When Gallerist arrived earlier that evening, Mr. Marcopoulos was busy ripping the work off the walls, and more than a few passersby stopped in their tracks to watch. The pieces were by an unknown number of artists—anyone could come in during the course of the one-month show and use the gallery's staple gun to make a contribution.

“Can I take one?” a young man asked Mr. Marcopoulos, admiring a large black-and-white picture of a bridge. “No,” said the curator, advancing toward the photograph. “Everything gets burned.” Though the young man told Gallerist that he found the destruction a little sad, he proved instrumental in getting it going. When the entire show was in the can and a small crisis over how to start the fire flared up, the young man volunteered to skateboard to the nearest gas station. Mr. Marcopoulos gave him a crumpled $5 bill and he soon returned with a bottle full of gasoline.

The Molotov cocktail was fashioned with unsettling efficiency (Mr. Marcopoulos only winked devilishly when asked whether he had done this before, though he later delivered a connoisseur’s treatise on bomb-building that left little room for doubt). Asked if he was worried about attracting police attention, Mr. Marcopoulos shrugged dismissively, and said, “If they come, I’ll be gone.”

They never did. Both the bonfire in the middle of the street and the abundance of alcohol (the crowd was invited to “drink the Christmas tree” constructed out of Pabst Blue Ribbon and tinsel) went unnoticed by the authorities. “Many shows should have ended up in this way,” said Maurizio Cattelan (who co-runs the gallery), before wandering off and asking no one in particular, “Do we have a fire extinguisher?"

They didn’t, and the conflagration continued. Adventurous viewers leaned in to light cigarettes off the blaze while one young man got a running start and leaped over the can, causing the crowd to gasp and Mr. Cattelan to start jumping up and down nervously, hands stuffed in the pockets of his puffy black jacket.

“People are warming their hands,” observed Mr. Marcopoulos as he watched the crowd draw closer. “Such a Bronx moment,” Mr. Cattelan said.

Several viewers noted how the exhibition's fiery end could be read as a comment on transience. “Life is temporary, why wouldn’t art be?” mused one philosophical fellow who stumbled upon the show just before it went up in flames. Mr. Marcopoulos espoused a different conceptual take on the event: “People enjoy fire.”

The crowd thinned as the flames died down and soon the exhibition was completely reduced to ash. As Mr. Cattelan made ready to bicycle home, some of the younger attendees headed inside to tag the gallery’s freshly bare walls. “We already have a new show,” said Mr. Cattelan with a grin.

Visitors look at Gustav Klimt's painting "Der Kuss" (The Kiss), 2009. (Courtesy Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images)

Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie followed John Baldessari in resigning from the board of MOCA L.A. Here's their letter. [L.A. Times]

An early fresco by the artist Gustav Klimt, thought to be lost for good, was allegedly found by a man in his garage in Northern Austria, just as Austria is celebrating the painter's 150th birthday. Experts say the fresco is most likely by Klimt's brother Ernst. [The Guardian]

Art historian W. J. T. Mitchell expounds on the word "occupy." [Documenta 13]

Chicago collector Stefan Edlis, who made his money in plastics, talks about his collection. He owns six works by Maurizio Cattelan. He says, " Is Cattelan a jokester? Is he a fraud? I like asking those questions." [WSJ]

Shepard Fairey mural is at the heart of a lawsuit. [L.A. Times]

MCA Chicago curator Naomi Beckwith shares her 20 favorite things, from kumquats to a trip to Antarctica. [ChicagoMag]

Author Larry McMurty to auction off 300,000 books. [WSJ]

The Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, a new contemporary art museum at Mr. Broad's alma mater Michigan State University, has set a date for opening: Nov. 9. [L.A. Times]

Michael Kimmelman talks about Hugh Hardy's Tow Theater at Lincoln Center. [NYT]

Geoff Dyer on how Google Street View is inspiring new photography. [The Guardian]

For the issue, a small box which comes replete with a stereoscope (designed and built by aruliden, a NYC-based multidisciplinary design studio) and 3-D art slides, Mr. Cattelan and Mr. Ferrari have photographed the transgender model Lea T, who was born male and now identifies as female, and is the daughter of a well-known former Brazilian football player. Painter Richard Phillips breaks new ground by photographing a sexy woman in a bathing suit, Victoria Secret model Adriana Lima on the Copacabana sidewalk.

In addition to the art component, there will also be all the usual fashion fanfare, like images by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld as well as photos of Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, nude in 3-D, naturally.

Artists Cindy Sherman and Chuck Close. (Courtesy Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan)

Which art-world bigwig owns “a lot of drawings” by John Currin? Which Christie’s director would own Rothkos if she could afford them? And which reporter reveals, “at dinner tonight, I’m sitting next to Richard Serra”?

We won’t divulge all of the details from this Architectural Digest piece, assembled from interviews at a variety of recent art events, but suffice it to say that Ellsworth Kelly, Barbara Walters, Chuck Close, Martha Stewart, January Jones and David Rockefeller, Jr., among others, gave some interesting answers when asked by the magazine to name their fantasy art wish lists.

Chuck Close chose Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance, and Ellsworthy Kelly had a whole list, which included Léger, but our favorite response may have been from painter George Condo, who gave a real-world (his “real world,” mind you) alternate to his fantasy choice:

“I wouldn’t mind having a van Gogh,” he said, adding, somewhat more practically, “or a Maurizio Cattelan.”

“Why?” we asked.

“It’s so refined,” he told Gallerist. “They were serving caramelized bacon before. Why would they want to have this party here? If they weren’t here, you would see a man in a horse mask being led around on a leash. But I guess it is being thrown by Paper magazine.”

“Toilet Paper magazine,” we said correcting him. He slapped us hard on the shoulder and let out a guffaw. We walked away confused.

Thursday is “Code” night at Eagle, voted the best leather bar in New York City by New York magazine. The suggested dress code is pants of "leather, rubber, uniform, jeans, S/M, jock, fetish." Torsos were to have been decked in “harnesses, vests, armbands, collars, wristbands, or nothing.” Not permitted were “cologne, sneakers, sandals, dress shoes, dress shirts, dress pants, khakis, suits, shorts (other than leather).” Welcome accessories include “braces, caps, belts, tattoos, piercing.”

Most of the guests at the Toilet Paper party were on the roof deck, and breaking the code. While the second floor had a club with a disco ball spinning slowly over a sweaty crowd of dancing men, the third floor roof deck was very brightly lit and had no discernible music playing, though there were plenty of men dressed according to “code” and toilets decorated with tousled toilet paper rolls propped on the deck.

“Interesting choice of venue for a magazine party,” said Sam, who is a writer for an art publication. “What do you think those are for?” he said pointing to the leather harnesses worn by three men who were standing on the deck under a tree.

“Those are real daddies,” said Brett, another friend who walked up. He seemed sympathetic with the men in leather. Brett was breaking code with his dress jacket, but he was also winning points with some type of S&M silver hoop ornament that was dangling from his collar in place of a tie.

“It’s like this,” he said pointing to the silver hoop around his neck. “I could hang myself from this if I wanted to.”

We contemplated his neck hoop. “But you wouldn’t,” we said. “Yours is just aesthetic.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Theirs look functional.”

Brett walked away and Sam and Gallerist walked closer to the three leather daddies. After 10 minutes, the three men had their arms around each other’s waists.

“I was at Family Business this afternoon,” said Sam referring to Mr. Cattelan’s gallery in Chelsea, “trying out for the part of a female Polish artist in a film—just one aspect of her personality.”

We looked around the third floor for more people breaking "code." Every here and there the sea of leather daddies would part and we’d see a couple of women in dresses or men in jackets. But it was hard to make contact. So we just stood around trying to feel comfortable as one of the men next to us began to kiss the pierced nipple of another man while a third rubbed his shoulder.

“The billboard went up today,” we said referring to the Toilet Paper billboard that had just been unveiled by the High Line park.

“Was it butts?” said Sam, referring to our blog post of a couple of days ago where we guessed what the billboard would be, posting a picture of three female backsides in 70's-style short shorts.

“No. It was hands.”

“Hands?”

“Hands.”

The nipple-kissing session nearby was getting more heated.

“Is he doing a line of coke?” Sam said looking up. Above us was a Toilet Paper poster of a beaver or other semi-aquatic rodent on a desk next to a line of white powder.

We saw a young man breaking code in a dress jacket and dress shirt and recognized him. We walked over he requested illegal drugs. We said we didn’t have any. The conversation ended quickly.

We looked for Maurizio Cattelan but did not see him anywhere.

Walking toward the door, we accidentally got into a photo-op of a woman posing playfully on a toilet bowl.

“Watch out,” said a tall burly man to Gallerist. We had almost knocked over a drag queen on crutches. Having decided it was time to leave, we grabbed a tote bag, a parting gift from Toilet Paper, which bore the image of the semi-aquatic rodent doing coke. In the bag was a magazine wrapped in cheap pink plastic, like a feminine hygiene product. It was an old issue of Toilet Paper—from February—with pictures we’d seen in Vice months ago. There was also a small bottle of Disaronno on the front of which was an image of the semi-aquatic rodent doing coke.

Still from video "Toilet Paper Magazine 14," 2012. (Courtesy 'Toilet Paper')

Friday, Toilet Paper, the magazine by artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari known for its cheeky, disturbing and ambiguous narratives and its high-production values, will unveil a billboard on the High Line to coincide with the launch of the magazine's next issue.

While the High Line confirmed that there is a project by Toilet Paper being unveiled on Friday, it wouldn't elaborate on what the project was. They're being very secretive about the whole thing. Qu'est-ce qui se passe?

Perhaps this video, "Toilet Paper Magazine 14," unveiled a couple of weeks ago, is a clue.

The app in question. (Courtesy Artforum)

Artforum released a new app for iPhones on March 13, a sleek and somewhat flashy portal to its renowned Artguide, the interactive heart of the Artforum website. This app is sleek and nifty, costs $2.99, and like its magazine, is geared to art world professionals and industry insiders who regularly travel the globe following the ever-expanding circuit of art fairs, openings and auctions.

The app successfully reflects its global orientation, including—on a slick black screen with white writing—five cities internationally (London, Berlin, Paris, Milan and Beijing) and two nationally, New York and Los Angeles. Within each city, you can select, from a menu, between five categories, “opening,” “galleries,” “museums,” “auctions” and “closing.” Once in a category, choose “Opening,” and within each city, you can search by neighborhood, or select “all.” Make your selection and you arrive at a beautiful clean scrollable page that lists openings replete with a picture and information about the gallery, including the date of the opening reception where available. In such a visual culture, while the inclusion of a picture seems key, the other app we've been using up to now, Artcards, didn't have one. The picture is like a tall glass of water.

Scrolling through the smooth and easily navigable app, within a few seconds we can see that, on April 5, the Damien Hirst retrospective opens at Tate Modern in the U.K., the Urs Fischer show opens at Gagosian in Paris and Alessandro Cannistra opens in Milan at Officine dell’Immagine. You can also search by "artfairs" and "events" ("events" include biennials and Documenta) months into the future.

While the app includes art fairs like Frieze, Pulse and Red Dot in New York in May, glaringly absent this morning was the Nada Art Fair, which announced its exhibitor list back in February. But a quick call to Artforum straightened this all out and in a couple of hours, the Nada fair was listed. It was simply an oversight in a database that is 10years old, according to its publisher Charles Guarino and largely reliant on its users for data with oversight charged to a couple of staffers. “Our perspective is long and deep,” said Mr. Guarino. And while that long-term perspective might lead to some oversight with respect to immediate details, its quick response speaks to its effectiveness. Because the app ports directly from the site, Artforum’s updates can be refreshed in the amount of time it takes to brush your fingertip against the cool surface of your iPhone.

While it caters to the art-fair hoppers who use as their mode of transportation the jet plane as opposed to the L train, its omissions of more esoteric events, like museum talks and screenings, shows that it favors the jetsetters to the slight disadvantage of those whose lives are more locally grown. Those stopping into town on a two-day jaunt will most likely prefer to check out the blockbuster John Chamberlain show at the Guggenheim than they would the one-off Gilbert and George talk at the same museum. It's the breadth and comprehensiveness of local events listings that its competitor Artcards has to its advantage. For example, last week, two events we attended that were listed on Artcards were not listed on the Artforum app, an opening at the Hole and the Vice launch party at Family Business, the gallery run by artist Maurizio Cattelan and curator Massimiliano Gioni.

As Mr. Cattelan recently had a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum and Mr. Gioni is the curator of the Venice Bienniale 2013, we were surprised Family Business wasn't listed. Mr. Guarino said that because the app, like the Artguide, is reliant on user input, and because New York has such an “abundance of galleries,” the onus is on the galleries to list their events. With this use-it-or-lose-it approach, if a gallery’s staff isn’t on the ball or isn’t Internet savvy, it works against them. But Mr. Guarino stepped up to bat and within an hour Family Business was listed, as was tonight’s opening at that gallery proving that, in time, if it continues to respond to the needs of its users, it might just develop the local breadth and esoteric programming to satisfy even the non-globetrotting population.

Maurizio Cattelan at VICE Issue Launch Party (Photo: Rozalia Jovanovic)

At 8:20 p.m. last night, artist Maurizio Cattelan was standing in line for a rum drink by the make-shift bar at Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea to which his own tiny storefront gallery, Family Business, is annexed. There was a pile of magazines next to him with bright blue covers, as it was the Vice magazine issue release party for the Holy Trinity Issue and Mr. Cattelan had designed the front cover, which features a picture of three objects—a stapler, a red plunger and a dildo, the last of which was covered with a black sticker that had the word “dildo” printed on it. We made to say hello to the skinny Italian artist as he left the bar, but the artist, who was wearing a dark sport jacket, black skinny jeans and modish white leather sneakers, was intercepted by a tall blonde woman. Around him in the small bright space, was a group exhibition mostly of photographic work. The crowd was dressed casually and seemed barely out of college.

“I’m here with friends,” said one man who was standing in the middle of the room. “Do you know Spencer Tunick?” he asked.

“Not personally,” we said. We mentioned some of his work we had seen recently, but the man seemed uninterested. Then a group of guys whisked by him and he said he had to go.

We pulled off the sticker from the Vice cover to see the dildo while sipping on a Sailor Jerry rum-and-ginger ale. We walked outside where a large crowd had gathered around Mr. Cattelan’s gallery, which he co-owns with Massimiliano Gioni, which is essentially the size of a window display that you’d see in front of a clothing store. The glass doors were open and the musicians, The Skaters, were setting up their instruments. People were drinking and smoking as if it was the middle of summer.

The Observer walked up to Maurizio Cattelan and he whispered something to a young brunette woman in a white dress, Daria Irincheeva, one of the gallerists of Family Business. They both looked suspiciously at us and then laughed hysterically to each other.

“I thought you were my weekly stalker,” said Mr. Cattelan to The Observer then smiled broadly. “Oh! Don’t step on my feet.” He look down at his modish white sneakers and did a little dance. Then he and Ms. Irincheeva laughed hysterically again. We had heard he was a prankster, but we were still surprised by his goofiness. Ms. Irincheeva had one of the black “dildo” stickers on her chest. Their moods seemed appropriate for the summery evening.

“Where are you from?” said Mr. Cattelan. He had a very deep voice and had stuffed a rolled-up copy of the magazine in his front jeans pocket.

“Guess,” we said.

“Eh, Terra del Fuego?” said Mr. Cattelan. We shook our head. “Canada?” We shook our head again. “La Isla Bonita?”

We said we were born in New York, but had part-Serbian heritage.

“Did you know the cover was going to have a sticker on it?” we asked presenting him with the cover and the black “dildo” sticker.

“Oh god,” he said faux nervously, tapping his foot, and looked down at his chest, not so much as if something had gone wrong, but as if to engage everyone around him in his act of concentration.

“Actually, no, we ah,” he said, “the ah—”

“Maurizio,” said Ms. Irincheeva gracefully intercepting and pointing to a copy of the magazine that was rolled up in the artist’s pocket with the sticker peeled off and the image of the dildo exposed, “has like more and more penises.” They both laughed.

“No!” he said in protest and then muttered something in a joking tone about something being used against him.

“I’m Dasha,” said Ms. Irincheeva lifting her head and smiling at us innocently, “From Russia. No parla inglais.”

Mr. Cattelan disappeared and returned with a tall woman with dark hair flowing on either side, Anna Kustera, the owner of the gallery to which Family Business is barnacled.

“She was born in New York,” Mr. Cattelan said to us knowingly, “and her father is from Serbia.”

“Croatia,” she said correcting him.

“Oh no!” Mr. Cattelan shouted playfully and ran away shouting, “That’s war. That’s war!”

And the band started up.

Messrs. Cattelan and Gioni, the men behind Family Business, with High Line curator Cecelia Alemani. (Patrick McMullan Company)

Contemporary artists cannot stop opening art galleries. To wit, Maurizio Cattelan is venturing into the art-dealing business again, according to Artnet's Rachel Corbett, and Sam Pulitzer and Matthew Malouf are launching a gallery in a garbage can on the fifth floor of 179 Canal, Art in America's Brian Boucher reports.

Let's begin with Mr. Cattelan--who, to be fair, is now a retired artist. His gallery is called Family Business, and it sees him partnering again with New Museum curator Massimiliano Gioni, with whom he ran Chelsea's Wrong Gallery--which was nothing more than a glass door--a few years back. (Wrong partner Ali Subotnick is not included in this venture.) Update: the gallery will operate as a nonprofit, and no work will be for sale.

Family Business, which is located in a 125-square-foot section of Anna Kustera's West 22nd Street gallery, is set for a February opening, and Artnet reports that artist Marilyn Minter has been lined up to curate the first show.

Meanwhile, Messrs. Pulitzer and Malouf are planning to christen their garbage-can space--William Gallery, located at 179 Canal Street--on Jan. 28, with a show of flyers and ephemera by the late, great Jack Smith that is being curated by Olivia Shao and Jay Sanders, the lapsed art dealer who is co-curating the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Here's an excerpt of William Gallery's very elegant curatorial statement: "...the program is generated through a constant dialog between social networking, personal recommendation, inter-generational collaborations and garbage." Sounds great.

Curiously, the William proprietors appear to have cribbed a bit of that statement--a section about "a glut of delirious information"--from the press release for Zak Kitnick's superb recent show at Clifton Benevento. Is there a Drake-Common-style feud brewing?

Who is your favorite artist dealer? Emily Sundblad? Mark Kostabi? Marcel Duchamp? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

About 130 of his works are now hanging, immaculately and elegantly, from a circular metal rack at the top of the Frank Lloyd Wright's rotunda, like sausages, laundry or, to quote the Guggenheim's rather bravely worded press materials, "a mass execution." (We counted two of the artist's sculptures of young boys hanging by their necks.)

Mr. Cattelan, as many have pointed out, is a master of the one liner. His works are designed to fill a room, to be photographed. They are short jokes we can tell each other. "I asked Maurizio to make a portrait of my grandmother," one can hear a collector telling his house guest. "And shoved a sculpture of her in a refrigerator!" Then they laugh.

That grandmother, Betsy (2002), is strung up near the top of the museum's ramps, not far from a photograph of the artist's French dealer, Emmanuel Perrotin, clad in a pink bunny/penis costume, which he wore for the duration of the artist's 1995 exhibition at his gallery. (Mr. Perrotin, as it happens, was at today's press preview, sadly not wearing the costume.)

Shown together, Mr. Cattelan's artworks--which were often perfectly crafted to sate the need of masochistic collectors to feel the bite of an 'avant-garde'--lose their spark. Walking along the rotunda, spotting the old classics (the broken safe, the kneeling Hitler, the pope felled by a meteor!) feels like reading a book of jokes.

Of course, assuming you know the stories behind the pieces, some are still funny (the lengthy foosball table on which the artist once had two soccer teams compete), while others are not (the pigeons that line many of the installation's support beams, which have always felt, to us, bizarrely, almost intentionally ham-fisted).

But if the installation often smothers the punch of many of Mr. Cattelan's individual works, it reveals his remarkable skill as a sculptor, or at least as a commissioner of fabrications. We see a fascinating picture of a 20-year career that has involved the meticulous, careful construction of beautiful objects--no small feat.

There will be more time to think all of this through later. For now, you may take a look at the installation in the slide show above. The exhibition, "All," opens to the public on Friday, Nov. 4.

Earlier this week, in The New York Observer, culture editor Sarah Douglas interviewed the artist.