Today we stopped by Deitch Projects to preview STAGES, an exhibition of 23 works commissioned by Lance Armstrong and Nike CEO Mark Parker to raise money for cancer research. Armstrong, an avid art collector, brought together big names like Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Raymond Pettibon and Dustin Yellin to create works rooted in the artists' personal connections with the disease. One of our favorites was Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's expressive "Tree With Yellow Blossoms" (above), created using gunpowder on a four-panel folding screen. Guo-Quiang, the subject of a solo show at the Guggenheim last year, allowed a photographer to capture his process as he "drew" with mini-explosions. Those photos can been seen below:

STAGES opens tonight, October 30, at Deitch Projects and runs through November 22. All proceeds go to the Lance Armstong Foundation.

Above: Gunpowder on paper, mounted on wood as a four-panel folding screen, 230cm x 310cm. © Cai Guo-Qiang.

The mash up between Hollywood and politics has long intrigued director Barry Levinson, a broadcast journalism student back in his college days. Though he's directed marquee actors in films from Rain Man to Wag the Dog, for his new documentary, he decided to observe them working way outside their comfort zone, without benefit of a script. For Poliwood, airing Nov. 2 on Showtime, he followed Anne Hathaway, Susan Sarandon and other politically-active members of the Creative Coalition as they navigated the 2008 political conventions -- sometimes with cringe-inducing discomfort.

What was interesting to you about following these actors and writers in particular?
I have to hand it to any actor who goes out there. It's very hard -- you are always in this situation where you're going to be criticized and at the same time there will be those who are excited to see you. I was fascinated at the level of criticism for those celebrities who have some genuine interest in the political process. You try to navigate through this media circus and hopefully don't end up the clown.

Who do you think benefits more from the relationship -- the politician or the celebrity?
Well, there is literally no upside for any actor, writer, director. You're not going to get any more movies made because you happen to be public.

What struck you about watching these celebrities function out of their comfort zone?
We tried to show that in the example of Anne Hathaway, who's a young actress now gaining a high profile. And suddenly she's beginning to wonder, 'How do I handle this? What do I do when I make a comment and that becomes a lead story?' Suddenly you're out there being asked questions. And you don't want to be the expert -- you're trying to make sense of it, but if you comment on it, it sounds like you think you're the expert.

You certainly seem to be disheartened by the way TV blurs the lines between truth, reality and mythology. Don't you think celebrities contribute to that blurring?
I think they get caught in it. A very small percentage of actors are politically active and the few of those who do get caught up in the maelstrom of it all. Where is it best to be? You don't want to be a negative, but some people just have a genuine interest in politics without necessarily wanting to be a spokesperson. Some just wanted to experience it and go there as a tourist.

Are there any particular celebrities you think could transition to elected office? George Clooney?
He probably could if he desired. That would be one. I hear Ben Affleck sometimes thinks about that. I don't know him but I've seen him on television and he seems bright and informed.

You say in the film that because of television, storytelling has become the story. The issues aren't the story. So you're saying that the images are the story?
Yes, images are the story. And if you can't have an image, you can't have a story. That's the terrible aspect. If you talk about infrastructure, nobody cares. But when the bridge falls down, then we watch it 50 times and it's shown with music. Catastrophe!

What are you doing next?
I just finished an HBO movie with Al Pacino about Dr. Kevorkian. Pacino is extraordinary.

That should generate a lot of discussion.
That's why I was intrigued. That whole issue of euthanasia is something we're going to be debating for a long time.

Poliwood airs Nov. 2 on Showtime

Daughter of art collectors Mera and Don Rubell and niece of Studio 54 impresario Steve Rubell, Jennifer Rubell is the closest you can get to art and entertainment world royalty. But she's made a name for herself in her own right as a cookbook author and crackerjack hostess, capable of masterminding culinary spectacles (such as a project she did on the subject of reconciliation at the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year, involving a 270-foot long table and 1,500 baguettes). Tonight, she's producing the opening dinner for the Performa 09 Biennial, transforming the X Initiative art space in Chelsea into an "interactive culinary experience" based on the book of Genesis. Five hundred guests will move through three floors, eating a course on each. Honey will drip from the ceiling onto 2,000 pounds of barbecued ribs (think: God creating woman) and guests will be asked to destroy and consume chocolate facsimiles of Jeff Koons's bunny sculpture (made by Jacques Torres).

How does one even prepare 2,000 pounds of ribs? 
Adam Perry Lang of Daisy Mae's BBQ -- I  met him through Mario Batali -- has a cooker that holds 1000 pounds of ribs.  I called Adam up and I said, I'm doing this project and I need one ton of ribs, 2,000 pounds, and the first question he asked was, "Is that the weight before or after they're cooked?" He didn't even hesitate.

Who are some of the expected guests?
It's a great mix of people and generations. Maurizio Cattelan, Cindy Sherman, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony, Zac Posen, Celerie Kemble, Lou Reed.
 
Will your parents be there tonight?
Definitely. And my brother Jason and his wife Michelle and my daughter are coming too.

What was it like growing up in a family of collectors?
It's impossible to exaggerate the degree to which art was the absolute central focus of our lives. We grew up around artists, curators and critics and we never had heroes who were anything but great artists.
 
Do you remember any in particular from your childhood?
I've known Jeff Koons since I was nine, I was in love with Richard Prince, I remember all the artists. When I think of my childhood- Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, they were all there. I remember strikingly my mother coming downstairs and telling me that Andy Warhol had died. It was like a family member had died. I was probably a teenager.
 
Tell us where you like to eat in New York.
One restaurant that I'm loving is Roberta's Pizza in Bushwick. It's been open for two years but it's just kind of burst onto the radar. They're actually coming on Saturday with chain saws to cut the apple trees we're using in the Performa installation into wood to use in their woodburning oven.  I've also been a consistent Indochine fan, it's their 25th anniversary, and there hasn't been a year in those 25 years that I haven't been a regular. I used to go with my uncle.
 
Your uncle was Steve Rubell -- are there similarities between you two, in terms of entertaining or otherwise?
He and I were very, very close, and we shared an interest in social interactions. But I feel like my whole life is atonement for the velvet rope. I try to be inclusive in everything. He used to say to me, "I'd never let myself into Studio 54," and I always thought that was heartbreaking, to create a place that he wouldn't feel adequate for. When I was 7 years old the crowds would part for me at Studio 54 -- I felt a little embarrassed. I just always had more sympathy for the people still standing outside. 
 

Among those who attended the opening of Urs Fischer's mega-show "Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty," at the New Museum earlier this week were Chuck Close, Tony Shafrazi, Gavin Brown, Cindy Sherman, Jeffrey Deitch and Matthew Higgs. Among those who didn't: the 36-year-old Swiss artist himself. Whatever the reason, the attendees seemed more than satisfied with the array of works on exhibit, including, on the 2nd floor, the dazzling optical maze of Service a la francaise (2009), composed of fifty chrome boxes onto which the artist silkscreened a dizzying array of images, from a Balenciaga shoe to a giant pear.

Photos by Ryan James MacFarland.

Click HERE to see our previous Gallery Go-Round coverage, including openings for Juergen Teller, Anselm Reyle and Kehinde Wiley.

Not your typical art show: Last week at Diane von Furstenberg's gallery all the portraits on the walls were of one man: Christopher Walken. The show, "Sundays With Chris," by painter/financier John W. Codling drew a motley mix of artists, power brokers and Wall St. types, among them Damon Dash, Dustin Yellin, Alexander-Dexter Jones and Mick Rock. Codling (who has never met actually Walken) has been telling everyone that he adopted Walken as his muse when the financial crisis hit. (Some of the names of his canvases: Walken This Way, Baby Walken, I Can't Stop Walken.) Guests bid on the paintings; the sales benefited the cancer charity Team Continuum.

John W. Codling

Jamison Ernest

Damon Dash

Photos by Christos Katsiaouni

If you loathe the treadmill, despise the elliptical machine and wouldn't be caught in a spin class, there's a new (well new-ish) calorie-burning workout that might be up your alley: Zumba.

A hybrid of Latin dance (cha cha, salsa, merengue), belly dance (bumping, grinding) and Reggaeton (fist pumping), Zumba has taken off with everyone from Greenwich private equity wives to those simply looking for an excuse to gyrate to Beyonce, Pitbull and Cascada. The workout was conceived ten years ago by trainer Beto Perez, but in recent months, its popularity has exploded. Equinox recently added Zumba to its roster of classes and in December 2010, there'll even be a Zumba Wii Fit game.

Addictive it is. Although I've had a lifelong aversion to exercise, I now take an hour-long Zumba class at a studio in Brooklyn four times a week -- and if I could squeeze more classes into my schedule, I would. My instructor, Shirley Catton (above), a dancer trained in ballet, tap and jazz, brings a whopping dollop of hip-hop to her sessions. (Her so-bad-it's-good musical oeuvre even extends to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.)  As she likes to say, "It's really not exercise. It's a dance party."
 
On November 3, Catton will host a Michael Jackson-themed Zumba party. Participants are encouraged to dress in costume and afterwards, she's hosting a class trip to see This is It. Must get practicing on my moonwalk.

Think your coat is a work of art?  At the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, you can display your overcoat, raincoat or  jacket for all to see in the Merry-Go-Round Coat Rack. Installed there last year by Dutch designer Wieki Somers, it just won this year's Dutch Design Award, and rightly so: rarely has something as mundane as a locker and so functional been such an occasion for competitive display.

To operate this carousel of temporarily discarded clothes, you put your coin in the slot, release a lock and hang your garment on the hook that comes free.  Then you pull it up above your head with bungee ropes, secure it and lock the contraption back up, so that nobody can touch that coat of many colors until you have finished with your museum visit.  Somers, who first made a splash with a tea pot in the form of a pig skull and accompanying water rat fur cozy, makes the exploded locker look like a cross between a laundry rail and a fair carousel.



There are no plans yet to franchise the exhibitionist storage device, but I'm looking into it for the art museum I run in Cincinnati.

See Aaron's previous posts HERE. And check back next Thursday for Aaron's next post.

There’s been no slowing down for Ilaria Urbinati. These days, the Los Angeles stylist and co-owner of designer retail mecca Confederacy is dressing one of Twilight’s vampiest stars, preparing to unveil her store’s new café and co-designing a ready-to-wear line with Rebecca Minkoff. We caught up with her as she prepped for a party in honor of Confederacy’s latest art exhibit, an installation by Todd DiCircio (hosted by none other than Ed Westwick).

Confederacy

How have you always gotten such great art for the shop?
Well, my mother [Fiorella Urbinati] is a prominent art dealer and she’s got all these connections. So we’ve gotten Francis Bacon and Julian Schnabel pieces through her. We also like to do younger, up-and-coming artists. Danny [Masterson, co-owner of Confederacy] is a big art collector and we have a lot of mutual friends who are artists.

How did you get Ed Westwick to host tonight?
He’s actually a friend of the artist’s. And I know that Todd did a portrait of Jessica Szohr, which will be up tonight. Jess is a good friend of ours and she shops here.

Westwick with Danny Masterson

What’s been selling lately?
The feminine, whimsical pieces aren’t selling anymore. I’m finding that people want more streamlined, kind of edgier fashion. Alexander Wang just always sells well and we do really well with the Boy by Band of Outsiders stuff.

And you're opening a café soon?
It’s opening in a few weeks. We’re going to have Gimme Coffee from Brooklyn—which is the best coffee brand on the planet—and little sandwiches, with tables outside. Steve Arroyo [of LA's Cobras and Matadors and Umami] is going to run it with us.

Rebecca Minkoff bracelets

How's the Rebecca Minkoff collaboration going?
We just had our first runway show, which was awesome. We did all ‘90s looking curvy models, big eyebrows and big hair. I am really just having this major obsession with the ‘90s right now, with the whole Cindy and Claudia era. And the orders have just been amazing.

Urbinati with Ashley Greene (left)

What can you tell us about Ashley Greene?
Oh, she’s the most beautiful girl on the planet. She reminds me of Ashley Judd meets Christy Turlington. I do all her red carpet stuff -- I did her for the MTV Movie Awards and the Teen Choice and she’s been getting Best Dressed a lot, so that’s awesome. And now New Moon is coming out so this month is going to be all about that. She wears a lot of Dolce and Brian Reyes. I find that Ashley looks better in simple, fitted clothes because her face is so flawless, you don't want to distract from that. Calvin Klein is really good for her too.

What designer would you say you wear the most?
I would say Rag & Bone. It’s wearable and you don’t have to be a stick to wear it. They even made our staff uniforms.

The menswear collection you did with The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr. was such a hit. Is there another collaboration you’re dying to do?
I actually just pitched a collaboration to Calvin Klein. I want to relaunch their old Brooke Shields-era denim. How insane would that be?



Photos: J. Strauss

I recently stopped by the gorgeous Lower East Side showroom of Maryam Nassir Zadeh—genius rep of several of my favorite labels, including Vena Cava, Rachel Comey, and Bodkin—to check out the spring line of Apiece Apart. It was fortuitous timing, as that very morning I had torn apart my own closet trying to find a simple blouse to wear with a rare spontaneous purchase (navy silk Jil Sander for Uniqlo trousers). The clock ticking, and the pile on my bed growing higher by the second, I couldn't find anything that worked and ended up throwing on one of my boring black jumpers. Thing is, Apiece Apart was made with this very quandry in mind: Starr Hout and Laura Cramer, both 31, ditched their jobs in fashion last year to create a streamlined collection of clothes that would interchangeably work as both individual pieces and outfits.

Hout—looking super chic in a long black silk skirt, blouse and blazer, all from the collection—talked me through the line, for which the pair drew inspiration from artists Ruth Root, Agnes Barley and David Hockney. For spring there's an impressive array of silhouettes, veering from va-va-voom (a bustier bodysuit) to more forgiving ones (palazzo pants) and standards (boyfriend blazer, maxi dress). "We toyed with the premise, 'If I had to wear one color all season, what would it be?'" says Hout; this means the requisite black and taupe—plenty of that in the pile atop my bed—along with dusty rose, tangerine, and a stunning emerald green. With twenty-five silhouettes in three to four colors each, and most pieces under $600, it's a concept with legs: one can pick up a blazer and pleated short for fall, and plan on adding a blouse for spring. The women swear that each season's colors will work well against the previous ones.

For more information, see apieceapart.com. The line is also sold at Jumelle and Kick Pleat in New York.

When it comes to fashion fairy godmothers, a girl couldn’t ask for anyone better than Karl Lagerfeld. Just ask Heidi Mount. The long and lanky chameleon began modeling in 2003, but it wasn’t until the designer came calling that Mount really hit the big time. Since opening and closing the spring 2009 Chanel show, the Utah native (seen here in Chanel's 2008 resort campaign) replaced the fabulous Claudia Schiffer as the face of the house and went on to land a slew of other campaigns including spring 2009 Alexander McQueen and fall 2009 Dolce & Gabbana. Little known fact: The 22-year-old Mount, a young wife and mother, is also quite prolific on Twitter. (Right before this interview she posted, “sitting in bed doing an interview over the phone. If I could always be this comfortable at work.”)

Chanel's spring 2009 ad campaign.

What’s it like working with Karl Lagerfeld?
I would consider him a friend. He definitely gives me advice—like, if I suggest something about work, he’ll tell me whether he agrees with it or not. As for life, he’s done a lot and been through a lot, so he gives me tidbits on friends, what kind of people should be in your life and what to do with yourself. My favorite is when he has told me about people he trusted and whether that it turned out good or bad.

From left, Hermes spring 2010; backstage at Carolina Herrera spring 2010

You live in the East Village—what are your neighborhood hangouts?
Right now, I like this Mexican restaurant called San Loco that’s a little hole in the wall. There’s a couple of them in the city, but I go to the one right by Thompson Square Park. I also go to Café Pick Me Up a lot. They have a really good vegetable pizza.

From left, Yves Saint Laurent spring 2010; John Galliano spring 2010

You have a bike, right?
I was really anti-bike for a long time but my husband talked me into getting him a bike. Then when he got one, I wanted to ride too. I don’t like to ride through the city because that makes me nervous, but I go to East End Park and other places.

Dolce & Gabbana's fall/winter 2009 ad campaign.

You’ve got almost 2,000 followers on Twitter. How did you get hooked?
I started in August because I had a Facebook account that I opened so my family and friends back home could see pictures of my son, but then I started getting all these requests from people I didn’t know, and I just couldn’t reject anyone. So I messaged all those people and told them that I didn’t want to be rude and that I was getting on Twitter. This way I pick and choose what I want people to know.

Tell us how you spend your free time.
I have such a TV problem. I really like Desperate Housewives and Dexter right now. I’m also trying to get everyone to watch Cash Cab on the Discovery Channel. It reminds me a bit of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in a cab. I love when he picks up drunk people in the middle of the night. It’s hysterical. I love to watch some Maury and to dance to Britney Spears while I’m cleaning.

From left, Bally's fall/ winter 2008 ad campaign; Armani's fall/ winter 2008 ad campaign.

Any other hobbies?
I’ve also started knitting recently. I’m a very fidgety person, so I always have to have do something with my hands. I just taught myself from a book, and I feel like I’ve picked up pretty quickly. During the shows, I was handing scarves out to everyone because I had too many! I’m working on a dress right now that I’m enjoying.

Could this be the beginning of your own fashion line?
Oh no, no, no!

What are you other career plans then?
I try not to think about it too much, but one thing I’d really like to try to be an aesthetician. I’m a zit popper and I enjoy it, so I’ve looked into it.

Really?
I do it on my husband all the time.

Chanel's spring 2009 ad campaign.

Photos: WWD staff

Check back next Tuesday for the next installment of "The Skinny." Read our previous model Q&As here.