CHANEL
Bleeding for Zaha: Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld Can Only Hope to Contain Her
In an age where Damien Hirst errata have joined gold and United States government bonds in the shrinking pantheon of safe investments, can contemporary art still be dangerous?
More to the point, can contemporary art be dangerous when it's held in something of a polyurethane uterus, a haute-culture billboard designed by deconstructivist goddess Zaha Hadid, deposited on Rumsey Playfield in Central Park (after stints in Hong Kong and Tokyo), and paid for by Chanel—in these hard times is Lagerfeld really the Teutonic Karl we need?—whose iconic quilted handbag the melting plastic womb is said, implausibly, to resemble?
In a word, yes, if the traumas suffered by the Daily Transom at last night's opening party for the so-called CHANEL Contemporary Art Container—styled "Mobile Art"—are any indication. read more »
Chanel UFO to Descend Onto Central Park
If you’re strolling through Rumsey Playfield in Central Park between Oct. 20 and Nov. 9, and you stumble across a grounded UFO, don’t panic. It was sent by Chanel (not the Sci-fi Channel) as a nomadic exhibition of artistic interpretations on its classic 2.55 quilted-style handbag, named not for its price but for its debut month of February 1955. Coming off stops in Hong Kong and Tokyo, the 7,500-square-foot space donut will round up its voyage in London, Moscow and Paris.
The pieces inside the mobile museum come from origins as international as the trip’s itinerary. The Russian arts collective Blue Noses submitted a collection of boxes with a series of satirical handbag videos called “Fifty Years After Our Common Era or Handbags Revolt. read more »
It's Chinatown! Knockoff Dealer's New Landlord Sues City for $8.5 M.
The new landlord of an old Chinatown shop that was repeatedly raided by counterfeit-merch cops this past summer has counter-sued the city for $8.5 million in damages.The offending retailer, known as G.T. Trading, has since been booted from the premises, located at 196 Grand Street, and the landlord claims to have even removed the former tenant's secret stash room.
Yet, an ongoing court injunction prevents the owner from leasing out the now-vacant 400-square-foot space and may further cause the owner to default on his mortgage, according to court papers. read more »
