The Return of the Fiat Cinquecento

Fiat 500, Cinquecento, 1957

The Fiat Cinquecento, originally designed by automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro–famous for the De Lorean and Alfa Romeo–was recently introduced to the American driving public. The Fiat 500 originally hit Italian streets in 1957 and was the quintessential Italian driving machine. www.fiatusa.com

We Are Handsome, The Memoirs

"This season, We Are Handsome takes you to the far reaches of your imagination, your minds eye, your memory. The Memoirs collection inspires thoughts of vacations past, memorable experiences and those moments in life when time seemed to stand still, just for an instant." Jeremy Somers from We Are Handsome, on the new collection for the Australian swimwear line, entitled The Memoirs. www.wearehandsome.com

[Craft, Utility and Luxury] Serum Versus Venom

Serum Versus Venom (SVSV), which was created in 2003, as a "interconnectedness of craft, utility and luxury" is re-launching after several years in hiatus. SVSV is built on a philosophy called Futurecraft - an "ideological framework for creating high and sustainable value in an over-saturated consumer landscape by colliding elements of hype modernity with traditional product development philosophies, techniques and values." www.serumvenom.com

[OPENING] Nancy Grossman: Heads

"They speak to the malice and subservience of both psychology and worldly conflict. Though the works are often rendered blind and mute, they still allude to the role of the silent witness amid cruelty and disorder." MoMA PS1 in New York presents Nancy Grossman: Heads, a solo exhibition that focuses on the artist's evocative head sculptures. On view May 22, 2011 - August 15 www.ps1.org

Three Way: A Trilogy of Vintage Erotica

"It's rarely a bad idea to show some sex films. I mean...really. This is a small series and is intended, certainly, to entertain. But it's also intended to investigate both the fantasies and realities of sexual representation — that uncomfortable space where we so often find a huge gap. When you place a slick, erotic daydream like Camille 2000 against the gritty reality of A Labor of Love, the difference becomes all the more stark. And then there's The Wild Pussycat, a masterpiece of what-the-fuck-is-this-ism. It combines erotic scenes with some pretty rough sadism — but somehow becomes an intense, unintentional black comedy instead of a just another crappy 60s sexploitation picture. Combined, I hope the three films illustrate some of the perils and positives of depicting sex, and raise questions about how, or if, anything has ultimately changed. Stay tuned for 'Three-Way Redux: A Trilogy of Contemporary Erotica,' coming soon." — Joel Shepard, Film & Video Curator, Three Way: A Trilogy of Vintage Erotica is showing the weekend at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. www.ybca.org

[ON VIEW] The Portraits Richard C. Miller

Richard Crump Miller was a true American working class photographer. From photographing airplanes for service manuals during WWII, to his snapshots of the construction of the Hollywood freeway–and all the way to his unique, saturated carbro prints of celebrities, assignments for various magazines, and covers of the Saturday Evening Post, Miller is a photographer who has captured the pathology and false paradise of the American dream. Miller's photographs ooze with a tenderness of a country still in the cocoon of its innocence.  Moreover, Miller's iconic portraits of James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Giant show not only a human side to celebrity, but the boredom suffered in the manufacture of our idols.  Richard C. Miller -- Portraits is on view at the Craig Krull Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica until June 11. www.bergamotstation.com

Shunga: Erotic Art in a Comparative Context

Series: The Prelude to Desire, 1799, Utamaro

It was a time when Japan was ruled by military dictators called Shoguns and much of the East was just large swaths of bucolic countryside, with flowing grass, and a certain mysticism you can only associate with "the Orient."  For centuries it was like this. Seemingly perfect and serene. The artistic output from this time is extremely recognizable: ornate woodcuts painted on scrolls, called ukiyo-e, that depicted the quotidien routine of Japanese life: work, play, love, theater, history, and  pleasure.  Shunga, a Japanese form of erotic art, that most think was deemed immoral, but was actually morally accepted, was common and many artists, without risking their reputations, dipped their pens in this type of ink. It was all the same–work and sex–it still followed a classifiable aesthetic of the quotidien. It begs the question–what did you do last night?

Series: The Prelude to Desire, 1799, Utamaro

This weekend, the University of London's School of Oriental and African studies will hold a workshop and a list of speakers on the topic of Shunga art.  Talks are ranging and include introductions on the history of Shunga art  to how to present and curate Shunga art. The talks are free and is being held at the Brunei Gallery May 20 and 21.  www.soas.ac.uk/

Marc Swanson: The Second Story

Marc Swanson, Untitled Boxer, 2010

Marc Swanson constructs sculptures out of found iconographic sources, from taxidermy to tattoos, fabricating them from culturally-loaded materials so that the resulting sculptures in both form and content reveal the conspicuous constructedness of our personas in the modern mediated world. For example, taxidermy forms relating to his own father’s fantasy of an outdoorsy hunter’s life—one his dad never really lived but simulated—are overlaid with the glittered mirrored surfaces associated with the demimonde of the after-midnight nightclub world the artist inhabited for many years.

Marc Swanson, Untitled Black Fighting Bucks, 2009

Swanson’s allusions often refer simultaneously to both the austere, rarefied, and serious history of minimal art and the legacy of cheesy metal and self-consciously decadent glam rock bands. In stating the equal importance of both in his work, Swanson makes viewers aware of the complex negotiations between high and low culture in everyone’s lives. An exhibition, curated by Bill Arning, Director, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston opens this July. Marc Swanson: The Second Story–July 2 to October 9, 2011, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston–www.carmh.org

Nino Migliori

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Nino Migliori, Il tuffatore, 1951

Nino Migliori's photography is the epitome of a definitively Italian cultural movement during postwar Italy called neorealismo, or neorealism. Its the stark black and white photography of an Italy that seems to sizzle to the touch. Whilst Migliori captured still images of Northern and Southern Italy's street life, neorealism can also be exemplified with film–for example, Vittorio De Sico's 1948 classic The Bicycle Thief.  Nino Migliori, who was born in Bologne in 1926, is still alive and well–a new exhibit Nino Migliori "Neorealism" opens this july at the La Mar de Musicas Festival in Cartagena, Spain. Nino Migliori "Neorealism–July 11 to August 31 at the Palacio Molina–www.lamardemusicas.com

James Franco by Adarsha Benjamin for Pas Un Autre

Test polaroid of James Franco for the first issue of Autre Quarterly, the print edition of Pas Un Autre. Shot earlier today in New York by the brilliant Adarsha Benjamin–styled by Paloma Perez–make-up/hair by Jordan Bree Long. Shot on location at the KDU Studios in Brooklyn.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want

Love Is What You Want

"People like you should fuck people like me," reads one her famous neon sign installations.  "Good smile, Great come," reads another.  Tracey Emin, a celebrated contemporary English artist, who has a retrospective of sorts opening today in London, is labeled a "wild child" of the art world with no chance of taming.  Her neon scribbles are honest and personal, and speak of the post modern human condition on a profound level.  Emin has had her fair share of hard knocks–growing up poor, raped at 13, and an abortion of twins at 18–so now, with her trademark lopsided smile and sexy glint in her eyes, she's appropriately getting back at this fucked up mess we call a world–in a beautiful way.

Good Smile Great Come

Emin's rise to prominence culminated with a special exhibit at the Tate Gallery in 1999, in which she presented her unmade bed in the museum exactly as it was in her home–after spending countless suicidal days in it following a fight in relationship.  Yellowed sheets, cigarette butts, stained underwear, and condoms strewn about the bed was a shocking, visceral site to behold–a strange reminder of the fragile, intricacies of the human psyche.  A famous photograph, a self-portrait of the artist herself, from a gallery show I've Got it All Now (2000) - displays Emin clutching bank notes and coins into her crotch - an analytical critique for man's unquenchable desire for money.

"Oh Christ, I Just Wanted You to Fuck Me, And Then I Became Greedy, I Wanted You To Love Me."  from a Tracey Emin Installation

The exhibition, Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want, opens today at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre in london and features painting, drawing, photography, textiles, video and sculpture, in works that are "by turns tough, romantic, desperate, angry, funny and full of longing." Seldom-seen early works and recent large-scale installations are shown together with a new series of outdoor sculptures created especially for the Hayward Gallery.

On view at the Hayward Gallery May 18 to August 29, 2011 - find tickets here.

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[FILM] Pere Portabella - A Survey

Francisco Rabal and Silvia Pinal in Luis Buñuel's VIRIDIANA.  Credit: Janus Films.  Playing 4/24 - 4/30.

In conjunction to the retrospective of the painter Joan Miró, the Tate Modern in London is showing a survey of films by the Catalan director Pere Portabella. His films, many made alongside his frequent collaborator Luis Buñuel, are distinct, revolutionary testaments to individual freedom and liberty in the ugly face of tyranny–namely General Francisco Franco.  "Portabella's radical experimentation with the limits and conventions of image, sound and genre is echoed in his eloquent critique of state repression and political indifference. His use of structural materialist devices to loosen the bond between image and referent serves to focus the viewer's attention on their role in the political and cultural processes of the circulation of meaning." On view at the Tate Modern until July 31, 2011. www.tate.org.uk

Eduardo Chillida's Rebellion Against Gravity

The limbs of Eduardo Chillida's (1924-2002) sculptures were monolithic gangplanks to nothingness - fingers that never touch - concrete testaments to humanities eternal, unrequited connectivity. His metal and stone sculptures, for which the Basque sculptor and former soccer player is most famous for, are like beautiful ruins, much like the labyrinthian formation of air-ducts after a building is blown away by a hurricane.

"My work is a rebellion against gravity."

Chillida had a romance with Space - nothingness wasn't really nothingness at all, but a disassembled puzzle waiting to be put together. Eduardo Chillida in the early 1960's engaged in a dialogue with the German Philosopher Martin Heidegger. When the two men met, they discovered that from different angles, they were "working" with Space in the same way. Heidegger wrote: "We would have to learn to recognize that things themselves are places and do not merely belong to a place," and that sculpture is thereby...the embodiment of places." This June marks the beginning of a large retrospective of Chillida's works at the Maeght Foundation in France. Almost 140 works are on display: 80 sculptures and 60 works on paper that include some Chillida's brilliant multi-media collages and drawings. On view June 26 to November 13 at the Maeght Foundation - www.fondation-maeght.com

The New Woman International

Germaine Krull by Eli Lotar

Images of flappers, garçonnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, and trampky—all embodiments of the dashing New Woman—symbolized an expanded public role for women from the suffragist era through the dawn of 1960s feminism. Chronicling nearly a century of global challenges to gender norms, The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s (University of Michigan Press) is the first book to examine modern femininity's ongoing relationship with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' most influential new media: photography and film. You can find the book here.

Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams

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Victor Brauner, Romania/France 1903–66, Loup-table (Wolf-table) 1939, 1947, Wood and taxidermied fox

This June marks the beginning of a unique, expansive exhibit of surrealist artwork in Queensland, Australia. The Gallery of Modern art in Queensland, a land far from the birth of surrealism, is borrowing "the core" of one of the finest and largest collections held at the The Musée national d’art moderne in at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Its a rare occasion in that the collection rarely leaves Paris.  The exhibition presents more than 180 artworks by 56 artists, including paintings, sculptures, ‘surrealist objects’, films, photographs, drawings and collages. Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams is on view June 11 to October 2 at the The Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland - www.qag.qld.gov.au.

PAUL THEK: Diver, A Retrospective

Paul Thek: Diver, a Retrospective is the first retrospective in the U.S. devoted to the legendary American artist Paul Thek (1933–1988). A sculptor, painter, and one of the earliest artists to create environments or installations, Thek was first recognized when he showed his sculpture in New York galleries in the 1960s. These early works, which he began making in 1964 and called “meat pieces,” resembled flesh and were encased in Plexiglas boxes that recall minimal sculptures. With his frequent use of highly perishable materials, Thek accepted the ephemeral nature of his works—and was aware, as writer Gary Indiana has noted, of “a sense of our own transience and that of everything around us.” With loans of work never before seen in the U.S., this exhibition is intended to introduce Thek to a broader American audience. On view at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles - May 22 to August 28 - website.

Warhol Worship: Aloof Self Portrait Goes for $38.4 Million

In 1963 Andy Warhol was on the cusp of fame when patron of the arts Florence Barron commissioned a painting that would become a seminal work of art in a nascent pop art movement. Barron purchased the self portrait, in which Warhol photographed himself in a photobooth and silkscreened the image onto a four panel canvas, for $1,600 - in installments. After a heated 16-minute bidding war the self portrait was ultimately won by an unnamed European collector who agreed to pay the $38.4 million.