News: Art fair opens, Acts of love and hate, Arrests, Damaged film
THE Frieze Art Fair opens today in London. Though Russian art collectors and museums have already bought some pieces at VIP previews, visitors can still see contemporary art exhibits, including "French Horns: Unwound and Entwined," by Claus Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, and life-size statues of street performers dressed as Che Guevara.
A French woman faces a fine of €4,500 ($6400) and a class in good citizenship after she kissed a $2.8m piece of art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. The kiss has left a permanent smudge on the canvas. Since July, employees have unsuccessfully used 30 different products to remove the smudge. "When I kissed it, I thought the artist would have understood," the woman said before the court. The owner of the all-white Cy Twombly painting is asking for $2,878,000, which will cover the cost of the painting and restoration costs. Defense lawyers have said the kiss was "a pure, intense act of love." A lawyer for the owner has said that such an act would require the consent of both parties.
A video documenting the vandalisation of several erotic works of art has been posted on YouTube. Four masked figures are shown destroying photographs from Andres Serrano's exhibition, "A History of Sex." As the vandals use crowbars to smash the glass protecting the photographs, the video cuts to lettered commentary asking, "This is art?" before returning to the destruction of the exhibit. The video is no longer available online.
Police arrested five youths (four men and one woman) for damaging a Monet piece after illegally entering the Musée d'Orsay on Sunday. One of the five turned himself in and named the others after being frightened by the media frenzy surrounding the attack. Police statements indicate the teenagers were drunk. One of the detainees knew how to enter the museum for job-related reasons.
A key scene of Tom Cruise's problem-plagued film, "The Valkyrie", will have to be re-shot after the film was damaged in a German lab. The film has already hit some controversial snags for its Hollywood treatment of a German hero: Germans are huffy about Mr Cruise acting as Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, largely because of his belief in Scientology. But the production company doubts sabotage was involved.
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