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Old Masters auctions total more than $120 million (Reuters)

Reuters - Old Masters paintings brought in more than $120 million at auction sales this week, with several works selling for more than $5 million each and records set for some artists.

NY art dealer charged in $4M fraud (AP)

AP - A New York art dealer has been charged in a $4 million fraud for selling works by Picasso, Matisse and others without informing the owner or giving him the proceeds.

Exclusive: Bones and landscapes inspire Danish queen's art (Reuters)

Reuters - Denmark's Queen Margrethe II said that painting landscapes helps to recharge her batteries in an exclusive interview with Reuters ahead of this week's opening of a major exhibition for her art.

Saudi artists test limits of expression in rare show (Reuters)

Reuters - Standing on a large floor map in a Jeddah art gallery, Hamza Serafi places a yellow sign inscribed "Caution: revolution (take 2)" over Egypt and then turns to Saudi Arabia.

Irishman makes "billion-euro home" of shredded notes (Reuters)
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Reuters - An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion euros ($1.82 billion), a monument to the "madness" he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust.

Michigan Report Shows Arts and Culture Spending Yields High Return (ContributorNetwork)

ContributorNetwork - Creative State Michigan, an annual report by ArtServe, showed every dollar spent in Michigan on arts and culture repays the state back 50-fold. According to Michigan Radio, the purpose of the report was to demonstrate to lawmakers how profitable arts funding can be. Here are details about cultural-to-business connections in Michigan.

Annie Leibovitz opens new art show at Smithsonian (AP)

AP - Photographer Annie Leibovitz says she has come back from some dark days and revived her creativity with a new project now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that marks a departure from her popular celebrity portraits.

Canaletto, Memling expected to lead Old Masters sales (Reuters)

Reuters - An early 14th century panel of the Virgin Mary, a view of Venice by Canaletto and a very rare oil on copper still life will be among the highlights of Sotheby's sale of Old Master Paintings this week.

Mexico's new public art exhibit examines 'roots' (AP)

AP - They look like images from a science fiction movie, gigantic white roots invading emblematic spots around the Mexican capital, crawling across stone plazas and snaking from windows of colonial buildings.

Smithsonian details upcoming art exhibit on gaming (AP)
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AP - The Smithsonian American Art Museum is announcing details of its first major exhibit exploring the art and evolution of video games.

5 Possible Reasons Why Madonna Thinks King Edward VIII Was "Very Punk Rock" (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - @font-face {font-family: "Times New Roman";}@font-face {font-family: "Arial";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: SectionAlthough the U.K.monarchy doesn't exactly conjure up images of spiked hair, loud music, andstudded leather jackets, Madonna thinks one former king is "very punkrock," according to the Daily Telegraph. When asked why she put Englishpunk band the Sex Pistols's 1977 anarchist anthem "God Save the Queen"on the soundtrack of her new film, "W.E." — a biopic about Wallis Simpson, theAmerican divorcée who captured King Edward VIII's heart — thepop-star-turned-filmed-director explained to the British broadsheet: "Ithought [Edward] was quite rebellious and cutting-edge in his point of viewabout life and about how to run the empire, and using the Sex Pistols was aperfect marriage." ARTINFOlists five possible reasons why Madonna thinks the notorious abdicator and Nazisympathizer was "punk rock":

Photographer Charlotte Dumas Tells the Story Behind Her Portraits of 9/11 Rescue Dogs (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - Over the past decade Dutch photographer Charlotte Dumas has fashioned a promising art career around soulful, haunting portraits of wolves, Roman Army and NYPD horses, the stray dogs of Palermo and New York, and even a blind circus tiger in an attempt to show that "the state of mankind can be read and studied by the way we relate to animals." She's succeeded critically and commercially: Sofia Coppola and the late Alexander McQueen are among many luminaries who've collected her emotive work.

Inside Dasha Zhukova's Garage, Clyfford Still Museum Preview, Fashion and Art Get It On, and the Week's Other Top Art Stories (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - The most-talked-about stories on ARTINFO, September 5-9:

To Kick Off the Year of Damien Hirst, Gagosian Will Blanket the World With the Artist's Spot Paintings (ARTINFO)
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ARTINFO - In 2012, the year of the Mayan apocalypse, an outbreak of spots is going to spread across the world. And Damien Hirst is to blame.

Take a Walk With Warhol: Celebrate the Pop Icon's Birthday With a Tour of His Favorite New York City Haunts (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - Andy Warhol moved to New Yorkfrom his native Pittsburghin 1949 and before long became one of the Big Apple’s most iconic citizens,advertising the city’s grittily experimental sensibility to the world throughworks like "Empire" and "Chelsea Girls." He was also head over heels in lovewith New York, and now it’s possible to view the city through his eyes — justin time for what would have been his 83rd birthday, on August 6 — with"Andy Warhol's New York City: Four Walks Uptown to Downtown," a newbook by Thomas Kiedrowski that traces the artist footsteps across 80 sites hedoted on. Some are no longer inexistence (others are never-realized), but most are still around —  meaning that you can pretend to be part ofthe Factory gang, meandering around Manhattan with Andy to lunch at the Odeonin Tribeca, shop at Bloomingdale's, and attend openings at the Upper EastSide's Leo Castelli gallery.The beginnings of the book came about when friends askedKiedrowski what he wanted to do during his first visit to New York. Unlike most tourists, he didn'twant to check out Times Square or see theStatue of Liberty. Instead, he pulled out a piece of paper containing a list ofaddresses of buildings having to do with the Pop artist: the Silver Factory on East 47th Street,the White Factory at Union Square,and the townhouse on the Upper East Side whereWarhol lived with his mother. Kiedrowski eventually moved to NewYork, continuing to map out Andy's New York, and making a career out of hisobsession by offering tours to Warhol sites in the city.

$20 Million Walmart Gift Makes Crystal Bridges Museum Free for Visitors, Forever (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - How will Alice Walton's megalithic Crystal Bridges museum attract art aficionados to its scenic (read: backwoods) location of Bentonville, Arkansas? Well, making admission free is one strategy. A newly announced $20 million sponsorship gift from Walmart, a company founded and owned by the Walton family, will pay for all Crystal Bridges visitors, forever. Take that, MoMA and your new $25 ticket price!

Before the Paparazzi: See Celebrity Portraits by Hollywood's Original Photographers at the National Portrait Gallery (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - Beforetoday's Internet-induced era of celebrity overexposure, paparazzi abundance, and tabloid proliferation, there was a time when film studioscontrolled the public's perception of their actors and actresses through the use ofin-house portrait photographers. London's National Portrait Gallery pays tributeto that period with "Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits," an exhibition of 70 vintage photographsfrom 1920 to 1960, on view until October 23.

Capitalism, Unclothed: Art Provocateur Zefrey Throwell on Overthrowing Wall Street With His "Naked Army" (ARTINFO)
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ARTINFO - New Yorkers pride themselves on their blasé — nothing will phase a well-trained city pedestrian. But artist Zefrey Throwell's urban intervention turned even the most stoic of heads: those of Wall Street traders. Throwell's "Ocularpation: Wall Street" saw 50 performers strip down and mime different Wall Street-related professions (traders, yes, but also janitors, secretaries, and everything in between) in a critique of the financial industry, a piece inspired by the plight of the artist's mother, a 60 year old woman who lost her retirement savings in the economic crash, and was forced to come out of retirement to look for a job.

Anselm Kiefer's World of Devastation Is Captured in the Documentary "Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow" (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - If Pompeii hadn't been excavated, if the towns and villages on the Western Front hadn't been rebuilt after World War I, and if the site of the World Trade Center had been left as it was after 9/11, they might partially resemble the ruins Anselm Kiefer constructed in the South of France. Moving from Germany in 1993, Kiefer took over the 35 hectares of the industrial wasteland La Ribaute, near Barjac, and turned the atelier into a sprawling Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art," consisting of 47 buildings, an amphitheater, bridges, caves, an underground labyrinth that invoke the guts of the Pyramids or the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps. In the concrete rooms, he installed artworks — twisted strips of metallic film, a dormitory cast in lead, a child's garment decorated with shards of glass, and other totems of catastrophe.

Caught in Flight: See Cirque du Soleil Founder Guy Lalibert駳 Photographs From Outer Space (ARTINFO)

ARTINFO - Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté is certainly used to flights of fancy, but this one was more unusual than most: a "poetic social mission" in space, on board the International Space Station. He documented the experience in a series of extraordinary photographs, which are gathered in "GAIA," just published by Assouline.