Four mammoth waterfalls, from 90- to 120-ft.-tall and as much as 80-ft.-wide, have sprung up in the East River thanks to Eliasson. Using banal materials—steel scaffoldings and run-of-the-mill plumbing pipes—and a big ol’ budget ($15 million), the Danish artist has made one of the largest artworks ever. It is also the largest, by far, public work ever put on view. But size isn’t all that matters. The fact that it is on American soil, where we tend to be pretty uptight about art in public, is also nothing short of astonishing.

When I first heard about the project, I cringed. Waterfalls are so romantic, so sappy. They are nature at her most gaudy, and I wasn’t sure how Eliasson was going to temper the hard edges of the big bad city with his waterways, even though he’s made waterfalls before.

But there was no need to panic. The waterfalls look like they’ve been around forever—that’s how well they match their setting. The scaffolds that the artist took no pains to hide lend the works an urban feel that resonates both with the history of the setting (a bustling industrial port) and the modern prevalence of scaffolds as a sign of growth, change and progress.

The fact that the waterfall’s construction is in plain sight, as well as a crucial part of the work’s look, lends the whole project an unpretentious honesty. The waterfalls don’t stand on formality or any kind of artsy airs. They don’t appear to be anything more than what they are: spectacular plumbing. But spectacular they are, because they hide nothing yet offer up so much to the viewer who is just passing by.

But then this book has a lot of bells and whistles. First of all, it weighs just over 46 lbs as it is covered in a scale reproduction of one of Michelangelo’s earliest works — a marble relief known as the Madonna of the Stairs. It is printed on paper made specifically for the book and is handmade all the way, from typesetting and printing to binding and covering. It includes the already mentioned Amendola black and white photos as well as removable handmade folios of Michelangelo’s drawings (reproductions, of course). It also comes with a 500-year guarantee.

The book was published by Gruppo FMR, an arts publishing house specializing in art, culture and luxury goods. And apparently the Michelangelo book is only the first in what FMR is calling its “Book Wonderful” series. But with a limited print run of 99 and a 6-month wait to get the book (as it is handcrafted upon order), the Michelangelo copies are sure to absolutely fly off the shelves. So reserve your copy today. But don’t try Amazon. I already checked.

With precise stitches and neatly embroidered rows, Ghada Amer interweaves politics, feminism, sexuality and anti-war ideologies into her work. The first American career survey of her work, Love Has No End, is up at the Brooklyn Museum through October. The show comprehensively examines each stage in the artist’s development.

Amer, Egyptian by birth, is best known for inserting herself into the historically white male domain of abstract expressionism with needlepoint, a feminine craft. The artist makes abstract paintings by sewing thread onto canvas and letting the long filaments hang along the surface of the painting, where they tangle together in a multicolored snarl. Oftentimes the canvas is first painted with abstract swaths of color or embroidered with scenes of female autoeroticism.

Amer has also embarked on projects that span designing a peace garden filled with carnivorous plants and then staging a performance where guests at the opening were invited to feed the hungry shrubs a meal of flies and worms to installing letter-shaped sandboxes in a Barcelonan parking lot that spelled out a feminist call to arms: Today 70% of the Poor in the World are Women.

She explores women’s roles in fairy tales and pop culture through her drawings, paintings and sculpture, and also makes pieces that unflinchingly discuss terrorism, race and politics. One installation involved a room wallpapered in a bright pink, yellow and green pattern. Written in small type, over the entire surface of the paper, were the English definitions of terror and terrorism. A table setting was laid out adjacent to the walls with a message for the viewer left on the plate: there is no definition or word for terrorism in the Arabic language.

Commingling the genteel occupation of needlework with forceful and thought-provoking themes and concerns, Amer is not reticent about getting her point across, no matter how taboo. She proves that in overturning historical or gender biases, and pointing out conundrums in politics and sexuality, a woman’s work is never done.

(Ghada Amer (Egypt, b. 1963) Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie, 1995-2004 Embroidery on cotton (Each): 70 7/8 x 27 9/16 x 4 in. (180 x 70 x 10.2 cm) Copyright Ghada Amer. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.)

What caught my attention about Yeondoo Jung’s work was the color. Saturated and rich, the images capture high-octane hues that, coupled with the stylized appearance of the photos, make for surreal viewing. But the effects are honestly achieved—digitized retouches and glossy alterations hold no allure for the artist. With an approach that shows how truth can be guised as a lie and vice versa, Jung has earned a reputation for visually exploring fabrication, amplification, could be and never was.

As a mid-career Korean photographer and filmmaker, Jung delves into altered realities or dreams made real. His 2004 series, Bewitched, gave individuals whom the artist came across in everyday situations—a waitress, a student, an art collector—the chance to realize their innermost dreams, at least for the time it took to click a camera shutter. Dreams ran the gamut from a trip to the South Pole, to becoming a hotshot chef, to teaching art education in war-torn Afghanistan, and Jung staged them all. The photos document impermanent incidents that are simultaneously false and true.

Jung’s latest photographic series, Locations, contains photos so over-the-top that at first the viewer looks for a hidden meaning, only to realize that nothing is disguised or simulated. All is as it, incredibly, appears. Contrived, brilliant and a dynamic mix of lie and truth, these works attest to the skill and unusual sensibility of an artist who is a storyteller most of all.

(Image: Yeondoo Jung (b. 1969). Location #8, 2006. C-print, 48 x 62 3/5 inches, 122 x 159 cm. Edition of 5. Courtesy Tina Kim Gallery, New York.)

This week brought the passing of Robert Rauschenberg, and with it the customary obituaries. Some are obligatory chronological inventories of milestones, neatly encapsulated with birth and death date bookends. Most are kind and reverent, hailing Rauschenberg’s genius, describing an important work or two, and drawing a line in the family tree of art movements to help us understand his place in the lineage. (You can read pieces in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post). The week also saw a record-setting $14 million sale of Rauschenberg’s Overdrive by Sotheby’s.

Amidst the flow of misty tributes are a couple of dissenting voices: Jack Shafer at Slate, and Jed Pearl at The New Republic. Both take on the less popular task of speaking prickly truth about the dead and questioning the significance and quality of the artist’s work.

As I read through the reports, tributes and criticisms this week, what came through for me was Rauschenberg’s work ethic. He made art through fame, unpopularity, age, and the infirmity of a stroke. He showed up, even in a wheelchair. Good art or bad, hits or misses, he just kept making art.

It’s hard to know which version of Rauschenberg’s story will persist through time–the one that plants him firmly in the history books as a Dadaist innovator, or the one that elevates his failings as larger than his accomplishments. Whichever version persists, I hope that it includes the fact that he made art right up until he died. This, I think, is the essence of an artist.

(Photo: Reservoir, Robert Rauschenberg, 1961. Courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum)

This kind of hands-off sale makes sense if you know the seller; the quality of the image; and have a good deal of background knowledge in terms of the artist and the provenance of the work. But that’s not always enough in the cyberspace art world. You also need a bit of art counterfeiting savvy because the presence of fake works sold online has skyrocketed in the past several years.

In 2004, the FBI started a division dedicated to art crimes, and one of the trends they have witnessed since then is the wholesale increase in art fraud, up as much as 300 percent. The latest indication of this came in March, when an FBI inquiry led to the prosecution of an international counterfeit ring that had pocketed over $5 million by selling fake prints—works supposedly by Chagall, Miro, Warhol and Picasso—on eBay.

Most vulnerable are art prints, which are perhaps the easiest works to counterfeit, especially with the use of modern technology like laser printers and scanners. There’s no surefire way to avoid getting swindled by a seller bent on deceit, but buyers can protect themselves by verifying the identity of a seller or source of a work, and walking away if a deal seems too good to be true.

iGoogle Artists, as the collaborative project is called, offers a wide range of themes created by artists for users who want to update their internet pages with a bit of high art. It is as easy as clicking on the suite of your choice, and the chosen design will decorate your Google taskbar until you change or deactivate it.

An international group, over 70 artists from 17 countries and six continents, has been amassed. It is an interdisciplinary group as well. Designs from visual artists like Koons, Mario Toral and Dale Chihuly are available, as are those from cartoonist Robert Mankoff and Korean illustrator, Snowcat. The choreographer and opera director Mark Morris is represented, as is architect Michale Graves. Fashion designers Marc Ecko, Fátima Lopes and Dolce & Gabbana have also participated. Musicians such as Coldplay and the Beastie Boys have submitted works as well.

In a similar response to architecture, Schneider used white or “clean” torture (interrogation tactics that leave no physical mark on victims) and images of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as inspiration for building interrogation rooms or holding cells, and inserting these environments into a museum context.

The artist is also known for “Cube Venice,” his contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale in the form of a 50-ft.-sq. scaffolding, draped in black and erected in the middle of touristy San Marco square—a play on the Ka’aba in Mecca.

Schneider’s sculptures also evoke psychological anxiety. “Mann mit Schwanz” (Man with Cock) (2004) is a prime example. The top half of a plaster cast of a man’s body is swathed in a black trash bag, obscuring identity or expression. The lower half of the body is dressed in sweat pants and fitted with an erection. Perversion and death are inextricably intertwined, as the viewer is not sure if this is a disturbing murder scene or sexual tableau.

All that being said, it is still startling to hear that most recently Schneider announced his plans for a performance piece that includes a person dying or the body of someone who is recently deceased. He aims “to show the beauty of death” as quoted in The Art Newspaper. Schneider has teamed up with a physician who is apparently willing to help him find volunteers who think art is worth dying for.

The Houston Zoo gives visitors the opportunity to sit and watch a resident orangutan make a painting just for them. You pick the colors and the animal does the rest. It is also possible to skip seeing the “artist” working and go straight to purchasing a canvas from the zoo’s website. They go for $250-$500.

Gram, an Indian rhinoceros from the San Diego Zoo (now he’s in Kansas’s Tanganyika Wildlife Park), paints with his prehensile top lip. His works were raffled or auctioned to raise money for the zoo’s programs.

Apparently, though, painting doesn’t always come easy to the animals. It is a matter of extensive training between keepers and their charges. The purpose behind it involves honing the animals’ motor skills, but the reward is that the critters find it stimulating and the sale of the artworks raise public awareness about the animals.

(Photo courtesy of the San Diego Zoo.)

Last week I visited The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, a delightful space in the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. Their current show “L(A)TTITUDES” attempts to mediate a discussion surrounding the borders and boundaries of Israel and Palestine.

On the surface, I expected a historical survey of the area’s cartography, giving perhaps a sterile, graphical representation of the boundaries and as they moved to and fro with the political winds. Happily, this was not the case. The works show more personal views of the effects and repercussions of drawing these lines, whether figuratively with a “security fence” or physically through a look at where a virtual map line falls on the ground. These lines show the inclusions and exclusions, the trusts and distrusts, the hopes and realities, and the “us vs. them.”

In the photographic series “The Green(er) Side of the Line,” Alban Biaussat documents places and spaces along the Green Line of the 1949 Rhodes armistice agreement, and thereby shows the improbability of separating the physical space of a family’s back patio or a local butcher’s shop that happens to be on the line. Yoav Galai’s “East Jerusalem Outside the Slogans” is a photojournalistic essay that documents the physical wall/fence that runs through East Jerusalem and the neighborhoods it bisects.

Karey Kessler’s “Desert” maps her personal journeys and memories of traveling through and living in Israel. Joyce Kozloff’s love of traditional technique is displayed in a series of small frescos that display how a culture’s societies and biases become evident in the way they draw their maps.

Anna Fine Foer and Doug Beube examine the alternate scenarios. Foer’s collaged “Vayikra” looks at what an absence of Israel could mean to its neighbors. Beube’s “Amendment,” an altered atlas, takes the idea a step further by physically zipping other countries onto Israel’s borders.

Wendy Fergusson, the gallery’s director, navigated heated discussions, tensions, and withdrawals of both works and donor support to curate a show that reaches across the line to embrace many difficult and divergent points of view. Such courage in the time of political correctness is both refreshing and commendable.

(Photo Credit: Sam Hunter. Joyce Kozloff’s “#31. Knowledge: The Holy Land, 1584.” Permission for use granted by The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC.)