ARTNET NEWS

James Franco is set to make yet another foray into the art world (and another role as a gay man). The Hollywood Reporter announced today that the Tribeca Film Institute has given a $15,000 grant to documentarian Ondi Timoner to make a narrative feature about Robert Mapplethorpe with Franco playing the late photographer of the sexual underworld.

Czech artist Martin Zet is waging war against the 2010 best-selling book Germany is Destroying Itself by German author Thilo Sarrazin. For an installation at the seventh annual Berlin Biennale, Apr. 27-July 1, 2012, Zet is amassing as many copies of the anti-immigrant book as he can find -- ideally 60,000, or about 5 percent of the total print order -- after which he plans to have the anti-immigrant screed pulped.

Young women running through a museum in their underwear? A fever dream, perhaps -- or a cheeky promotion in Paris, where, on Jan. 9, 2012, the French lingerie company Etam sent a trio of long-gammed models in black stilettos and belted french coats into the Musée d’Orsay, where they stripped down to their skivvies among the world’s most celebrated collection of Impressionist masterpieces.

After a mere 18 fairs in Miami at the beginning of December 2011, you might think the art market would take a break for January 2012. If you thought that, however, you would be wrong.