Street art strives to shock the bourgeoisie, but as suburban kids keep picking up spray cans and graffiti becomes more like urban decor than urban blight, the middle classes are becoming blasé about artists’ attempts to anger them. “The Disenchantment of the Bourgeoisie,” London-born, Berlin-based Anton Unai’s second exhibition at CircleCulture, Berlin’s top “Urban Fine Arts Gallery,” plays with this conundrum. The exhibition, which opens tomorrow, consists of a site-specific installation and relics from the artist’s unauthorized conversion of an abandoned tattoo parlor into a showcase for his art. Unai converts rusty sheet metal and discarded newspapers into canvases paying homage to literary references, African iconography, and artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Sir Howard Hodgkin. Our verdict? It’s most likely to delight viewers from all social strata.—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Anton Unai, courtesy of CircleCulture

As Liverpool revels in its status as 2008’s European Capital of Culture, Tate Liverpool is launching a sparking retrospective of works by Gustav Klimt, the Viennese painter whose decadent Art Nouveau style has been the gold standard for opulent art since the twentieth century began. In “Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900,” the first exhibition in Britain devoted to the founder and leader of the Vienna Secession, Tate Liverpool charts the widespread influence that Klimt’s use of gold leaf, gilt, and sensual lines has had on architects, designers, and other artists. Major paintings and drawings, including his 1918 painting of a tiny infant snugly enveloped in a mound of brilliantly patterned fabric and his 1904 painting of a radiant gold mermaid embracing another sea sprite, are on view alongside work by the architect and designer Josef Hoffmann, whose gold- and pearl-encrusted belt buckle is one of the stars of the show. It would be the perfect accessory to wear with the Klimt-inspired couture that John Galliano launched this season at Dior.—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Gustav Klimt, “Baby (Cradle),” 1907. Courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington ©. Gift of Otto and Franciska Kallir with the help of the Carol and Edwin Gaines Fullinwider Fund.

Manolo Blahniks, Alexander McQueens, and other masterpieces of shoe design artistry littered the entrance to the opening of Pipilotti Rist’s video installation at Art Basel a couple of nights ago. The reason? Rist had posted a handwritten note in German and English urging viewers to “kiss your neighbor! And leave your lovely shoes by the door!” Obedient art fans entered the purple velvet-lined room, lay on red sofas, and watched a video of hippies rolling on the floor that was being screened on the ceiling. A day or two later, it seemed that a few non-flower children were hoping to top up their shoe selection from the stash by the door. When I emerged from Rist’s ode to love, I found another woman covetously clutching one of my Costume National wedges. After rescuing my shoe from her and hearing her mutter something (probably not very hippie-ish) in Italian before slinking away, I turned to the guard, who shrugged at the barely averted injustice: “Art,” she said, which seemed to be her cryptic suggestion that maybe I was not toeing the Rist line by refusing to share my shoes with the stranger.—Ana Finel Honigman

Paying six to eight figures for big-name contemporary art is de rigueur, but those with considerably less disposable income floating around can take heart: New York’s seventh annual Affordable Art Fair (AAF NYC) is on today through Sunday at Chelsea’s Metropolitan Pavilion. Developed to appeal to younger buyers and emerging collectors, this year’s fair features original prints, paintings, photography, and sculpture from over 75 galleries in 12 countries—75 percent of which will sell for from $100 to $5,000. “It’s always been thought of as a way to break down those barriers between people who are interested, but maybe aren’t that experienced buying artwork, and the gallery experience, which for some can be a little intimidating,” AAF NYC director Laura Meli explains. Also included this year: free lectures, printmaking and sculpture demonstrations, and a children’s art studio. “That’s really the idea behind the fair,” Meli says, “making art truly accessible to people.”—Sarah Fones

Photo: Courtesy of Vernissage

The relationship between art and fashion can be a complicated one. Maybe an artist is inspired by a designer (à la Richard Prince and Marc Jacobs), or maybe a designer seeks intentional inspiration from art (Marc Jacobs again, as well as Zac Posen and Proenza Schouler). But at Wednesday night’s solo show for Todd DiCiurcio’s “Synthesis,” the connection was even more complex—the artist met premier art promoter Yvonne Force Villareal through his wife, Megan, a publicist at Dolce & Gabbana. Throw in Petra Nemcova as a co-host, and you’ve got a crowd that stands at the intersection between fashion and art, including Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Arden Wohl, Molly Sims, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and the odd Gossip Girls. “I loved his work immediately when I saw it, and he’s such a great guy and someone I really think will go places in this industry,” Force Villareal said. The shtick of the show was that the nearly dozen works on display had been painted from live music performances; DiCiurcio would attend a gig, quickly sketch out the band, and later put it on a large canvas. “So we’re doing the inverse tonight,” Force Villareal explained of the two bands—the Filthy Youth (fronted by “Gossip Girl” ’s Ed Westwick) and Death of Fashion—that performed around the pieces. “But I’m taking the night off this time,” DiCiurcio said. “I’ll be drinking, not sketching, for once.”—Derek Blasberg

Photo: PATRICK MCMULLAN/PatrickMcMullan.com

Artists are often stereotyped as brooding misanthropes who equate antisocial behavior with originality and integrity. And art communities are often perceived as cliquish scenes closed to the uninitiated. But London-based Matthew Stone is a real-deal artist who creates work that is unique, wondrous, and exciting precisely because it’s neither hostile nor exclusive. Stone’s photographs, films, and performances are all by-products of his complex word-of-mouth happenings, in which viewers are invited to participate the divisions between art and play, audience and artist, are all submerged into one harmonious stew. In explaining his July 5 transformation of London’s Alma Enterprises into a temporary artists’ salon/Sunday morning disco, Stone says, “We’re installing a stage throughout the entire gallery, which in a very simple way suggests that everything that occurs within the space will be an elevated performance, whether conscious or not. The different nature of the two events will allow for the different ways that artists/shamans approach knowledge.”—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Stone

Shrine builders, rejoice: Peter Philips’ premier collection as the new global creative director for Chanel makeup finally hits stores this week, and it includes a limited-edition nail polish with serious I-got-it-on-eBay
(because it was sold out everywhere else) potential. Philips, who was schooled in the art of frenzy-provoking by predecessors Dominique Moncourtois and Heidi Morawetz—the duo who unleashed Black Satin nail
polish on voracious product fiends two years ago—has created Gold Fiction, an 18-karat gold-flecked lacquer that pays homage to a gilded mirror the veteran makeup artist happened upon while inspiration hunting at Coco Chanel’s famed Rue Cambon apartment. While the color is now officially available for purchase at Chanel.com, it couldn’t hurt to start sharpening your online bidding chops.—Celia Ellenberg

Photo: Courtesy of
Chanel

The crowds massing outside Milk Gallery last Thursday may have shown up expecting yet another air-kissy art do, but once inside, the scene proved rather otherwise. For the studio’s tenth anniversary Summer BBQ & Staff Photography Show, Milk went all out, even trucking in a mechanical bull. After taking in the photos, natch, folks spilling out onto 14th Street passed the loooong wait in line for grilled goods by rubbing elbows with anyone and everyone from Sue Stemp to Russell Simmons, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld to Terry Richardson, David Schwimmer to Kirsten Dunst. And after a chorus of “La Cucaracha” by the mariachi band, Fu Manchu took the stage. What did all of this have to do with art? Not much, according to Milk creative director Mazdack Rassi. “We just wanted to do something memorable for our employees and the people who support Milk every day,” Rassi says. “A mariachi band and a mechanical bull—who’s going to forget that?”—Maya Singer

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcmullan.com

Twin events on the eve of Berlin fashion week riffed on fashion and art’s increasingly fruitful relationship. The stately Unter den Linden Strasse featured a chic vernissage garden party for Friday 13th’s “Into the Woods” group show. “Art serves as an intellectual base camp and archive of forms and ideas for fashion,” exclaims the exhibition text by former Qvest magazine editor Joachim Bessing. Over at ProjektGalerie, meanwhile, a scrappy and sassy showing of Japanese photographer Fumi Nagasaka’s film and stills of a male model in sordid cinematic scenes drew the fashion crowd’s more downtown faction. And who should we spot there but Iekeliene Stange, in Berlin to walk in Hugo Boss’ show today. Of where she chose to spend her single night in the city, she said, “Where else should one be in Berlin, rather than at an art opening?”—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Ana Finel Honigman

Taking “The Wisdom of Crowds” by The New Yorker’s business and financial columnist James Surowiecki as its point of departure, the Brooklyn Museum’s summer group show, “Click,” asks whether the general public can be wiser collectively in identifying art than any single expert. “Click” began when the museum sent an online open call to photographers, asking them to digitally submit images representing “The Changing Face of Brooklyn.” The museum then asked the site’s viewers to rank the images according to preference and also to specify their level of art knowledge. Ranging from striking architectural shots to a shot of a man mooning the camera with “gentrify this” scrawled on his posterior, the photos are now displayed according to their relative ranking by the viewers. Whatever image ultimately “wins” first place, it is clear that Brooklynites of all stripes care about art that shows off the borough’s diversity. Should their collective assessment trump the experts? The jury is still out.—Ana Finel Honigman

Photo: Marcia Bricker Halperin, “Dubrow’s Cafeteria,” 1979. All rights reserved.