It's hard to imagine wanting to be indoors anywhere in Paris right now, but the Grand Palais is an exception, now that it's unveiled Richard Serra's massive new work, "Promenade." The second annual commission of the Monumenta program, an initiative by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication to bring international work to the Art Nouveau iron-and-glass landmark exhibition space, "Promenade" is a series of five massive steel plates arranged on the axis of the building's nave. (Don't worry, fashion editors: Serra's masterpiece will only remain until June 15; Karl Lagerfeld will return with his next Chanel collection, as usual, during fashion week.) Each of Serra's 17-by-4-meter planes, placed to take up almost the entire span of the hall, rests at an ever-so-slight angle. Despite the fact that five 73-ton slabs of steel can't actually move, walking around and through them creates a series of optical illusions that make them seem as if they just might keep leaning.

Serra has lately focused more on horizontal and curvilinear shapes -- most notably in "Matter of Time," recently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the phenomenal "Torqued Ellipse" series--so working with a sequence of verticals in an interior space already as rigidly symmetrical as the Grand Palais was "an enormous risk and a challenge," he said. It paid off: the effect of "Promenade" is utterly arresting -- which is no small feat under the webbed glass dome that usually eclipses the art it shields. Serra is rigorously site-specific in his designs, and "one can't really predict scale in a context until the object actually arrives in the context," he said. "It wasn't until the fifth plate went in that I could take a deep breath. I can say now that this piece is as fulfilling to me as anything I've ever done."

"Promenade" and Richard Serra will be celebrated while the work is on site, with a series of colloquia and events that include screenings (Serra's own films, documentaries about him and works by Chantal Akerman), concerts (Serra pal Philip Glass will perform a solo piano concert on June 7), and dance workshops. (Could Serra ever imagine his work inspiring, say, an afternoon of interpretive movement for kids aged two to seven? "You can never predict how your work will be received," he said, though he does think that kids bring the least amount of baggage to art.)

In addition, his 1983 sculpture, "Clara Clara," named for his wife, has just been re-installed at the Tuileries, where it was originally shown after the ground at the Georges Pompidou museum proved to be too unstable to hold it. And, most movingly for the artist, this week also marked his induction as a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. It's not his first medal, "though I think it's my most prestigious," he said. "I'll wear this one," he added, before taking the podium and having the green-striped ribbon tied around his neck.

"This country made me a sculptor," he told the assembled audience with tears in his eyes, recalling his first introduction to the work of Giacometti and Brancusi in Paris when he was still a painter in 1964. Well, France clearly returns the love. "France needs Richard Serra," said Christine Albanel, the Minister of Culture and Communication, as she looked out over Promenade from the upper gallery as the assembled guests guzzled champagne. "Look at this piece! Just look at it!"

Yes, why don't you? And be quick about it. You've only got another five weeks. After that, the future resting place of "Promenade" is unknown. --ALEXANDRA MARSHALL

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Summer doesn't officially start until June 21, but with warm weather across the nation, it's time to head to the coast and ride the waves -- in true surf style. Actor Court Young and a team of designers are reviving the "Go Ride a Wave" surfwear line of board shorts and T-shirts. The line was created in the late 1970s by Martin Sugarman and marked a shift in surf apparel with its bright colors and bold patterns. With easily recognizable designs and an unassuming style, the clothes became popular with beach dwellers, quickly dotting the shores of Southern California and Hawaii.

The concept of surfwear began when small businesses designed shirts, shorts, wetsuits, and boots for local surfers. The industry has expanded beyond surfing communities, with some companies like Ugg, Billabong, and Quicksilver growing to an astronomical level and appealing to the mass market. Young's line will be designed and manufactured in the U.S. using organic cotton, and will be sold at Live, a new men's store by Gerard Guez on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles starting in August. Whether you're riding a wave or just relaxing on the beaches of Waikiki this summer, the cool and functional "Go Ride a Wave" line may be a worthwhile addition to your warm weather wardrobe. --BRANDON FELDMAN

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If the crowd last night at Christie's Impressionist and modern art evening sale resembled a pastoral congregation, next week's offering of contemporary art should bring back all the maneuvering, sweating, and yearning of Caligula.

Last night Christie's kicked off a two-week marathon of major evening sales in New York that the big auction houses hope will see as much as $1.8 billion trade hands -- a sum the Wall Street Journal astutely pointed out would trump the $1.2 billion J.P. Morgan paid for Bear Stearns. The question on everyone's mind going into May Madness in the art market is whether or when booming art prices will be slapped silly by global economic turmoil.

Last night's celebrity-less affair indicated that the art market might not be going bust but it may be mellowing -- at least in the more polite sphere of Monet, Rodin, and Pissarro. For the first time in four years, Christie's failed to meet its presale estimate, pulling in $277 million against a target of $287 to $405 million.

Still, Christie's set six records last night, including a spot-on $41.5 million for a Monet. Shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos (the grandfather of the Paris-Mary Kate-Lindsay lothario) sold the painting at Christie's in 1988 for $12.6 million to last night's seller, the Nahmad family, auction stalwarts and megadealers with a Geneva warehouse stuffed with thousands of artworks.

Next week will be the true bellwether, with Christie's expecting to break the world auction record for a work by a living artist with Lucian Freud's portrait of a very portly woman, estimated to make $25 million to $35 million.  The record, previously held by Damien Hirst (he of the $100 million dollar skull), is currently held by Jeff Koons whose big pink shiny heart fetched $23.5 million last November. (That's just a fraction of the reported $80 million privately paid this spring for one of Koons's iconic Rabbits as part of a half-a-billion-dollar art transaction involving the estate of legendary dealer Illeana Sonnabend.)

Christie's biggest potential sale this season has been sent to Hong Kong -- a 14-foot tall Warhol Mao the auction house hopes will privately fetch a patriotic $120 million. That leaves Sotheby's with the star lot of the season -- a Bacon triptych it expects might make $70 million, on par with the most expensive piece of real estate  in New York right now -- the former gallery of troubled dealer Larry Salander.

When I recently toured the Met with Salander for an article in this month's issue, he was outraged over what he sees as the blatant market manipulation inflating the prices for contemporary art. He may well go ballistic if the price paid for a Bacon trumps the value of the palatial manse he could never really afford; particularly if Hirst (he of the tank-encased shark that Salander sniffs at) ends up buying the artwork -- a distinct possibility given that the enfant terrible-turned-mogul paid $33 million for a Bacon self-portrait last season.  --KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

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For anyone who was young -- or at least felt young -- in the eighties, the recent news that Polaroid would soon discontinue all production of instant film was akin to being yanked out of summer camp early. What would happen to all the memories? Fortunately, the folks at savepolaroid.com are on the case. The organization's goal is to find another company to keep churning out the insta-presto film packs. Help convince Ilford or Fuji to take up the torch by posting your favorite polaroid snapshots on Save Polaroid's Flickr page, or just peruse the gallery for a nostalgic reminder of what picture taking was like before the age of the four gigabyte memory card. --SARA JAMES

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If you view a leisurely lunch of escargots and roast lamb as the height of civilization -- and there's no reason not to -- then you can look forward to the opening of Benoit, Alain Ducasse's new bistro, where the cooking feels like Paris about a hundred years ago. After taking over the original Benoit in the French capital, where the bistro's been an institution since 1912, Ducasse has established an American outpost in Midtown in the former space of the grand dame of French haute cooking, La Cote Basque.

Bistro cooking isn't about surprise -- it's about executing the classics, and Benoit delivers with a terrine de foie gras, and an expertly turned lobster ravioli. You can also have a roast chicken for two, or pike quenelles, a dish Julia Child always loved. Finish with a wheel of Camembert and a chocolate soufflé and you probably won't need to eat again for at least a day. --David Coggins

60 West 55th Street
New York, NY 10019
(646) 943-7373

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(Photo of Derby contender Pyro via yahoo.com)

If you're going to a Kentucky Derby party this weekend and you want to sound more like Jimmy the Greek than Derek the Schmuck, here's all you need to know: Forget the favorites. Big Brown -- at 3-1 the shortest price in the field -- breaks from the far, far outside pole. He's more likely to see the Churchill parking lot than the winner's circle. After all, no one has cashed a ticket on a horse coming out of that post since your great grandpappy bet on Clyde van Dusen in 1929. The trendy filly pick, Eight Belles, may earn you some feminism points from the julep-swilling ladies at your fete, but this gal will leave your wallet lighter. Three-year-old fillies just don't run well against a herd of tough colts. My pick is Pyro, the horse with the baddest-ass name in the field. He ran like a mule in his last race, but it was at Keeneland on the funky new Polyturf surface, a mixture of recycled rubber that many horses don't take to. Back on real dirt, he'll be back to his old self, passing tired horses in the stretch. And at odds of around 10-1, he'll have you humming "My Old Kentucky Home" to yourself long after the party's over. If you want to really impress folks, play two longshots with him in exactas -- Denis of Cork and Z Humor, both of which have been training beautifully and are sitting on monster performances. --ERIC BANKS

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(Photo via latimes.com)

I received an e-mail message today from my friend Dion Neutra, the 80-something son of architect Richard Neutra. Dion said he was glad that his dad -- who passed away in 1970 -- "did not live to experience this loss." He was talking about the early-morning blaze that engulfed and destroyed what was left of Neutra's Laemmle Building, a landmark at the northwest corner of Hollywood and Vine going back to 1933.

"The drastic remodels of the Laemmle started already in the early 40s," Dion wrote, "but I always had this hope that the building could have emerged from all the junk with which it had been shrouded for years." Indeed, what was left of the Laemmle Building -- which Neutra built for Carl Laemmle, the president of Universal, and once housed the Coco Tree restaurant -- wasn't all that: Until this morning, it was the home of the Basque nightclub ("4 RED VELVET private VIP rooms"!), along with DanDee Shoe Repair and the Bloodshot Tattoo parlor. In a way, Laemmle was a perfect expression of where this stretch of the boulevard is now, uneasily pitched between regeneration (Sam Nazarian's Starck-designed S Bar and Katsuya are mere steps away) and the kind of picturesque sleaze that Tom Waits celebrated here. As the Los Angeles Times noted, the fire is the fifth in the area in recent weeks. (The paper, however, did not notice the connection between Basque and its surprising architectural provenance.)

Of course, anything truly Neutra-esque about Laemmle was lost years ago in the ebb and flow of this well-traveled Hollywood crossroads. But it is still striking to contrast its fate with that of Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, which Christie's will offer at a blockbuster auction on May 13, with an estimate of $15-25 million. "What a great anchor this could have made to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame," Dion mused, ever mindful of modernist buildings -- his father's and others -- that have fallen to wrecking balls, mud slides, or suspicious fires. --MARK ROZZO

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(David Lynch, Moby, Laura Dawn, Daron Murphy)

"I didn't want to say this over the phone, but the universe sometimes makes it difficult for people to get here." My wife, Laura, and I had just arrived backstage at the rec center of the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. And our host, a very nice man named Bob, was apologizing for the fact that we'd had to endure 13 miserable hours of economy airline travel to find ourselves in this spot.

Laura's a singer and I'm a guitarist. We'd been invited to perform a few songs with our friend Moby (that bald-headed electronic music guy) at a special weekend to raise awareness of the benefits of Transcendental Meditation, hosted by film director David Lynch. If you're a fan of David Lynch, you might know that he is hugely into TM and has been promoting its cause through an eponymous foundation for the past few years.

For those of you who've never thought to explore any of the other 10 dimensions, Transcendental Meditation is basically a relaxation technique involving the mental repetition of a personal mantra. TM was created by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi -- the same guy who people like the Beatles, Donovan, Mia Farrow, and Mike Love traveled to India to study under in the 60s. Neither Moby nor Laura nor I had any real familiarity with TM (well, my hippie parents did have me try it briefly as a kid in the late 70s, but that's another story). But Lynch, who's a pal of Moby, thought his music captured the spirit. So he asked us to come, and there we were.

The Maharishi University of Management sits quietly among the tree-lined streets of old-fashioned, all-American Fairfield. We were staying out past the corn, just a couple of miles away, in an area called Vedic City, where houses are built to the specifications of "natural law" (kind of a TM feng-shui). The school is incorporated right into the old town. And except for the huge, gold-topped, flying-saucer-like meditation domes on the campus front lawn, Maharishi U. looks like any humble, Middle American college.

"Backstage" was a small garage in the parking lot behind the rec center whose perimeter had been blocked off with crime scene tape -- kind of like a location from Twin Peaks. Inside, David Lynch sat smoking a cigarette, fabulously suited and coiffed, like a handsome Hollywood version of a 50s MIT professor. He was surrounded by admiring members of the University, prepping him for an imminent Q&A session with the crowd of a thousand or so students and visitors who'd gathered for the weekend.

Hearing Lynch answer questions about his work and spirituality inside the auditorium, it was immediately apparent that his devotion to Transcendental Meditation is passionate and sincere. He explained that every human being possesses a "well of creativity and bliss waiting to be tapped," and TM is the way to get there. None of the audience members bothered to inquire as to how that well of bliss has translated into some of the most unsettling and psychologically violent films in recent popular culture. So I asked Lynch about this later in the weekend. "That's just me," he explained. "You don't have to go to a dark place to tell a story about one." Well there ya go!

After Lynch, world-renowned quantum physicist John Hagelin took the stage for an hour-long lecture on TM's ability to connect its devotees with something called the Unified Field, basically the primordial ooze of the universe. He showed pictures of brain scans from well-adjusted people who've practiced TM (nice brains) and from sociopathic criminals with mental problems who've never meditated (brains full of creepy-looking black spots) and explained how TM is the only way for us to engage the entirety of our mental faculties. Until this point, I'd always thought at least the better part of my mind had been functioning. Now I'm certain that is not the case.

Later that night, we took in a performance by the legendary psychedelic troubadour, Donovan, who sang hits like "Mellow Yellow," "Season of the Witch," and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" while playing a green acoustic guitar emblazoned with the image of a proud Celtic stag. Just before his performance, Laura and I played some songs with Moby, who caused quite a stir by using the "F" word while onstage. The kids loved it, proving that the "F" word never goes out of style, even amongst the enlightened.

The most surreal and fantastic moment of the evening, though, came when David Lynch was told that the kids from Maharishi High were having their prom that night, and had to miss the concert. So Lynch volunteered to go down to the prom and crown the King and Queen himself. Donovan and Moby and Laura and I went with him. And after Lynch performed the crowning, we played a blues jam for the kids, who seemed alternatively delighted and confused.

Despite the out and out weirdness of these events, I must say without any irony that the citizens of Fairfield are seriously on to something. Not only did these people know how to have a good time, but they were some of the nicest, smartest, and most vibrant folks I've met in a very long time. And whether or not it has anything to do with Transcendental Meditation, an outsize portion of them just happened to be conspicuously good looking. Deserving of further investigation? I think so.

Thank you, universe, for allowing us to get to Fairfield. Something tells me the journey has only just begun... --DARON MURPHY

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There was one trend glaringly absent at this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan -- sustainable design. As the rest of the world is going green, powerhouse furniture manufacturers, it seems, have been slow to adapt. One exception is Cappellini, the quirky Italian company with a history of inventive design. While it hadn't greened its entire line, the company took its first few baby steps toward a sustainable future with the launch of a new project named Cappellini Love.

New York designer Stephen Burks created the project's first four pieces. Two are small tables made from recycled, shredded magazines and newspapers, which are assembled with a papier-mâché technique that uses a non-toxic, glue-like hardener.

A vase and bowl made from fragments of recycled glass and silicone round out the collection. All the pieces will be handmade by struggling artisans in South Africa. Burks has a history of working with people in the area, helping to create better sources of income, in between more glamorous jobs for companies like Calvin Klein, B&B Italia, and Missoni.

Burks says the project grew out of an idea he had "for recycling all the piles of magazines I had lying around, which I figured would make great raw material" -- proving once again that one man's garbage can be another man's treasure. --TIM McKEOUGH

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Unless your name is Billy Ray Cyrus, your choice of hairstyle is a serious, sometimes nerve-wracking responsibility. And like any other modern man beholden to concerns not only of image but also abiding fears, warranted or not, of inevitable pattern baldness, I usually felt more comfortable quickly and cheaply snipping just a little off the top. Always better to have something to work with, I say, without resorting to Propecia or a Giuliani.

But the stylists -- yes, call them stylists -- at L' Atelier de Frederic, the mercifully quiet men's section of the Frederic Fekkai Salon on 5th Avenue, have found a way to alleviate this and most every other hair care concern. Reached by a dedicated, discreet elevator, the salon consists of but four sumptuously leathered barbershop-style chairs in a private nook not unlike most downtown bistros -- white tile walls, black trim, dark wood, stainless steel, and flat screen TVs (careful here; Troy was playing).

There, over the course of two and half hours last week, Dominick Sedita put together the most carefully considered snip and shave this writer has ever encountered. He prescribed a cut based on the interplay of facial features, hair texture, and a cowlick that has lasted further into adulthood than my mother ever predicted. He slavishly applied the finest cleansers, recommending the restoring qualities of the More line for any fellow paranoids. The shave -- a languid step-by-step process first with the grain then against -- was, in its old world decadence and tempo, the grooming equivalent of a chef's tasting menu.

Sedita prides himself on the mixture of the guy-friendly barber style (read: free Scotch) and the full-service nature of modern styling. "It's a symbol of [my customers], not just what they're wearing. I will get a feel for what their job is like, or their personality," he said of the process. "You're not just walking in, sitting in a chair, and saying 'Give me a number three,' before they buzz your head." No need for a buzzer when the man making all the decisions can wield a scissor like a surgeon and make any fears of sub-par hairstyling vanish like so much 5 o'clock shadow. --NICHOLAS MOSQUERA

L' Atelier de Frederic
712 5th Avenue, on the 4th floor of Henri Bendel
212-753-9500

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