Spotlight: Tom's Sachs

Now featured for sale in the Gagosian Gallery's new retail venture on madison Avenue. The work of art costs $12,000 a piece and was produced in an edition of five. Sachs plays on the idea that the Hermes Kelly bag, also priced up to $12,000 in materials like lizard or ostrich skin, is "the holy grail of handbags." But he demotes its status by fashioning the bag from hardware store supplies, commenting on how our society values the name brand.

KAWS for Vogue

The November 2009 issue of French Vogue includes an incredible spread called "GRAFFI-COUTURE" starring model Raquel Zimmermann with background designed by artist KAWS.

Bravo Art Series

The latest in the wave of reality TV Bravo wraps taping on Monday for their next big competition based show... and it's all about ART! Receiving assignments each week breakout talent creates works for group openings. Evaluated by gallery go-ers, qualified judges, and the art world elite, the untitled art project is produced by Sarah Jessica Parker's company, Pretty Matches, and Magical Elves of Project Runway and Top Chef fame. Sure to include flinging paint and lots of drama the series is scheduled to air come spring.

Drive-Through Art Museum: Winding our way through history

NOW: The new Automobile Museum planned for Nanjing, China enables visitors to drive their cars into the building, and up a ramp to the roof. Intended to mimic the sensory thrill of driving the architects at 3Gatti dedicated their design to the car.

THEN: Plans for the Automobile Museum are not the first example of architecture designed with cars in mind. The Guggenheim Museum's radical spiral rotunda was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's love of the automobile. Wright's intention was for visitors to take an elevator to the top level and allow gravity to help descend the ramps while admiring the museum's art collection.

Murakami x McG x Dunst

Japan and Hollywood have more in common than one would think! Our newest favorite collaboration is a 4-minute film from Takashi Murakami, Japan's King of Pop, directed by Tinseltown's McG (Terminator Salvation) and starring the young Kirsten Dunst, who plays a singing Majokko Princess. Set in Akihabara, the signature bright colors and anime theme is nothing short of wild and magical. Murakami has succeeded yet again in eroding the great divide between high and low art...and he looks fabulous as a flowerball.

Irving Penn: 1917 - 2009

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. - Irving Penn

Mickalene Thomas: Odalisques

With an established following for her sparkling paintings, Mickalene Thomas' "Dress Codes" at The International Center for Photography highlights a new dimension of the artist's work: photography. Initially the preliminary studies for her paintings the photos pay homage to the Blaxploitation era. Swathed in colors, fabrics, and prints the strong, black, female subjects of the "Odalisques" series depict the artist's reinterpretations of racial stereotypes. Stimulating viewers, the images are set against lavish backdrops inspired by the 1970's.

Pop Life x Tate

Now on display at the Tate Modern "Pop Life: Art in a Material World" riffs on Andy Warhol's saying "Good business is the best art" considering his legacy the inspiration for subsequent pop artists who have engaged with mass media since the 1980's to cultivate a signature “brand”. Exploiting channels that engage audiences both in and outside of the gallery these artists prove that culture and commerce is not a betrayal of the values associated with art, but rather an affirmation and an inherent association. Beginning with Warhol’s late works, the show includes highlights from eighties and nineties pop art, such as reconstructions of performative, ephemeral, and installation works: Keith Haring’s former Pop Shop in New York's SoHo, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s shop in Bethnal Green, and a re-staging of Damien Hirst’s '92 performance at Cologne’s ‘Unfair’ in which identical twins sit beneath identical spot paintings.