Round-Up: Elgin marbles, art and money, getting over David Byrne

The Elgin Marbles debate and too many stories about art and money, including a $26-million painting by Christopher Wool, expensive art-dealer sushi, black dancers and ballet, plus the gruesome aesthetic possibilities of a Marina Abramovic/Lars Von Trier partnership. It’s the Round-Up:

— Amal Alamuddin Clooney (aka prominent human rights lawyer married to an actor named George) has waded into the Elgin Marbles debate. She is lending her expertise to Greek authorities regarding the dispute over where the bas relief marble panels removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century rightfully belong. The marbles have been in Britain since the early 19th century.

— The co-founder of the Frieze Art fair says we should be “grateful” to rich people for all they do for the arts. Fails to mention that rich people have turned artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons into exhausting multimillion dollar spectacles.

— Sort of related (and totally meta): American artist Eric Fischl has taken to depicting the garish scene at art fairs in his paintings.

— Definitely related: Mega-gallerist Larry Gagosian’s new restaurant has a $240 sushi roll on the menu. No word on whether it’s made from fairy dust and unicorns.

— Plus, Artnet helpfully rounds up the best and artiest bits from the New Yorker’s profile of hedge fund mogul /art collector Steven Cohen.

— And, the story a painting by Christopher Wool tells about art and money.

— The Chicago Tribune reports that George Lucas’ new museum has quietly unveiled a new website that features many more images from his collection. Conclusion: It is all over the map, and there’s a whole section devoted to pin-up girls. But I have to confess that I’m rather intrigued by his collection of comics art, even if it doesn’t appear to contain any Jack Kirby. (The Art Newspaper)

— Philip Hoare of The Guardian is totally P.O.’d that moviemakers are getting artist and critic John Ruskin all wrong.

— The Walker Art Center rounds up four works of art with which to consider Columbus Day.

— An interesting op-ed in the Washington Post: Ferguson as a symbol of white rage.

— “Most ballet companies look like an Alabama country club in 1952.” The New Yorker has a terrific story about black dancers in ballet and the story of L.A.-born and raised Misty Copeland, who is aiming to be the first African American principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre.

— If Black America were a country what would it be? The Atlantic gathers some starkly fascinating stats. E.g. Black America has a higher rate of poverty than war-torn Iraq.

— What’s it like to stare at a giant billboard ad outside your window night after night after night? And what does this ad say about the place that you live? Novelist Zadie Smith reports.

— What would Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye look like if it were derelict and vandalized?

— And what would the 2006 self-help book “The Secret” look like as a video game? Game designer Pippin Barr has an answer. And it’s abstract geometrically weird.

— Thom Andersen’s seminal Los Angeles documentary, “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” about the ways our city is mischaracterized by the movies, is finally coming to DVD this month. L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne interviewed the famously dyspeptic director: “When I heard that [former Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa liked “Crash,” that was when I gave up on him.”

— The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing has posted a free downloadable catalogue tied to its show on post-internet art. For the pixel–heads, this looks like essential reading.

— All the places the New York Times has compared to Brooklyn.

— Last week, I posted a link to an essay by David Byrne on how he’s over the money-focused nature of the art world. Well, artist and writer Ric Kasini Kadour pens a missive in response. And it is all kinds of outrage and hilarious.

— And last but not least, five imagined films that Marina Abramovic and Lars Von Trier could make together.

Find me on the Twitters @cmonstah.