From Galleycat comes literary trendspotter Ron Hogan's musings on the rise of doodle-laden book covers. He points to the casually sketched or scribbled covers (larger photo here) of Joe Dunthorne's Submarine, Megan Hustad's How To Be Useful, and Rivka Galchen's Atmospheric Disturbances, which we think feels positively Rauschenbergian, although that observation could very well be a manifestation of our mourning of the artist, who passed away earlier this week and whose 1969 work "Red Body" sold last night at Sotheby's for $993,000 (including buyer's premium), well above the high estimate of $700,000. Meanwhile, a doodly Dubuffet work made in 1975-76 soared over its high estimate of $2 million to sell for $3.6 million, including buyer's premium, while Jeff Koons' polychromed aluminum doodlebug ("Caterpillar Chains") sold for just under $6 million.

Man, do we ever love it when Art Info puts together their round-ups of upcoming awards. This time around, they've collected the four finalists for the Tate's Turner Prize, which is perhaps the biggest, most important award an artist can receive (or so the good people at Turner would very much like you to continue to believe). The finalists this year are Mark Leckey, Runa Islam, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes, and Art Info has a great photo gallery to accompany their wonderful synopsis paragraphs for each of the artists. Read up on them now, as you're sure to hear their names again and again throughout the year, given that we're still a long way off from when a winner is announced: December 1st (those Turners and Tates love to stretch things out as long as is humanly possible).

While the art industry suffers heavy loses, perhaps the budding new design-as-art industry will continue to thrive. Our friends over at Details were kind enough to send over word of a recent mini-feature they'd put together (meaning, if it's in their magazine, it's well on its way to becoming a larger trend, maybe), ranking their top five picks for design auction houses in the country, places to pick up an extremely pricey couch or a very strange, expensive chair you'll be too afraid to sit on. We do like that they gave Chicago a nice shout out with their pick of Richard Wright's great space here in town. Here's that one:

Wright 1440 West Hubbard Street, Chicago; wright20.com Founded eight years ago by auctioneer Richard Wright and his late wife, Julie, Wright practically created the auction market for high-end postwar furniture. The independent outfit had its breakthrough moment when it put one of California's landmark Case Study houses on the block in 2006. It was the kind of feat achieved only by behemoths, and Wright is using its newfound power-player reputation to expand its inventory in ways few houses do. This month's biannual Important Design auction will star pieces from early-20th-century French master Charlotte Perriand and Droog Design upstart Tejo Remy. Note: Though prices will start at $2,000, they're expected to reach nearly $500,000 for some prize items, so bring your AmEx Black.

A matter of hours after we stood at Sotheby's enraptured by Robert Rauschenberg's "Embark [Anagrams]," the extraordinary 1995 vegetable dye transfer on paper that goes on the block Thursday morning, comes news that the 82-year-old artist has died of heart failure at his Florida home. We'll remember the puckish Rauschenberg as a sparkly-eyed master who once told an interviewer that he had long stopped offering visitors to his home and studio gifts of his work, because he found it terribly depressing when they would inevitably depart having forgotten to take the pieces with them.

As the Michael Kimmelman-penned obituary in The New York Times suggests, Rauschenberg's predilection for pop imagery was fueled by a sentiment to which many designers can relate:

"I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly," he once said, "because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable."

The remark reflected the optimism and generosity of spirit that Mr. Rauschenberg became known for. His work was likened to a St. Bernard: uninhibited and mostly good-natured. He could be the same way in person.

After reading in our dentist's office last week, the not very positive outlook for the art world as foretold in this really great piece about Lawrence Salander's fall from grace in Men's Vogue, we weren't surprised at all when we found, by way of Art Info, that Sotheby's, the biggest of the big in all art dealings, is posting big loses and not faring very well at all in this current economic free fall. And it doesn't seem like just a little hiccup, as Bloomberg reports that their stock has fallen by half in just a year, which is never a good sign for both the company and the art market as a whole. Here's a bit:

Chief Executive Officer Bill Ruprecht said in a conference call with analysts that amid the U.S. credit crunch, the company reduced its own risk by cutting guarantees it offers to sellers.

To continue to compete against rival Christie's International and win consignments, its profit on auction sales fell as it remitted to sellers part of the commissions it charges buyers, Chief Financial Officer William Sheridan said.

"We tempered some of our opportunities, which resulted in lower margins," Ruprecht said in the conference call.

Commission revenues for every $100 in auction sales declined from $16.60 to $13.60, Sotheby's said.

Crack that whip. Give the past a slip. Brooklyn is whipping it, whipping it good, thanks to a new group show of "art, adventure, and music" inspired by everyone's favorite red ziggurat-hatted New Wave pop sensation: DEVO. On view through June 1 at Williamsburg's 3rd Ward Gallery, "The Super Thing: NYC goes DEVO" features 20 "Postcard Diaries" prints by DEVO co-founder and multi-tasking musician extraordinaire Mark Mothersbaugh, who began illustrating postcards to send to friends and family while first touring with the group. Another room is given over to DEVO-inspired (or at least DEVO-compatible) interactive art, including Mike Dee's layered music videos, Michael Robinson's ingenious stealthy logos, and Yuliya Lanina's indecent robotic mechanical dolls. Want to see photos of the work from the opening on Saturday? Go forward, move ahead, and check out Maro's shots over at The Village Voice. (After the jump, we couldn't resist this opportunity to post the "Whip It" video.)

continued...

Alice Fisher has an interesting story up over at The Guardian, "How the Tate Got Streetwise." It's about London getting so crazy for street art (see: stenciled spray-painted artwork and the big checks made out to Banksy) and how it must really be a viable art medium, now that the Tate Modern is giving its day in its hallowed halls with its aptly-named, upcoming exhibit, "Street Art." If you're like us and you're at all interested in reading and then repeated re-reading how these pieces suddenly went from things you'd pass on the street to stuff selling in galleries for millions and millions in just around a decade, with the real push coming over the last couple of years, Fisher's piece serves as a pretty solid primer. So go forth and educate yourself. Then either start cutting out stencils to see if you can get yourself on the street art gravy train or saving your pennies to buy something one day.

We like art and all, but sometimes we have to groan a bit. Such is the case after we saw Peter Gronquist's new exhibition in LA popping up on a few blogs here and there. The showing, entitled, The Revolution Will Be Fabulous, features things like guns and chain saws re-designed to include shiny surfaces and the logos of high-end fashion designers like Louis Vuitton and Prada. And while we appreciate the effort and think Gronquist did a spectacular job with the general look and feel of the pieces, really successfully recreating the imagined style guides that would be involved should high-end fashion ever get into the weapons market, but it feels so deflated, like something we've seen this sort of thing a million times before, that pitting glossy Western consumerism against something dangerous and violent. But hey, in a world where Damien Hirst can put a dead shark in the Met, then what do any of us know about anything, right? (we know the two are in no way related, we just still can't get over the weirdness of that damned shark)

Back in January, we told you about Chicago's Museum of Modern Ice, which was more a month-long outdoor festival than an actual museum, and now the Windy City is continuing with the theme, this time bringing an icy exhibition to The Field Museum. With a title that we suspect represents the top three finishers in a 'Name the exhibition!' contest, "Melting Ice -- A Hot Topic: Envisioning Change" features works by 26 contemporary artists from 10 countries. Ranging from photographs and paintings to sculptures and video installations, the works all focus on climate change, specifically melting ice caps and their effects on the planet. The exhibition, which runs through September 1, is presented in partnership with the Natural World Museum and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Among the artists represented are Chris Jordan (who led off February's Greener Gadgets conference with digitally-manipulated images of trash), digital media artist Andrea Polli, sculptor David Nash, and a collective known as the Icelandic Love Corporation, which sounds like a Reykjavik-based ABBA cover band but is in fact three artists who produce performance and video pieces. Dalibor Martinis contributes "Circles Between Surfaces" (pictured above, at left), an installation in which a drop of water falls from the ceiling and briefly disturbs both the surface of the water and the electronic image projected above it. But it's not all Zen dripping and Bjork-like ice fairies. Asked by the Los Angeles Times to reflect on the show's intentions, artist Philip Pastor said, "The purpose is to shock people -- shock them into fear."

Earlier this month, we told you that Christie's will auction off the legendary Richard Neutra-designed Kauffman House on May 13, as part of its major evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. For those planning on bidding, the house is Lot 42--sandwiched between a 1987 Richard Prince joke painting and a Damien Hirst butterfly canvas (and my, but those dead butterflies would look smashing in Palm Springs).

In last weekend's Financial Times, the front page of the House & Home section was given over to Edwin Heathcote's piece on the Kauffman House as art and the burgeoning market for modernist architecture. He rolls around the issue with the help of the Kauffman House's current owners (Brent and Beth Harris), Pritzker Prize jury chair Lord Palumbo, Andre Balazs (who recently bought a Maison Tropicale by Jean Prouve), and Avanti Architects' John Allan, an experienced conservator of modernist buildings:

[Allan] raises reservations about buying houses as if they were art-objects: "The issue is to do with houses as collectors' pieces, as distinct from the value of the land they sit on," he says. "My only reservation is that if these houses are sold as art they may cease to be functioning buildings. . . An attic full of houses that no one sees or uses is a bad thing." And does he see art/architecture as a burgeoning market? "The demand for these houses is fairly limited, but so is the supply. The issue is connecting the right buyer to the right house."

Recently on UnBeige: