DAILY NEWS, VIEWS, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS
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Well, it's back and it's big. A couple of years ago, New York's Second Biennial of the performance arts, featured a hundred artists. Performa 09, which opens on November 1 with a Futurist dinner organized by Jennifer Rubell, will feature about 170 artists over its three-week run. "We have 11 commissions. We have 40 curators, working on different parts of the show. We have many more venues. But it's not just the festival, it's what we're producing," says Performa's director RoseLee Goldberg.
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Anthony Haden-Guest does Frieze Week, taking in Damien Hirst's new paintings at the Wallace Collection, The Age of Marvellous curated by Joe La Placa (below), Ed Ruscha at the Hayward, Ugo Rondinone and John Bock at Sadie Coles, Jonas Burgert at Haunch of Venison, The Museum of Everything, and the Kandinsky Prize at the Louise Blouin Foundation.

The former Velvet John Cale represented Wales at this year's Venice Biennale showing a multi-screen audio-visual installation; the month before Jarvis Cocker played with his band for a week in a Paris gallery, La Chappe, improvising on scribbled ideas from gallery goers; and a work by Hiroshi Sugimoto adorns the cover of U2's 'No Line on the Horizon'. So it's a given that relations between the art world and Pop music is entering a new phase. But just what? ... read more...

The artist Dash Snow's death at age 27 from a drug overdose has sparked a firestorm of schadenfreude, snide criticism and bile from bloggers and genuine uncompromised grief from the people who knew him. Here, some of Snow's friends have assembled material in the hope that describing their own feelings and pain over the loss of a warm, bright and beautiful young artist, father and inspiring figure will serve as a counterpoint to comments made by people who never knew Snow and tragically never wil... read more...

The survival of Carsten Holler's creation The Double Club is an art world success story with an up-to-date subtext. When the club opened in the innards of a Jack-the-Ripper-period warehouse behind the Angel subway station in London last November even drum-beaters were cautious. Yes, Holler's Slides had been both a critical and a popular success at Tate Modern, but that had been in 2006, the zenith of the boom, and this new elaborate project was opening in the teeth of a perfect storm. ... read more...

These are strange days just about everywhere and in New York the strangeness has been taking its own distinctive forms. "There are fewer people on the streets," said Phoebe Eaton, a writer. "There are fewer parties." A usually brash collector told me, "The world has turned cruel." A friend in the East Village says there has been an outbreak of early 80s Mad Maxness in the neighbourhood streetwear. And why were so many local antiques and Pop knickknacks stores closed mid-morning? "Just the recess... read more...

The Last Gasp, a show of 250 small Polaroid works now up at the Haven Gallery in New York's South Bronx, is so called because Polaroid manufactured their final batch of stock last year, shortly before filing for bankruptcy. For many artists and photographers, this is no small thing. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, the New York-based portrait photographer, was moved to describe its demise as "the worst tragedy since Hiroshima." ... read more...

The stand-out show this year for Anthony Haden-Guest include Ilya Kabakov in Moscow, Louise Bourgeois at the New York Guggenheim (below), Tim Noble and Sue Webster at Deitch Projects, New York and Cao Fei at the Serpentine, London.

So just what did we learn at Art Basel Miami? Well, for one thing we learned - yet again - that an art fair beats the holy hell out of an auction as the proper spot to take the temperature of the business at any one given moment. After all, auction estimates represent reality as it was several months before the fact, which in times like these can seem as lost in the mists of time as the Bronze Age. At Art Basel art stars who had under-performed at the November sales - Hirst, Murakami - were seen... read more...

Art Basel Miami Beach opens tomorrow, 4 December, and among the highlights of the fair's programme this year is Art Projects, a series of 7 installations by individual artists from 7 countries, including Olaf Breuning and Ai Weiwei. These will be displayed in the public areas around Miami Beach, and free shuttle buses will be on hand to take visitors on a 90-minute tour of the projects. For more information click here. Next week we'll be publishing reports from the fair by Jerry Saltz and Anthon... read more...

A new film by the Berlin-based artists RothStauffenberg was shot in a former hotel in Mozambique, now run as a 'village' of 3,000 squatters. It last functioned as a hotel for a New Year's Eve party which is recreated in the film entitled ''What happened on New Years Eve 1980/81?'

This weekend a new art event launches in Hay to coincide with the Hay Festival's winter weekend of literary events. The Art Festival at Hay and the Institute of Art and Ideas will be presenting a series of talks and debates, focusing on the impact of the credit crunch on the art world. Speakers include Saatchi Online contributor Anthony Haden-Guest (below), artists Alison Jackson and Gavin Turk, and the critic and arts tv presenter Ben Lewis. To find out more and to book tickets click here. ... read more...

With almost half the lots on offer at the recent contemporary sales in New York going unsold, Anthony Haden-Guest reflects on the impact the economic 'Perfect Storm' is having on the art market - including interviews with Simon de Pury (below), chairman of auctioneers Phillips de Pury, the only auction house to actually make any money at the sales, and the founder of the Lisson Gallery in London, Nicholas Logsdail. ... read more...

'Suprematist Composition' (below) by the avant-garde Russian master, Kasimir Malevich, was the trophy lot at last Monday's evening auction at Sotheby's, New York. The estimates on the sale had been agreed during the summer and the line on the Malevich lot read "Estimate on request". But a bullet-like symbol alongside the lot number was a new wheeze, denoting that there was an "irrevocable bid" on the work. Such a bid is made in advance of the auction and it not only cuts an auction house's expos... read more...

A blobby entity, a sea anemone of raw light, was pulsing moodily in a bell jar. I wondered just what I was looking at? "You're looking at a star really," said Paul Fryer, the artist behind this creation. "Effectively a star in a jar."

At Zoo, Paradise Row had a narrow space with cut-ups on the floor supposedly based on a work by Wyndham Lewis. A naked Russian was in a cage, yelping, and taking an occasional question. Somebody asked him about the future of the markets. I would say that the artist, yowling pathetically, his face pressed flat, made much more sense than the financial press on this issue. Good old Alternative high jinks, you might say, but the gallery was also doing gangbusters business selling amongst other works... read more...

Anthony Haden-Guest reports on the Art Bridge Finance Group, a new kind of art fund offering loans to younger galleries so that they can support their artists and avoid seeing them poached by the bigger blue-chip galleries just as they become successful.

The new Saatchi Gallery opened its doors for the first time on Tuesday evening, with celebrities and art world stars arriving in their droves for the art event of the season. The 70,000 sq ft gallery was packed by 7pm with guests such as Daria Zhukova, Julian Schnabel, Lily Allen, Mica Parish, Tracey Emin and Ruby Wax (below) taking in the gallery's inaugural exhibition of Chinese contemporary art. ... read more...

It was clear that the Moscow openings of the Garage and the Gagosian exhibition at the Red October Chocolate Factory were going to make for a few days that would be heady, even by the credit crunch-defying standards of the Upper Art World. The Garage, a Contemporary art space funded by Dasha Zhukova, the significant other of Roman Abramovich, and Larry Gagosian (below) had their opening dinners on consecutive evenings. And this attracted a pool of art world movers - from museum folk like Robert ... read more...

The winner of the September Your Studio competition is Esther Yva from Bonn in Germany. Anthony Haden-Guest, Saatchi Online correspondent, comments: 'Esther Yva's drawings remind me of the works of Egon Schiele. I'm amazed that something so sophisticated can be created online.' The Saatchi Gallery will donate £500 in the artist's name to a hospital of her choice. You can create now your entries for the October Your Studio competition, the winner of which will be announced on Friday 31 October. ... read more...

Dan Asher fits awkwardly into today's coolly professional art world, which doesn't really bother him much. Asher, who has a show at New York's White Columns and who recently had some work at Wilkinson's in London, is an unreconstructed bohemian, a beat survival, an in-your-face hippy and a remarkable artist, whose work includes spikily enigmatic drawings - Peter Doig bought an 80s drawing a few days ago - photographs, paintings, sculptures and film. ... read more...

'Five huge heads by Ugo Rondinone stood outside Badrutt's Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. They are fabricated from aluminum varnished to the colour of peanut butter and look like the friendly monsters you might see in a children's book. Beside them was a white AMG parked on a low platform. A sign noted that the car was from an "edition." A guard explained that, yes, it comes in an edition of 200 and that each costs 170,000 Euros.' Anthony Haden-Guest reports from Art Masters, an annual summer e... read more...

The winner of the August Your Studio competition is Moti Sagron. Chris Moore, Saatchi Online Magazine China correspondent, comments: 'Moti Sagron, from Tel Aviv, plays with our expectations of space and his series of works created on Your Studio are also very attractive.' The Saatchi Gallery will donate £500 in the artist's name to a hospital of his choice. The critic and Saatchi Online magazine contributor Anthony Haden-Guest will judge the September Your Studio competition; the winner will b... read more...

Anthony Haden-Guest reports from Beijing on the art exhibitions taking place to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games.

A long wall painted with officially sanctioned graffiti glides by as you approach Beijing's 798 Art District - 'No. 4. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING' one section crows. In English. The largest of several Art Zones to have budded in the city over the last few years, 798 is gated, and security was hovering in the form of twenty-somethings in short-sleeved white shirts. This is China and now with the Olympics the world's hugest nation is on tippy-toed alert. ... read more...

For people unfamiliar with the Hampton's scene (such as myself) Robert Wilson's 15th Annual Watermill benefit just shy of Southhampton seems a good, if not slightly hectic introduction. Through the verdant front entrance and up the tiered landscaping where Asian performance artists were hiding in the shrubs (members of u theatre of Taipei?), one was immediately confronted by a pair of newly commissioned, big heavy bronze Jonathan Meese sculptures resting on some checker board lawn. One guest was... read more...

One of the most telling passages in La Riviere Gentille, the third segment of Brigitte Cornand's absorbing documentary about the moment-by-moment studio-table-bound life of Louise Bourgeois, shows her making a picture of two heads. The 96-year old artist begins by drawing two profiles, swiftly and deftly. She then mucks it up by splodging paint on one of the cheeks. 'Oh, do stop!' you want to shout but Bourgeois daubs relentlessly on until suddenly a tongue shoots from one mouth to another and ... read more...

Liliane Lijn's current exhibition at Riflemaker (until 5 July) induces that rarest of art reactions: Wonder. The works are made from Aerogel which she discovered at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley, where she had a residency in 2005. The material was first used as insulation to protect instruments in space. It's now used to collect cometary particles and interstellar dust from beyond Mars. Yes, stardust. ... read more...

At the main fair it was all 'happy, happy, entertainment', with Brad Pitt (below) and Roman Abramovich spotted browsing along the aisles. Houses look set to become the New Collectibles, collectors of Old Masters are moving into Contemporary art and, in case you thought art fairs had stripped art of any chance of being a meditative experience, the Beyeler Foundation have created a small private chapel for the contemplation of works by Rothko and Giacometti. ... read more...

Some triumphalism - okay, naked glee - was to be expected in the wake of the New York auctions. Both Christie's and Sotheby's took out full page ads in the New York Times to trumpet their respective World Records. And since then there have been plenty of in-your-face megashows - Robert Therrien at Gagosian, Lee Bul at Lehmann Maupin, Urs Fischer and Gavin Brown at Tony Shafrazi - to keep the balloon in an updraft. 'Three Painters', the show that just went up at David Zwirner on West 19th Street,... read more...

Cartoonists and caricaturists have seldom been made to feel comfortable within the avant-garde art world. Since content became acceptable, a few cartoonists have been granted access, notably David Shrigley, and artists such as Adam Dant and Glen Baxter, both of whose work is inspired by cartoons, captions and the vocabulary of cartoons. Another is Gary Panter, described by artist Mike Kelley as 'the most important graphic artist of the post-psychedelic (punk) period'. Panter, now in his eighties... read more...

Whilst the big contemporary auctions were the star attraction of Contemporary art week in Manhattan, it was also the week that Barbara Gladstone opened a second gallery in Chelsea (was Gladstone concerned to be opening a new space in suddenly difficulty times? "No. Times are fine," she said crisply), Jake and Dinos Chapman unveiled their show at L&M Arts, AVAF gave a performance at Deitch Projects in front of Debbie Harry and Maurizio Cattelan, and a new show by Dennis Oppenheimer opened attract... read more...

Anthony Haden-Guest visits Moscow's version of New York's Chelsea, home to the city's biggest photo studio, Eleven, various art and design-related enterprises and such crucial contemporary art galleries as M&J Guelman Gallery, the Aidan Gallery, XL and the youngest, Proun. It also provides studio space for eleven artists, including Alexey Kalima, an ethnic Russian who bills himself a 'Chechen artist'. In 2005 he won Russia's first state-sponsored prize for visual art with 'Chelsea vs. Terek', an... read more...

At PULSE a woman artist, Jenny Marketou, was showing part of a video about art collectors aged between 8 and 14, called I LOVE CANDIES BUT MY PASSION IS COLLECTING ART. Then I watched a cartoon short by Laurina Paperino, an artist from Trento, Italy. At one stage a monstrous two-headed figure appears. You realize that this is a (wholly unlike) representation of Jake and Dinos Chapman. A bomb explodes, both heads lie on the ground, gushing blood. A Jay Jopling figure (wholly unlike) stalks on and... read more...

Colin de Land (below), the subject of a new book from Powerhouse, was one of those excessively rare art dealers who didn't merely earn himself a niche in art history but operated with such a distinctive touch that he seemed to exist within the art world as much as an artist - a Conceptual artist in de Land's case - as a gallerist. Anthony Haden-Guest talks here with the filmmaker John Waters who was also one of de Land's artists: 'Collectors loved Colin. He looked dead! But dead and sexy. And so... read more...

After all the Asian and Russian activity in the February sales in London, I was keen to see more of this much talked-up new cultural globalism in action. And the Victoria and Albert museum, home of such highly charged reliques of Colonial times as Tippoo's Tiger, suddenly seemed a weirdly appropriate venue. Marah Winn-Moon of HSBC let it be known at the press view for the V&A's exhibition 'China Design Now' that this the first of an HSBC-sponsored series called Cultural Exchange. So perhaps an A... read more...

That Baird Jones, whose death was discovered when emergency workers broke down the door of his apartment in Manhhattan's East Village on February 21, was a peripheral figure in New York's art world can hardly be denied. He was however the hardiest of peripherals. Perky and bright-eyed, always wearing an annoyingly ant-Art Chic navy-blue baseball cap, Jones was an omni-present partygiver and party promoter, a curator of art exhibitions, mostly by "celebrity artists," and a gossip column regular. ... read more...

The four lightboxes are circular. One is a deep red and carries the image of a leaping puma in white, which is the icon of Puma, the sportswear giant. The Adidas icon, which is also white somewhat resembles an open lily. It's on a pink disk. A black Nike Swoosh sits on lemon-yellow. And a white Reebok icon is on black. Each lightbox also bears the same slogan: MADE BY SLAVES FOR FREE PEOPLE. They are the work of PSJM, the nom de guerre of Pablo San Jose and Cynthia Viera, two Madrid artists who ... read more...

Anthony Haden-Guest asks whether last month's London auctions offer any indicators as to what might be lurking in the shadows ahead. He talks to dealers Harry Blain and Lawrence Luhring about the future of the art market which Luhring describes as 'very tenuous'.

Andy Warhol began the magazine Andy Warhol's INTERVIEW in 1969 and, typically, Warhol claimed that he started it as a way to get invited to movie screenings and opening parties, but it soon developed into a remarkable publication. After Warhol's death in 1987 Interview was acquired by Brant Publications, the publishing house owned by the industrialist and art collector Peter Brant. Brant has now taken over complete control of Brant Publications, Ingrid Sischy, the editor for many years, has depa... read more...

'Matters of Opinion' is a new series of interviews we're going to be publishing in which Anthony Haden-Guest talks to key figures in the art world about topical issues. To launch the series he talks to Dave Hickey (below), one of the most highly regarded critics in the world, about the extraordinary expansion of art world, the astonishing prices artists are now fetching, and whether the boom is here to stay. ... read more...

'John Richardson's multi-chambered apartment at the Greenwich Village end of Fifth Avenue is kind of a time machine. One moment you are at the high end of the Ecole de Paris - drawings, print, bits and pieces by Braque, Leger and Picasso, including loads of tauromachia - then you are whooshed right into the louche giddiness of Andy Warhol's Manhattan.' The indefatigable biographer of Picasso discusses the third volume which takes the story up to 1932, some twenty years before Richardson (below... read more...

Tim Noble and Sue Webster (below) take on UK department store John Lewis; the owner of Aston Villa donates £5 million to London's National Portrait Gallery; Russian heirs seek compensation for paintings in the Royal Academy's exhibition; new report reveals art market prices went up by 18% in 2007; Getty Images goes on sale - plus the latest prizes, and comings and goings in the art world. ... read more...

What should artists do when they find that their work has been appropriated? Anthony Haden-Guest reports on the latest example of plundering, this time by the department store John Lewis whose most recent advertising campaign 'borrows' from the work of British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster (below).

In her current solo show at London's Fred Gallery, Cathy de Monchaux has gone from making dark and sensual work celebrating aggressive sexuality to an all-white show protesting violent politics.

'After running into Anthony Haden-Guest, the Grand Pooba of art gossip ("My gosh, did Prada ship you in from New York?", "No, London", "I'm just glad that Hezbollah let you free"), we broke off for a fancy affair involving a four-course white wine lunch at Milan's fine and fancy 'da Giacomo', where I sat next to an exhausted Rehberger (sleepless in Milan, hard at work), comedian Florian, and the tall and fetching Mark van Huisseling from Vanity Fair Germany. Anthony Haden-Guest was sitting at th... read more...

A documentary film, an exhibition and a book of photographs taken at his memorial service (below) celebrate the life and work of Andy Warhol.