At the Aventura Mall in the Louis Vuitton store, Hernan Bas has created a sculptural installation specifically for the luxury brand’s location. Using canvas covered in Vuitton’s iconic monogram symbols, Bas made up bundles — hobo sacks, really, or bindles — and attached them to birch branches, to come up with A Traveler. He’s playing with two extreme ends of travel accessories — a Vuitton suitcase and a bag on a stick.

It’s one of the numerous places across the globe that the Miami-bred artist will be shown this year, signaling the meteoric rise of the 34-year-old, former New World School of the Arts student.

Over the next six months alone, Bas, best known for his beautifully brushed, dreamy, melancholy paintings, will blanket three continents with his work. Until April 21, the major New York gallery Lehmann Maupin is exhibiting a solo show of his newest paintings, called “Occult Contemporary.” Also through April, the Kunstverein museum in Hannover, Germany, is giving the artist a survey of works spanning the last five years. Then he will pop up in a solo show in Seoul, South Korea at the PKM Gallery, which has on its roster such giants in contemporary art as Olafur Eliasson and Bruce Nauman. Bas will return to Europe, to Galerie Perrotin in Paris, and wind up back in Miami for a new show at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery.

These are significant shows at trend-setting locations. Most artists could only dream of just one of these exhibits in one year.

Bas is viewing it all with a large dose of humility. “The exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover — from what I’ve been told — has been received rather well by the local community, It has been a while since the Kunstverein has mounted a classic, traditional painting show and the public has seemingly embraced it.”

So what is it about this hometown talent that has caught so many eyes, leading to his work to catch on fire? From people near and far, the simple answer is this: Bas is a painter’s painter, whose technique, color palette, skill and story lines jump from the frame immediately and attract the viewer.

But to love it, people first had to see it.

The director of the powerhouse London gallery Victoria Miro, Glenn Scott Wright, ran into work from Bas back in 2002, when the Rubell family of the Rubells showed off examples of their latest acquisitions to him.

“I went out to dinner with Don, Mera and Jason Rubell, who brought a whole selection of works on paper they had just acquired and spread them out on the table in a Japanese restaurant,” he recalls. “I remember worrying we might get some soy sauce on them. I loved the work and called Hernan.”

Wright says Bas was hard to pursue, but he persisted, and that would result in a huge breakthrough for Bas — a solo show at Victoria Miro in 2005. “The response in London and throughout Europe has been wholly enthusiastic from the very first moment we showed him,” Wright says.

That special collecting relationship with the Rubells would pay off again a few years later, with Bas’ museum show, “Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection,” at the Brooklyn Museum in 2009. In between those two, Bas had already become a Miami favorite through his shows at Snitzer, the local gallerist who has known him and his work since his New World days. “The bottom line is, he is a masterful painter,” Snitzer says. Last December, Snitzer included a huge canvas from Bas at his booth at Art Basel Miami Beach (Snitzer has been one of the few local galleries in the fair throughout the years), prominently displayed on the outer wall, which became a Basel talking point.

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

Published: April 13, 2012

PARIS — R. Crumb, the American cartoonist, is said to be a timid, reclusive soul who doesn’t like visitors, photographers, reporters or even fans.

 But here he was on Thursday, dressed in a smart black sport coat and trousers, posing for photographers and holding forth with journalists about fame, fortune, art, politics, music and death.

The occasion was the impending opening, on Friday, of “Crumb, From the Underground to Genesis,” an exhibition covering nearly five decades of his work, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his first comprehensive museum retrospective.

Mr. Crumb, 68, called himself “confused,” “impressed,” “flattered” and “bewildered” to have moved over from the gritty comic-book world into a fine-art museum in Paris.

“Seeing this on the walls is very strange,” Mr. Crumb said at a news conference. “The sheer quantity. It’s like going to the dump and seeing the sheer quantity.”

The exhibition, on view through Aug. 19, brings together more than 700 original drawings and more than 200 underground magazines, many from Mr. Crumb’s private collection. It opens with greeting cards that he created for the American Greetings Corporation in Cleveland and illustrations made in Harlem and Bulgaria in the early 1960s. There are the psychedelic Zap Comix; his graphic renderings of sex, obscenity and drug use; and intimate photos, including one of Mr. Crumb sitting in a wicker chair in his living room and strumming a banjo.

His memorable cartoon characters are here, including Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Devil Girl, Flakey Foont and Angelfood McSpade. The exhibition ends with his illustrations for Genesis, the opening book of the Bible.

There is also “Marriage License,” a work commissioned — and rejected — by The New Yorker in 2009 that shows a couple, whose genders are ambiguous, as they are about to get married. “They had it for a few months,” he said, adding: “Finally I got it back in the mail one day with no explanation. I never did find out why they didn’t want to use it.” (He called the treatment “insulting” and said he could never work for The New Yorker again.)

Early in the news conference, Mr. Crumb took the lead in questioning, turning to Fabrice Hergott, the museum’s director, to ask how the show came about: “Was there an argument? Was there resistance?”

“It was not so easy,” Mr. Hergott confessed. “The team of curators was not so sure that you were an artist for this museum, that you belonged to the classical world of art.”

Mr. Crumb did not seem distressed. After all, he admitted, he is not a museumgoer. “I went to the Louvre once,” he said. “I don’t really like museums. You get too close to the art, and the guard is going to yell at you.”

From a seat in the first row, an American woman in a black mini-dress with flaming orange tights and lipstick to match, a ring in her left nostril and long, curly hair streaked ruby red cheered him on and filled gaps in the conversation. It was his wife, Aline Crumb, also a comics illustrator and Mr. Crumb’s sometime collaborator, as well as a yoga instructor.

“I’m impressed,” she said of his work’s being shown in a big museum. “You’ve moved up in my esteem.”

The Crumbs have lived in Sauve, a village of fewer than 2,000 people in the south of France, for 21 years. Asked why they moved to this country, Mr. Crumb blamed his wife. “She wanted to live in France, and one morning I woke up and I was living in France,” he said. “But it’s a nice country to live in. I’m not complaining. Even if I don’t speak French, never learned it, now I have French grandchildren.”

The Crumbs have always been open about their open marriage, in which they have allowed each other to pursue other intimate relationships. Asked how it has worked out, he replied, “It’s the only reason we’ve stayed together all these years.”

Ms. Crumb said: “It’s a mess, though! It’s just too time-consuming. One husband is a lot of work. And having another one is even more work.”

Mr. Crumb observed, “And also you have children and all that, oh boy.”

Ms. Crumb said: “You have grandchildren and chicken pox, and you’re off with that other person, and you feel guilty. It might or might not be worth it.”

Mr. Crumb acknowledged that age, along with fame, had changed his approach to his art. “I don’t draw as much as I used to,” he said. “I’m too self-conscious now.” Perhaps, he added, “that’s just the process of getting older.”

Mr. Crumb was asked about fear of death. “Death? Afraid of death?” he said. “When you get older, you dry up. You die. That’s it.” He added: “I’ve lived my life. I’ve lived it out. I’ve left my mark. I’ve had great sex. I got a great record collection —— ”

Ms. Crumb finished the thought. “You’re shown in a museum,” she said.

 

By MONIKA BIEGLER EYERS

WHILE MOST OF MIAMI'S architectural gems can be viewed along South Beach's fabled avenues, many of its secret treasures of midcentury design are stored within two nondescript strip malls in the city's less flashy Northeast corridor—an area gaining popularity thanks to nearby MiMo's (Miami Modern) recent designation as a historic district.

The two shopping Meccas—Antiques Plaza and 20th Century Row—are ripe for "pickers" and savvy dealers of Miami Modern furnishings from the 1940s, '50s and '60s that flood the area. Both close to MiMo, Antiques Plaza is a series of pell-mell boutiques within a faux-Mediterranean compound, while 20th Century Row is a deceptively humdrum looking strip of shops surrounding the Museum of Contemporary Art.

A Sampling of Miami Finds

View Interactive

Milo Baughman Barrel Back Armchair, 1970s

Click above to view the interactive.

Don't judge them by their facades. With many of the dealers on both strips listed on that sentinel of authenticity—1stdibs.com—the shops here are the real deal. "They're the first stop for antiques, directly from the source, before they find their way into the way more expensive shops of New York, Los Angeles, even London," said Jonathan Adler, the home furnishings designer and a devotee of the district.

With a wealth of estate sales in the area and lower commercial rents on their side, these dealers can afford to sell their finds for less than their big-city counterparts.

Take a pair of Milo Baughman glass-and-chrome étagères: At press time, the set was selling for $5,700 in Miami, as compared to $8,650 in New York. Similarly, a pair of T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings chests were selling for $9,800 at Joseph Anfuso on 20th Century Row, and $12,000 in Los Angeles. A New York dealer had them priced at $15,900.

Variety is another big draw. Said designer Kelly Wearstler, "The selection has been curated from so many different eyes, it's a fresh change from the pieces you see in New York or L.A."

With countless retailers hawking "re-editions" these days, why not hunt down an original instead at a vacation-friendly port of call?

—Monika Biegler Eyers

 

The Designers You're Likely to Come Across

Gio Ponti (Italian, 1891-1979). The co-founder of Domus magazine is often hailed as the father of modern Italian design, conceiving homewares for Richard Ginori, Krups, Venini and Fontana Arte. Iconic pieces for Cassina include the Distex lounge chair and the Superleggera chair.

Jacques Adnet (French, 1900-84). The Art Deco pioneer was considered a paragon of French Modernism, perhaps best known for wrapping everything from bar carts to daybeds in stitched leather, including a line for Hermès in the 1950s.

Tommi Parzinger (German, 1903-81). The designer is hailed for his glamorous yet refined pieces, like lacquered cabinets embellished with ornamental hardware. Works from 1953 onward are stamped "Parzinger Originals" to distinguish them from imitators.

T. H. (Terrence Howard) Robsjohn-Gibbings (English, 1905-76). Renowned for his modern interpretations of historical design, the furniture-maker won the American Institute of Interior Design's coveted Elsie de Wolfe Award in 1962 following the production of his graceful Klismos chair.

Swan Back Sofa by Vladimir Kagan, 1950s, $12,000, Stripe

Paul McCobb (American, 1917-69). The designer's Planner Group series for Winchendon (1949-1964) swept through mainstream American homes, featuring a modernized version of the Windsor chair and a birch credenza with sliding grass-cloth doors.

Milo Baughman (American, 1923-2003). The California Modern movement stalwart was celebrated as a walnut-and-birch man in the '40s and '50s. With Thayer Coggin, he designed a now-classic steel-framed leather lounge chair in the '60s.

Vladimir Kagan (German, born 1927). Famous for his circa-1950 Serpentine sofa, the designer went more linear in the '60s. In 2002, at age 85, he received a Modernism Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His current work remains influential.

Paul Evans (American, 1931-87). Lauded for rough-hewn casegoods in welded metal and wood, from 1955-1964. His debut collection for Directional in the '60s sold out in one week. His later Cityscape series exudes a more streamlined aesthetic.

 

WHERE TO FIND THE DEALS

20th Century Row

The Row sprawl is located on N.E. 125th Street, between N.E. Seventh and N.E. Ninth avenues. Numbered addresses refer to shop locations along N.E. 125th Street.

Gustavo Olivieri Antiques. No. 750; gustavoolivieriantiques.com. Look for: Baughman, Evans, McCobb, Parzinger, Ponti, Robsjohn-Gibbings

Vermillion 20th Century Furnishings . No. 765; galleryvermillion.com . Look for: Baughman, Evans, Kagan, Ponti, Robsjohn-Gibbings

Stripe. No. 799; stripe.1stdibs.com. Look for: Baughman, Evans, Kagan, McCobb, Parzinger

Galleria d'Epoca. No. 800; galleriadepoca.com. Look for: Adnet, Baughman, Paul Evans, Kagan, McCobb, Gio Ponti

Joseph Anfuso 20th Century Design. No. 815; josephanfuso20thcenturydesign.1stdibs.com . Look for: Baughman, Kagan, Robsjohn-Gibbings

Gary Rubenstein. No. 859; garyrubinsteinantiques.com. Look for: Baughman, Evans, Kagan, McCobb, Parzinger, Ponti, Robsjohn-Gibbings

Marc Corbin. No. 875; 305-899-2509. Look for: Evans

Antiques Plaza

The Plaza is located at 8650 Biscayne Blvd. Numbered addresses here refer to shop locations within the strip mall.

M.A.D.E. by Robert Massello Antiques. No. 1; robertmasselloantiques.1stdibs.com. Look for: Evans, Parzinger

Modern Epic Antiques. No. 4; modernepicantiques.1stdibs.com. Look for: Baughman, Kagan, Robsjohn-Gibbings

Iconic Design. No. 6-7; 305-606-7757. Look for: Baughman, Evans, Ponti

Michel Contessa . No. 8; michelcontessa.com.Look for: Adnet, Robsjohn-Gibbings, Evans

The greatly expanded second iteration of this online compilation of self-selected art museums and artworks was unveiled last week. It makes available images of more than 32,000 works in 31 mediums and materials, from the collections of 151 museums and arts organizations worldwide, forming a broad, deep river of shared information, something like a lavishly illustrated art book fused with high-end open storage.

But world-wonder status will not happen tomorrow. The project has plenty of limitations and some bugs to work out. Numerous important museums have remained aloof, for one thing, including the Louvre, the Prado, the Centre Pompidou, Stedelijk in Amsterdam, Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and every Swiss museum of note.

Others, having joined, participate grudgingly, whether protective of their own Web sites or unwilling to deal with copyright permissions that apply to art not yet in the public domain; this includes vast quantities of 20th-century Modernist material, which remains in very short supply here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/arts/design/google-art-projects-expanded-offerings.html?ref=arts

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Kraftwerk fans at MoMA on Tuesday night. The band's performances include 3-D imagery. More Photos »

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: April 11, 2012

Sell-out rock shows usually mean a lot of shouting, some sweating, maybe a few drunken pass-outs. Kraftwerk inspired none of that on Tuesday night. The first of its eight consecutive sold-out performances at the Museum of Modern Art had reverence and stylistic weight; even for a New York museum crowd there was a lot of black. Artfully swept hair, uncomfortable-looking shoes, architectural glasses: check, check and check. The high-design audience was rewarded with an equally aesthetically tuned concert, with the band, a foursome in graphic black-and-white unitards, playing neon-lighted synths. Behind them a video screen offered a parade of simple 3-D images, like stick figure robots and spinning numbers, a retro future in an MS-DOS font.

 

Multimedia

Slide Show

Kraftwerk at MoMA

The show, part of a retrospective for this pioneering German electronica group, was a coveted event, with fewer than 450 tickets available to the public for each night of the run. All eight sold out within an hour when they went on sale in February. (With a face value of $25, they were going for hundreds online afterward.)

On Tuesday several diehard Kraftwerk fans waited outside the museum in the vain hope of scoring an extra ticket. “I grew up listening to this in high school,” said Andy Horowitz, 49, a banker turned teacher from Long Island. “It’s got a real good sound. It’s melodic, pulsating, makes you want to move. It’s timeless.” Mr. Horowitz, who had also turned up at the museum a few days earlier to inquire about more spots, said he might return nightly but was holding out for Friday, when the band is scheduled to perform its seminal 1978 album, “The Man-Machine.” “The personal computer, space, technology — they hit it right on the head,” Mr. Horowitz said. Kraftwerk was expected to play a full album a night, with some bonus and new material mixed in.

 

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Kraftwerk, the German group whose members were early adapters to the world of the computer, at the Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday. More Photos »

By JON PARELES

Published: April 11, 2012

The Robots” — the first song Kraftwerk played on Tuesday to start its eight-night series of retrospective concerts at the Museum of Modern Art — is adroitly misleading. “We’re programmed to do/anything you want us to,” Ralf Hutter sang.

 

Multimedia

The album in focus on the opening night of the Kraftwerk retrospective at the Modern was “Autobahn,” from 1974, performed live with prominent graphics and along with additional material. More Photos »

In fact Kraftwerk has been far more predictive than obedient. It can rightfully claim to have done some cultural reprogramming of its own. Back in the 1970s Kraftwerk conceptualized itself as the Man-Machine and started writing songs about what technology might do to — and with — the modern mind. It can now claim a direct influence on all sorts of electronic and computer-driven music, while its lyrics clearly envisioned our computer-mediated daily lives.

Tuesday’s concert was the beginning of Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, with Kraftwerk performing eight consecutive albums on eight nights for just 450 people per show. Only Mr. Hutter remains from Kraftwerk’s original lineup; the other current members are Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert and Stefan Pfaffe. Onstage the quartet stood at keyboards — playing some of the music’s components live — in front of a very active video screen with images that sometimes sandwiched the musicians between the planes of eye-popping three-dimensional geometry and typography. (Concertgoers were handed 3D glasses on the way to the museum’s atrium.)...

 

 

Not too far up the congested slope of Monte Carlo is an exquisitely restored early-20th-century villa that is one of the two homes of the recently opened Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, filled with contemporary works. And over near Casino Square, site of the Anish Kapoor sculpture “Sky Mirror,” is an array of new galleries.

Monaco, a tiny principality that clings improbably to a limestone cliff on the southeastern coast of France, has long been known as a playground for vacationers with means who dabble in hobbies like gambling and Formula One car racing. Yet in recent years, it has become home to a distinctive and vibrant international contemporary art community, a new tourist draw in a country with no shortage of them.

“We know people come to Monaco for the sea and the sun, but we want them also to know that we are committed to culture and, in particular, to art,” Paul Masseron, the principality’s minister of the interior, said...

Introduction

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times  

The Orange County government building in Goshen, N.Y., has a leaky roof, faulty ventilation and mold and, in the eyes of many, is just plain ugly. Officials shut it down last year and would like to demolish and replace it. But it is a prime example of Brutalism, from the noted architect Paul Rudolph, and many want to preserve it. Do even ugly, unpopular buildings deserve to be saved if they are significant? Or should a community, or owner, be allowed to eliminate architectural mistakes?

Read the Discussion »

The organizers are calling it “the biggest festival the U.K. has ever seen.” For eight weeks from June 21 to Sept. 9 — before, during and after the 2012 Olympic Games — Britain is hosting the London 2012 Festival, an outpouring of events across the country including theater, music, visual arts, dance, sculpture, performance art, film and other genres. The plan is to put on a show that rivals the sports spectacle in breadth and excitement, not to mention Olympian flights of excess. London 2012 is part of a broader, multiyear effort called the Cultural Olympiad, showcasing events like the World Shakespeare Festival, running April 23 until November, and a major exhibition of Lucian Freud portraits (through May 27) at the National Portrait Gallery. “Even before we won the bid, we said we wanted culture to be part of it, in the run-up to the games and through the games themselves,” said Moira Sinclair, the executive director of Arts Council England, the London 2012 Festival’s lead organization.

Deborah Shaw, the associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, said the effort brought the modern Olympics back to the ancient idea that the arts were as important as sports.

“It was about celebrating the whole human — both physical prowess and the spiritual, artistic side,” Ms. Shaw said. “If this culture program works, it could mean a whole recalibration for the Olympics.”

This program does not come cheap, which is something of a disconnect at a time of severe government cutbacks in arts financing here. Organizers say they do not yet know the final cost of the Cultural Olympiad, but The Guardian recently estimated the total at more than $154 million: $83 million for commissions for the London 2012 Festival and $71 million for the Cultural Olympiad.

Artists were chosen in a variety of ways: through commissions, applications and organizations taking part in the festival. In one initiative, called Artists Taking the Lead, potential participants were invited to submit projects that would celebrate Britain’s different regions. The winning ideas — a 30-foot seafaring yacht constructed from donated wooden objects, a floating building that generates its own power on the River Tyne — were then selected by a regional panel of artists.

The final lineup of events will be completed this month, when the full catalog is published. But dozens of projects — deadly serious and seriously offbeat, traditional and conceptual, from Britain and abroad — have been confirmed.

One piece, “Work No. 1197: All the Bells in a Country Rung as Loudly as Possible for Three Minutes,” by the Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed, is scheduled to take place from 8 to 8:03 a.m. on July 27, the first day of the Olympics. The idea, according to the festival’s Web site, is to encourage the nation “to ring thousands of bells at the same time, whether school bells, church bells, town hall bells, bicycle bells or doorbells.”

Other events will be less fleeting, like a retrospective of the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in 2009, at the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells, which will feature 10 of her works; a Damien Hirst exhibition at the Tate Modern; and “Back2Black” with the Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil, a three-day exploration of the links between Africa and Brazil.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis will have a two-week residency at the Barbican and other spots, culminating in the British premiere of Mr. Marsalis’s “Swing Symphony (Symphony No. 3)”, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. There will be screenings of Alfred Hitchcock silent movies, restored by the British Film Institute and shown with live musical accompaniment. At the Barbican, Cate Blanchett will star in “Big and Small,” by Botho Strauss.

Offbeat fare is also on the agenda, like “Bee Detective,” a murder mystery in which the audience travels through a beehive.

The verdict on whether the selections in the cultural festival are successful may have to wait until after the Olympiad has ended. But for now cultural critics and members of Britain’s arts world establishment seem open-minded and optimistic. There will probably be little argument over the prominent inclusion of Britain’s most enduring cultural export, Shakespeare. As part of a program called the World Shakespeare Festival, some 70 productions will take place across Britain in 30 locations starting on April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday.

“The theme of the festival is to look at Shakespeare as a world playwright, so we’re not getting just one perspective on his work,” said Ms. Shaw, who is also serving as the director of the World Shakespeare Festival.

The festival, which is costing the Royal Shakespeare Company about $9.5 million, she said, will feature a dozen new productions, some in collaboration with international companies and some performed outside theaters. There will be amateur performances, a chance for people around the world to discuss online what Shakespeare means to them, and an educational conference on how Shakespeare is taught in schools. The Globe Theater in London is hosting an ambitious undertaking called Globe to Globe, in which all of Shakespeare’s plays, and one poem, are to be performed, each in a different language and each from a different international company.

“Four hundred years ago he was using the world to talk about Elizabethan Britain, and it’s very interesting now to look at how the world sees their own societies through the prism of Shakespeare,” said Ms. Shaw, of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

That has raised some controversy, with a number of artists recently calling for the Globe to cancel a planned performance of “The Merchant of Venice” by the Israeli theater company Habima, which has performed in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“By inviting Habima the Globe is associating itself with policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theater company,” said a letter in The Guardian that was signed by the director Mike Leigh and the actress Emma Thompson, among others. In response the Globe has said the festival is a “celebration of language,” not “nations and states.” It is also featuring a performance of “Richard II” by the Palestinian company Ashtar Theater.

The festival arrives during a painful economic retrenchment across Europe that has drastically cut into government grants for the arts. In Britain the Arts Council’s government funds have been cut by 20 percent; many smaller groups have lost all their financing. “When we won the Olympics, we weren’t in the same position we’re in now,” Ms. Sinclair, of Arts Council England, said.

But, she added, the program should make it clear how important the arts are to the world’s perception of Britain — and Britain’s perception of itself.

“The range of activity that we’ve got to offer shows that we really are a contemporary-art nation, as well as having this extraordinary heritage we can hook into,” she said.

After the last athlete has gone home, she added, “we want to convey the sense that the Olympics is over, but the arts aren’t.”