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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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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The green lawns surrounding the Menil Collection in Houston will never be the same. After months of excavating, they are now home to three huge and rare Michael Heizer "earth sculptures." It is the first time a major work of Heizer's -- described by Menil director Josef Helfenstein as "the most under-recognized major artist in America" -- has been unveiled in America since the opening of Dia Beacon five years ago.

The new installation was no easy feat, combining the egos of two major art world luminaries: the museum's architect, Renzo Piano, and Heizer, a loner who rarely leaves his home in the Nevada wilderness. (He communicated with the museum by phone.)

Each sculpture is 50 to 60 feet long. Along with Double Negative -- a work that came two years later -- they are the culmination of Heizer's efforts to make sculpture that "removed" substance rather than adding to it. The other six in this now wildly famous Nevada Depression Series were made of wood. They have since disintegrated back into the Nevada desert. Heizer's great work -- nearing completion in eastern rural Nevada -- remains City, one of the largest contemporary earthworks projects ever constructed. (It's about the size of the D.C.'s National Mall.) But the artist, who Helfenstein describes politely as "not a friend of too many human beings," does not welcome visitors. So the new installations give his works something quite rare: accessibility. Maybe Heizer will now finally become "recognized." Even deservedly popular. --DAVID HAY

(Photos: George Hixson)

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The connection between a Paul Frankl mirror, a Karl Springer glass chandelier and the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal is not immediately obvious, but when the designer Alexander Gorlin was asked to create a vignette using the works on offer at this weekend's 20th Century Two-Day Modern sale at Sollo Rago, suddenly these disparate elements came together. A number of top designers, such as Amy Lau, Juan Montoya, and Steven Sclaroff, took the challenge, but Gorlin's timely take on Spitzer's indiscretion stands out. Gorlin transformed his 200 square-foot blank canvas into a room at the Mayflower Hotel and called it "Client 9," casting a pair of male and female Leo Sewell sculptures as the supposed sex-seeking New York governor and his infamous Jersey call girl. A Jean Royère daybed covered with a white goatskin is well placed, calling to mind fancy things that seem, well, a little cheap. If you look closely, you'll see the face of the man is a dartboard. And as stationary and erect as it is -- one can't help but notice -- it makes quite the easy target. --LIZ MCDANIEL

SOLLO RAGO
"Modern Masters" on view April 5-11
204 North Union Street
Lambertville, NJ

20th Century Two Day Modern Sale
April 12-13
Doors open at 9am

(Photo via wynnphoto.com for Sollo Rago Auctions)

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An impressively large and youthful crowd streamed down 21st Street for the opening of Piotr Uklanski's first Gagosian gallery show last Thursday, and wandered through the exhibition's corkscrew layout with expressions of bewilderment and wonder. "I feel like I'm in a haunted house," said one woman, walking into a dark room filled with gold-tinseled figurines of Polish Cathedrals.

The show, titled Bialo-Czerwona ("White-Red"), displays all of Uklanski's most endearing qualities -- his bombast, wicked humor, and perverse take on pop cultural iconography. A soaring rainbow of crockery rises up a wall opposite a fascistic aquiline statue; a raised brass fist stands surrounded by blood-spattered canvases. But unlike Summer Love, Uklanski's recent Polish western film, Bialo-Czerwona never feels contrived or jokey. The fascination with Polish identity -- a subject Uklanski has never before addressed so directly -- creates an unlikely continuity that delights even as it haunts. --NATHANIEL RICH

March 27 to May 17
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.741.1717

(Photos via gagosian.com)

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The artist Daniel Bozhkov once made an enormous crop drawing of Larry King by clearing a field of plants in the shape of the famed interviewer's face.

Then he flew a plane over the entire field and filmed his handiwork. When the footage found its way to CNN, they aired it -- during an interview with Friends actor Matthew Perry -- in a moment of eccentric brilliance.

Bozhkov, who also created a cologne dedicated to Ernest Hemingway (Eau d'Ernest, naturally) is back with another project, this time in Berlin. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sigmund Jähn's trip into space (he was the first German to do so), Bozhkov recently renamed Skulpturenpark Sigmund Jähn Park for 7 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes -- the precise amount of time Jähn was in space. He then opened a kebab stand and served kebabs every day for the week of March 16 to 23. The project also involved a life-size sculpture of Jähn, a series of hand-painted billboards, and an elaborate surveillance system.

Bozhkov was born in Bulgaria and is currently living in Italy, where he is a Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome. His permanent home is New York, and he exhibits at Andrew Kreps Gallery. At once dreamy and cerebral, Bozhkov is an irrepressible force in the art world. And a very original one. --DAVID COGGINS

(Images via andrewkreps.com)

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Carla Bruni, the former model, current pop star, and new wife of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, joined her husband this Thursday for France's first state visit to England in more than a decade. Sarkozy's theme was building a new brotherhood between the nations but, on the eve of the pair's arrival, the venerable British auction house Christie's dampened la fraternité with the announcement that it was selling a nude photo of Bruni. The piece is part of a larger collection going on the block, including nudes of Kate Moss, Gisele Bündchen and a fully clothed Igor Stravinsky.

(Carla Bruni)

The auction has provoked outrage from Sarkozy, who is trying to shed his image as a "Bling Bling" president who cares more about strolling with his beautiful wife than finding answers to Frances economic malaise. Christie's is sticking to its guns, claiming the photo is a tasteful piece of art featuring one of the world's most beautiful women. Rather than back down, Bruni went on a press offensive, appearing with the royal family in a stunning outfit, more Jackie O than Oh My. And while the auction may have slowed Bruni's transformation into the Gallic Princess Di, it certainly won't hurt sales of her new album.

(Gisele Bündchen)

The auction is scheduled for April 10th at New York's Rockefeller Plaza. The photo, a gelatin silver print shot in 1993 by world-renowned photographer Michel Comte, is expected to fetch $3-4000.

Register for the auction

(Kate Moss)

(Lot 24, "Reclining Nude" by Mark Gertler)

Even with the anemic value of the US dollar, some of the most reasonable auction prices are of dead British artists despite the fact that their work sells in robust pounds. Consider that Sotheby's sale of 20th Century British Art in London on March 18 is full of choice prospects in the four-figures. Bargains, however, are only good if the pictures are good, and the sale contains excellent drawings and paintings by class English acts like Walter Sickert and Henry Lamb.

Bloomsbury painters are represented with a Vanessa Bell interior of Charleston, her country home, and a series of Roger Fry landscapes and portraits. For those who prefer sharper-edged modernism, there's always Sir Peter Blake -- still very much alive -- whose 1991 collage for the I.C.A.F poster contrasts such bearded heavyweights as Cezanne and Van Gogh with the equally imposing face of Jayne Mansfield. --David Coggins

(Lot 155, "Painter and Critics" by Alan Lowndes)

(Lot 31, "The Garden Room" by Vanessa Bell)

(Lot 189, "Original Collage for the 1991 I.C.A.F. Poster" by Sir Peter Blake, R.A.)

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Box Elder County, Utah, has become the latest oil battleground -- this time pitting art enthusiasts against local officials. A proposed drilling area less than 5 miles from American sculptor Robert Smithson's massive Spiral Jetty (1970) threatens the serene open landscape integral to this work, not to mention noise pollution and the effect of toxic chemicals on the surrounding wetlands. The protection of Smithson's earthworks masterpiece -- a 1,500-foot-long coil made of basalt rocks and earth that winds into the Great Lake -- is championed by Dia Art Foundation, a nonprofit organization, as well as The National Trust for Historic Preservation. What's their plan of action? A letter-writing campaign directed at the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordination Office. If dissenting words escape you, a letter template is available at diaart.org; start stamp licking. --TASHA GREEN

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Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), is largely remembered for his luminous Ocean Park paintings from the 60s and 70s. Those California landscapes epitomize ethereal grace and subtlety, and are some of the definitive abstract painting of that era.

Miller 22, 1951

But a new exhibition in New York is showing another side of the great painter. From Jan. 25 to April 5, the Grey Gallery is presenting rarely seen early work from 1950-52, when Diebenkorn was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. Sponsored by the G.I. Bill, Diebenkorn moved to Albuquerque, embraced the desert landscape, and produced a number of rich canvases that are surprisingly mature. He favors a palette of rust and red, and dense compositions interrupted by bold snaking lines. And we see hints of Diebenkorn's training as a cartographer in a series of small ink drawings -- the expressive lines could be a cross between abstracted maps and ambiguous cartoons.

Untitled (Albuquerque), 1950

Diebenkorn said he chose New Mexico because he "liked the look of the place." Judging from this body of work -- both lyrical and expansive -- it's easy to see the attraction. --DAVID COGGINS

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You don't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool, rifle-polishing hunter to appreciate wooden decoys, the innocent looking birds that float in ponds and lure ducks and geese to their doom.  Prized for their effectiveness for over 150 years, they're now appreciated as classic examples of American folk art -- and command prices to match.  As part of the Americana auctions this week at Christie's (Jan. 18) and Sotheby's (Jan. 19), you'll find all manner of waterfowl, from the canvasback to the golden plover, with some prices going north of $500,000.

Pair of hen and drake pintail decoys, mid-western, circa 1920

Christie's is teaming up with Guyette and Schmidt, Inc., the world's largest antique decoy firm, and their 70 or so offerings include a remarkable carved Canadian goose in the swimming position. Made by a certain Nathan Cobb Jr. in Virginia in the 1870's, it's expected to gather $400,000-600,000.  A 19th Century eider drake from Deer Island, Maine, built so it couldn't look more harmless to its eider friends, is estimated to reach $400,000-500,000.

Hollow carved Canada goose, Cobb Island, Virginia, circa 1870

Meanwhile over at Sotheby's, you can find a pair of hen and drake pintails, with elongated necks and original paint, for an estimated $50,000-70,000.  A running yellowlegs, by noted Massachusetts maker Elmer Cromwell, dates from 1910. It's concise and expressive, and like all the birds on sale, it's safe to assume it won't get near a duck blind anytime soon. --DAVID COGGINS

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At this year's Design Miami, the rigorous and often gleeful questionings of form and function that have lately taken over the design world continued along two lines: among newly commissioned work shown by the event's 26 galleries (up from the 21 at last year's gathering) as well as archival pieces, many from the formerly accursed period known as postmodernism, which has lately been undergoing a kind of retro vogue. The newly minted Friedman Benda (New York) highlighted Wendell Castle's plastic lounge chairs from the seventies, but visitors were busy aiming their Canons at three pieces off in a far corner from Ron Arad's early eighties One Off series: a turntable, receiver, and pair of speakers, all tricked out in unforgiving concrete.

Over at Demisch Danant, another New York gallery known for its adventurous ways, the focus was on avant West German designers from the same period, particularly Stefan Zwicky, whose Domage a Corbu, grand confort, sans confort (1980) is a take on Corbusier's LC2 Petit Chair rendered in, you guessed it, concrete.

It was impossible not to wonder whether some intrepid collector would snap up the Arads and the Zwicky as a set--that unforgettable hair-blown-back Maxell ad (which famously featured an LC2) cast in cement.

It was also impossible not to get the point: The Corbu chair's status as an icon of sensible, enduring modernist form--and even the idea of enduring modernist form--has become stolidly monumental. And was it ever really that comfortable to begin with? Such interrogations might have seemed radical in 1980. These days, they're amusing and refreshing--like popping a mix tape from college into the cassette deck, for old times' sake. --MARK ROZZO

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