Selma Hayek at the Gucci Ceremony for Women in Cinema

68th Venice Film Festival – Tonight MADONNA presented the 2011 Gucci Award for Women in Cinema. Headed by Gucci's creative director FRIDA GIANNINI the jury consisted of the actress ROBIN WRIGHT, actress VALERIA GOLINO, JAMES FRANCO and film journalist GIULIA D'AGNOLO VALLAN. This years award was given to the Tree of Life actress JESSICA CHASTAIN. Photo by ADARSHA BENJAMIN

The Persistence of Collage

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Linder: Detail of Untitled, 1978.

The new Arts Council Collection touring exhibition Transmitter/Receiver traces some of the uses of collage in British art from the first influences of the Parisian avant-garde, in the early work of Ben Nicholson and British Surrealists Eileen Agar and Roland Penrose, through to present day practitioners such as Steve Claydon, David Noonan and Idris Khan. Bringing together over 50 works it includes traditional collage on paper, alongside painting, sculpture, film and slide projections, all drawn from the Arts Council Collection. Transmitter/Receiver: The Persistence of Collage is now on view at its first stop at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in the UK until November 6.

Under the Big Black Sun

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Film still from experimental filmmaker Bruce Connor's Marilyn Times Five.  As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, MOCA Los Angeles will present Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981, on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA from October 1, 2011 – featuring works by more than 130 artists, this exhibition is the most comprehensive survey to examine the exceptional diversity of art practices in California during the mid- to late 1970s.

Art Meets Rock

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RICHARD KERN, Nirvana, Courtney Love
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left: WILLIAM ENGLISH, Vivienne Westwood in Sex, 1975, courtesy of Maggs Brothers, London right: URS LÜTHI, Un'isola dell'aria, 1975, particolare, 28 fotografie, cm60x50 cad, Collezione Fabio e Virginia Gori
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IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD, A Rock'N'Roll Suicide, 1998, Live performance, Photo: David Cowlard courtesy Kate MacGarry, London

Museo Pecci di Prato in Florence, Italy presents an exhibition entiled LIVE! Art Meets Rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years. Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE!offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films. Artists include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, William English, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle and more. The exhibition will be accompanied by Live!, a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini. LIVE! Art Meets Rock view at the Museo Pecci di Prato until September 16.  

Elite of the Obscure

Harry Gamboa, Jr, Cruel, 1975. Super-8 film. Showing Willie Herrón III

This September, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987, the first retrospective to present the wide-ranging work of the Chicano performance and conceptual art group Asco. Geographically and culturally segregated from the still-nascent Los Angeles contemporary art scene and aesthetically at odds with the emerging Chicano art movement, Asco members united to explore and exploit the unlimited media of the conceptual. Creating art by any means necessary — often using their bodies and guerilla tactics—Asco merged activism and performance and, in doing so, pushed the boundaries of what Chicano art might encompass. Asco: Elite of the Obscure includes nearly 150 artworks, featuring video, sculpture, painting, performance ephemera and documentation, collage, correspondence art, photography (including their signature No Movies, or invented film stills), and a series of works commissioned on occasion of the exhibition. Asco: Elite of the Obscure  is on view at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art September 4 to December 4.

Rebel on Certosa Island

As part of the Venice Biennale in Italy, James Franco's site–specific film installation, entitled Rebel, will open on the island of Certosa.  Rebel is a collaboration with artists Douglas Gordon, Harmony Korine, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young that "unites the myth-making allure of cinema and contemporary art, and acts as interrogative ode to Hollywood iconography." Rebel will be on view on Certosa Island from September 4 to November 27. Photo by Adarsha Benjamin

Appropriated Imagery: Richard Prince + Jackson Pollock

Guild Hall of East Hampton presents Richard Prince “Covering Pollock” featuring 27 new works that are focused on Jackson Pollock, a leader of the Abstract Expressionist group. Richard Prince uses appropriation to distill and disrupt America’s compulsive fascination with iconic brands, fame, and lifestyle. This is the first public viewing of “Covering Pollock” and the first museum exhibition of Richard Prince’s work on Long Island. On view until October 17. 

[EXHIBITION] Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

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The two most famous artists to have come from Mexico, the lives of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have attained a mythological status. A major touring exhibition, which comes first to Chichester from Istanbul and Dublin, brings together works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera for the first time ever in the UK. On view now until October 9 at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, U.K. 

[FAST] The Porcupine Racing Motorcycle

Rod Coleman on the AJS E95 'Porcupine' in 1954

The Bonhams Quail Lodge auction opens today in Carmel, California which presents a nice collection of rare automobiles, motorcycles and 'automobilia.' Lots include artist Frank Stella's 'Polar Coordinates' design, 1979 BMW M1 Pro-car and the pictured above Porcupine racing motorcycle - one of only four built. Bonham's Quail Lodge auction is on today August 18 and tomorrow the 19th.

[LONDON] Power of Making

Left: Blond Lips, Charlie Le Mindu using Hairdreams. Image by Manu Valcarce - Right: Sandra Backlund knitted dress, © John Scarisbrick

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Crafts Council celebrate the role of making in our lives by presenting an eclectic selection of over 100 exquisitely crafted objects, ranging from a life-size crochet bear to a ceramic eye patch, a fine metal flute to dry stone walling. Power of Making is a cabinet of curiosities showing works by both amateurs and leading makers from around the world to present a snapshot of making in our time. On view September 6 to January 2, 2012.

[books] MAXIM'S, MIRROR OF PARISIAN LIFE

"The mythic Parisian restaurant Maxim's—owned and operated for the past twenty-five years by iconic designer Pierre Cardin — has hosted patrons from royalty and celebrities to courtesans and starving artists since opening its doors more than a century ago. The history of this legendary restaurant is captured through stunning photographs, and also features a selection of Maxim's most successful recipes." A new book out now by Assouline....

[LIQUIDATED] ZEVS Solo Show in Tokyo

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Venerable French street art mainstay ZEVS' first solo show will open in Tokyo at Art Statements Gallery this September 2 and will be on view until September 23.  ZEVS twisted, dripping logos and corporate iconography is obvious statement unto itself and have become as recognizable as the logos themselves. 3-2-12 Ebisu-minami Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0022, Japan

Dalí: Mind of a Genius

The aphrodisiac telephone by Salvador Dali

SINGAPORE: Explore over 250 artworks which highlight the creativeness of Dalí across different mediums, including bronze sculptures, rare graphics, furniture, gold jewelry and crystal pieces in three themed areas – Femininity and Sensuality, Religion and Mythology, Dreams and Fantasy. Highlights include Dance of Time I (Dalí's famous representation of melted clocks), Woman Aflame (sculpture uniting two of Dalí's obsessions - drawers and fire), Spellbound (a huge painting featured in Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same name) and the Mae West Lips Sofa (inspired by actress Mae West's sensual lips). Now on view at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore until October 11. 

[BOOKS] PATTI SMITH & TOM WAITS

Dancing Barefoot: The Patti Smith Story by author Dave Thompson – Dancing Barefoot is a measured, accurate, and enthusiastic account of Smith’s career. Guided by interviews with those who have known her—including Ivan Kral, Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, John Cale, and Jim Carroll—it relies most of all on Patti’s own words. This is Patti’s story, told as she might have seen it, had she been on the outside looking in. You can purchase the book here. 

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Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters, edited by Paul Maher, Jr. – Tom Waits on Tom Waits is a selection of over fifty interviews from the more than five hundred available. Here Waits delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs. Available on Chicago Review Press

LYNDA BENGLIS Retrospective at the MOCA Los Angeles

This is Lynda Benglis' first retrospective in 20 years–this one held at the MOCA Los Angeles.This travelling exhibition spans the range of Lynda Benglis's career, including her early wax paintings, her brightly colored poured latex works, the Torsos and Knots series from the 1970s, and her recent experiments with plastics, cast glass, paper, and gold leaf. It features a number of rarely exhibited historic works, including Phantom (1971), a dramatic polyurethane installation consisting of five monumental sculptures that glow in the dark, and the installation Primary Structures (Paula's Props), first shown in 1975. Alongside her sculptural output, Benglis created a radical body of work in video, photography, and media interventions that explore notions of power, gender relations, and role-playing. These works function in tandem with her sculpture to offer a pointed critique of sculptural machismo and suggest a fluid awareness of gender and artistic identity. They also contribute to an understanding of the artist's objects as simultaneously temporal and physically present, intuitive, and psychologically charged. On view until October 10 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.