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‘Casablanca’ piano auctioned for $600,000, less than expected – UPI.com
NEW YORK, Dec. 15 (UPI) — A piano briefly seen in 1942’s “Casablanca” sold at auction for $602,500, about half of the highest estimates for the item, New York’s Sotheby’s said.
The winning bidder, whose name was not reported, bid $500,000 on the item Friday, though commissions added $102,000 to the total, The New York Times reported. Sotheby’s had estimated the piano would sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
The piano was one of two used in “Casablanca,” and was small, with 58 keys, 30 fewer than a conventional piano.
It was used in a flashback scene at a Paris cafe named “La Belle Aurore.” The piano was on camera for 1 minute and 10 seconds, and actor Dooley Wilson, who played Sam in the classic film, mimicked playing it while singing in the film, the Times reported.
Sotheby’s last auctioned the piano in 1988 for $155,000, the second-highest price for Hollywood memorabilia at the time, the newspaper said.
via ‘Casablanca’ piano auctioned for $600,000, less than expected – UPI.com.
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France: ‘Astounding’ Louvre branch to open in Lens – Telegraph
Until right now, you went to Lens in northern France for second-division football and slag heaps and other fine mining memories. You might also have used it as a base from which to see Great War battlefields. What you didn’t get much of was world-class culture. As you wouldn’t in Wigan, so you didn’t in Lens. The depressed former coal town apparently had problems beyond the reach of Raphael.
Which is precisely why, in a splendid burst of reverse thinking, the place is about to open an art gallery of astounding breadth and brio, containing works from across the history of human creativity. In the year’s major French cultural initiative, the Louvre has broken out of Paris to establish its first provincial base on a disused colliery site hemmed in by miners’ housing estates.
President François Hollande inaugurates the Louvre-Lens next Tuesday. It opens properly to the public on December 12. It is no mean branch office. The €150 million (£121m) building is of deceptive simplicity, a succession of four connected rectangles, and a square, all in aluminium and lots of glass. It has been kept long and low – a single storey – to avoid crushing locals with worthiness. The Japanese architects want the neighbours to come in, not stay stuck outside, awestruck. It could be a big leisure centre – which, in a sense, it is.
via France: ‘Astounding’ Louvre branch to open in Lens – Telegraph.
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Ropac Gallery Vies Gagosian With Cymbals, Live Horse – Bloomberg
“Open the door and leave it like that,” Thaddaeus Ropac tells one of his 60 employees as he crosses the courtyard of his new gallery on the outskirts of Paris.
The Austrian-born dealer has just inaugurated the French capital’s biggest commercial contemporary-art space. He hopes to encourage more visitors to follow him inside, now that the French government has rejected a proposal to include artworks in calculating wealth tax.
Super-size galleries in New York and London are being followed by Ropac’s mega-space, where he is showing works by the German artists Anselm Kiefer and the late Joseph Beuys. Larry Gagosian has also just opened a new space on Paris’s northern rim with a Kiefer show, in a week when galleries at the Fiac fair have been vying for the attention of choosy buyers.
“I was surprised Gagosian decided to open with Kiefer,” says Ropac, who had been the first to approach the French-based artist 18 months ago. “Actually, it turns out Paris has profited from all the attention. I’m quite relaxed about it now.”
Ropac, 52, has converted a former boiler factory at Pantin — a site on Paris’s eastern rim reachable by Metro — into a 50,000 square-foot (4,645 square meter) complex. Gagosian has chosen an old 17,760 square-foot industrial building in the north of the city at the private-jet airport of Le Bourget.
Exodus Fears
France’s Socialist government is planning a 75 percent tax band on all income of more than 1 million euros ($1.3 million). The country’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, is seeking dual Belgian citizenship.
via Ropac Gallery Vies Gagosian With Cymbals, Live Horse – Bloomberg.
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Louvre, Versailles Palace weigh in on French art tax row | Reuters
Reuters – Top Paris art galleries and the Palace of Versailles have weighed in against an unpopular push to extend wealth tax to art, complaining in a letter to the government that such a move could drive historic collections out of France.
The daily Liberation printed an excerpt from a letter it said was signed by the heads of the Louvre, Versailles, the Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou Centre and others and sent to the culture minister and President Francois Hollande, saying the tax would crush the art world.
“There’s a risk that France will contribute to the disappearance of historic collections that have been passed down through the generations,” Liberation quoted the letter, written on Friday and also signed by several city mayors, as saying.
Spokespeople for the various art galleries could not be reached for comment.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault appeared to sound the death knell on Tuesday for the push for art works worth over 50,000 euros $64,700 to be included in assets used to calculate a person’s fortune, saying the Socialist government opposed it.
“Artworks will not be included in the calculation of wealth tax. That’s the government’s position,” he told Europe 1 radio.
Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac cautioned that the proposal was not buried yet.
“We will have a frank discussion with the Socialist group. It is possible for a government to be beaten by its parliamentary majority,” he told France Inter radio.
Currently, only assets like real estate or cash savings count towards wealth tax. Net assets of more than 1.3 million euros are taxed at 0.25 percent on top of income tax, and the rate doubles to 0.5 percent for assets above 3 million euros.
via Louvre, Versailles Palace weigh in on French art tax row | Reuters.
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Bubbledogs Mix Champagne With British Bangers in London – Bloomberg
A bore at the next table in a Paris brasserie once ruined my dinner by insisting that I was wrong to accompany my food with Champagne, which was an aperitif.
This gastronomical gendarme was drunk, which might explain it.
I myself, sober though I was, wondered about the lineup of Champagne and hot dogs at the new London restaurant Bubbledogs.
Any doubts were misplaced. I’m more excited by Bubbledogs than any new London restaurant I’ve tried since Dabbous, where you can wait months for a table. The hot dogs are great, the Champagnes are varied and inexpensive, and the service is first- class.
To use a phrase I dislike, what’s not to like?
There’s a choice of about a dozen hot dogs, each of which is available as beef, pork or vegetarian. For the purist, there’s the Naked Dog, at 6 pounds ($9.75). The top price is 8 pounds for the BLT, which comes with caramelized lettuce and truffle mayo. There are no starters and no desserts.
(Crif Dogs, in New York, helped inspire Bubbledogs.)
Sides are restricted to tots (potato croquettes), sweet- potato fries and coleslaw. That’s it. I can’t think why anyone would want more choice in a hot-dog restaurant. If anything, I’d like things simpler: no sides and a single price.
Those who shrug that it’s hard to get hot dogs wrong should eat their words. Simplicity is complex: You might get away with a mistake in an elaborate fine-dining meal, but there is nowhere to hide with a sausage and a bread roll.
via Bubbledogs Mix Champagne With British Bangers in London – Bloomberg.
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