he first started learning about and practicing pointillism, a style of art that uses spots of narrow colors to make an image.

"The beauty of a mosaic is how all the parts come together to create a large image," Keylon said.

While the portrait of Lincoln lay complete, on the other side of the room, Ridenour and Blesse were having some difficulties. Since they were inside, they could only use the spray paint for the first few minutes, which extended their deadline.

Already nervous to be painting in front of people, Blesse had to change his plans when the spray paint was off limits. Still, after an hour, he was pleased with the outcome of colorful layers and abstract neon flowers.

"Sometimes a painting paints itself," Blesse said about his piece spontaneously titled "Big Loud Mess."

Ridenour's piece titled "Oil Spill" followed her normal construction technique of no technique.

"There's no method to the madness," said Ridenour whose piece blended bright oceanic colors with darker textured paint.

All of the art will be auctioned off 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Grandstand. The proceeds from the auction will go to the fair.

Proud, Painful Art on Baghdad’s Blast Walls

2010-06-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Holly Pickett

BAGHDAD — Baghdad’s blast walls are a blank canvas. They reflect Iraqis’ shared history — both proud and painful facts of life here in the capital.