WEDNESDAY, JULY 18

Discussion: Otto Piene with Massimiliano Gioni at the New Museum
German artist Otto Piene, who's been a pioneer in using cutting-edge technologies in art for more than half a century, will speak with the New Museum's associate director, Massimiliano Gioni, who is the co-curator (with Gary Carrion-Murayari) of the museum's new exhibition, "Ghosts in the Machine," which looks at the "shifting relationship between humans, machines, and art," and includes Mr. Piene's work.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, 7 p.m., $10

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18

Opening: Stan VanDerBeek, "Writings, Drawings and Collages," at American Contemporary
American Contemporary will present a variety of works by the late, great Stan VanDerBeek—some that have never before been shown publicly, according to the gallery. Stop here before or after seeing the reconstruction of his epic Movie-Drome (1963–66/2012) in the New Museum's "Ghosts in the Machine" show.
American Contemporary, 4 East 2nd Street, New York, 6–8 p.m.

THURSDAY, JULY 19

Art Fair: ArtMrkt Hamptons at the Bridgehampton Historical Society Grounds
Forty U.S. galleries will offer their wares at this contemporary-focused fair. Among the exhibitors are New York's P.P.O.W., DC Moore and Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. galleries, as well as some favorites from the area, like East Hampton's Halsey Mckay and Eric Firestone. Opening night includes a "four-star BBQ" by chef Leon Gunn, who's served as sous chef of Brooklyn's meat-heavy Traif restaurant. The fair runs through the weekend.
ArtMrkt Hamptons, 2368 Mountauk Highway (Rt. 27), Bridgehampton, N.Y., 6–10 p.m., $100/$110

Opening: "In Plain Sight" at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Mitchell-Innes & Nash's summer group show explores how contemporary artists are investigating representational painting. Some of the participants include Andrew Kuo, Anna Conway, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Jeanette Mundt, Mamie Tinkler, Nancy de Holl, Nolan Simon, Roger White, Timothy Hull and Van Hanos. —Michael H. Miller
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th Street, New York, 6-8 p.m.

FRIDAY, JULY 20

Talk: "Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper" at Morgan Library
Isabelle Dervaux, the curator of modern and contemporary drawings at the Morgan Library, will talk about the German-born Albers and his time in America, where he was a teacher first at Black Mountain College and later at Yale. —M.H.M.
Morgan Library, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, 7 p.m., museum admission is free on Friday evenings

SATURDAY, JULY 21

Opening: “Creature from the Blue Lagoon,” at Martos Gallery Bridgehampton
For the third and final installment of his yearly group show at Martos Gallery, curator and Vice columnist Bob Nickas presents “Creature from the Blue Lagoon,” a group show with 40 artists, including Darren Bader, Anne Collier, Chris Martin, Tamara Gonzalez and Chris Johanson. Inspired by Jack Smith’s play The Secret of Rented Island, this show is presented on the lawn and throughout the summer home of gallerist Jose Martos in Bridgehampton. So before or after checking out ArtMrkt Hamptons, make a stop at this presentation, and drop in at 5 p.m. for a performance by transcendental metal band Liturgy. —R.J.
Martos Gallery, 112 Sagaponack Road, Bridgehampton, New York 2-6 p.m.

A postcard for a performance by Michael Smith at Electronic Arts Intermix. (Courtesy EAI)

Following in the tradition of its Ice Cream and Creamier books, Phaidon just recently released another hulking contemporary art survey. This one is called Defining Contemporary Art: 25 Years in 200 Pivotal Artworks—the works are selected by eight top-flight curators like Bice Curiger, Massimiliano Gioni and Okwui Enwezor. It's a pleasurable anthology, with some nice quirks. But more on that another time. We just wanted to share this tiny excerpt from a roundtable discussion among the participants and Phaidon editor Craig Garrett. In this portion, New York writer and curator Bob Nickas, one of the book's contributors, shares his thoughts on the state of the art world today:

Craig Garrett: What made 1986–2010 different from 1961–1985 (or, for that matter, any other period in art)? For example, could we say that this era still had an avant-garde.

Bob Nickas: Specific time frames simply don't matter, or they will only drive one agenda or another. There's back then, and there's where we find ourselves now. Back then you didn't have the over-inflated art market and the so-called art world; today, it's like we have to baby-sit a child with gigantism who's been fed steroids. ...

In other words, it's basically Baby Ikki with roid rage. Which is a nice image.

"The Catcher in the Rye" by Richard Prince. Courtesy Vice.

Over at Vice, the writer and curator Bob Nickas has a new column called Komplaint Dept., where he's been taking on artists like Christian Marclay and, most recently, Richard Prince.

The Richard Prince essay is really something else. You should read it for yourself. It's several thousand words and exists in two parts. In it, Mr. Nickas informs us that the same judge that presided over a 2009 court case between the writer J.D. Salinger and a Swedish author Fredrik Colting--who Salinger sued for writing a "sequel" to his novel Catcher in the Rye, called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye--was the same judge in the recent case of Mr. Prince and photographer Patrick Cariou. Mr. Cariou sued Mr. Prince for infringement and won; the case is now in appeal (more on that here).

It turns out this is a pretty significant coincidence. Mr. Nickas writes:

Consider a recent, somewhat elusive work by Richard Prince, his facsimile version of the first edition of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. Although the two books physically appear the same, having identical cover artwork, with both Salinger's and Prince's being dedicated "To My Mother," there are a number of differences between them, most obviously the author's attribution. Rather than "a novel by J.D. Salinger," we see: "a novel by Richard Prince." Is this a comment after-the-fact on these cases, presided over by the same judge? Or just one of life's great coincidences?

Or, as Holden Caulfield might ask, are they all just being a bunch of "Goddamn phonies?"