Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei talks on his mobile phone as he walks near the entrance to his studio in Beijing June 20, 2012.

BEIJING | Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:47am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei announced plans on Monday to release a heavy-metal album that he said would "express his opinion" just as he does with his art.

The burly and bearded Ai said 81 days in secretive detention in 2011, which sparked an international outcry, triggered his foray into music.

"When I was arrested, they (his guards) would often ask me to sing songs, but because I wasn't familiar with music, I was embarrassed," Ai, 55, said in a telephone interview. "It helped me pass the time very easily.

"All I could sing was Chinese People's Liberation Army songs," Ai said. "After that I thought: when I'm out, I'd like to do something related to music."

A court in September upheld a $2.4 million fine against Ai for tax evasion, paving the way for jail if he does not pay. Ai maintains the charges were trumped up in retaliation for his criticism of the government.

The world-renowned artist has repeatedly criticized the government for flouting the rule of law and the rights of citizens.

Ai's debut album - "Divina Commedia", after the poem by Italian poet Dante - is a reference to the "Ai God" nickname in Chinese that his supporters call him by. "God" in Chinese is "Shen", while "Divina Commedia" in Chinese is "Shen qu".

Two songs are about blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, whose escape from house arrest last April and subsequent refuge in the U.S. Embassy embarrassed China and led to a diplomatic tussle.

One song on the album is called "Hotel Americana", a dig at the U.S. Embassy for sheltering Chen. Another is "Climbing over the Wall" - a reference to Chen's scaling of the walls in his village to escape, and Chinese Internet users circumventing the "Great Firewall of China", a colloquial term for China's blocking of websites.

Ai said he was not worried about government persecution for his album, which will be out in about three weeks. But he is gloomy about the prospects of it being sold in China, saying he will distribute the album online "because music is also subject to review" in China.

Ai said his time in the recording studio did not mean that he was moving away from art.

"I think it's all the same," he said. "My art is about expressing opinion and communication."

Ai said he was working on a second album, with pop and rock influences, that he hoped people would sing along with.

"You know, I'm a person that's furthest away from music, I never sing," Ai said. "But you'll be surprised. You'll like it."

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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A visitor looks at a ten-piece set paper screenprint of Mao Zedong by Andy Warhol, which is part of Warhol's series of the late Chinese leader, displayed at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre during Christie's 2008 Spring Sales May 26, 2008.

LONDON | Wed Mar 13, 2013 8:33pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese spending on art and antiques shrank by nearly a quarter in 2012, ending a streak of spectacular growth that helped drive up global prices and made China the biggest player in the market by 2011, a report said on Thursday.

The study, commissioned by the European Fine Art Foundation which organizes The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), estimated the worldwide art and antiques market contracted by seven percent last year to 43 billion euros ($56 billion).

The study, compiled by academic Clare McAndrew, founder of the consulting firm Arts Economics, estimated Chinese art sales fell 24 percent to 10.6 billion euros in 2012.

Auction sales in China dropped an even steeper 30 percent, pushing it into second place in the art market rankings with a 25 percent share behind the United States, which regained its position as market leader with 33 percent.

Britain remained the world's third most important art market at 23 percent, according to the study released to coincide with this year's TEFAF which opens in Maastricht on March 15.

"The main reasons for the deceleration in (Chinese) growth were both demand factors (including a slowdown in economic growth and continuing liquidity constraints) and a reduced amount of high quality, high priced works coming onto the market," said the report.

"Many art funds and other speculative investors also reduced their participation in the market during the year."

The study added that collectors were increasingly focusing on works by so-called "blue chip" artists.

"Many art buyers are minimizing risk by opting for the best-known artists at the top end of the market with post-war and contemporary art performing strongly," it said.

That helped boost auction sales of post-war and contemporary art by five percent in 2012 to almost 4.5 billion euros and took that sector's overall market share to 43 percent.

Modern art was the next biggest sector with auction sales of 3.2 billion euros, representing 30 percent of the fine art auction market but a fall of 17 percent from its 2011 peak of 3.8 billion.

Private retail and dealer sales, as opposed to the auction room, fell four percent to 22.2 billion euros, with the lower end of the market recording the weakest performance.

Several art analysts have voiced concerns over what they say is a growing divide between the top end of the market, where ultra-wealthy buyers snap up rare treasures for staggering sums, and mid- to lower-tier sales which have been more susceptible to broader economic pressures.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

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SYDNEY | Tue Mar 12, 2013 10:17am EDT

SYDNEY (Reuters) - When Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec sketched his celebrated portraits of the Parisian demi-monde, even he could never have imagined his work would one day be displayed to new admirers amid the scorching heat and gum trees of faraway Australia.

"Paris & the Moulin Rouge," at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the nation's capital, is unusual in that it marks the first time Australians have been treated to a full range of Lautrec's work.

The 110 pieces on display are the result of more than three years of work. Considered one of the most influential Post-Impressionists, Lautrec captured the multifaceted nature of the bohemian Parisian night life of the 1890's with which he surrounded himself.

"The national gallery is always looking to do something different. We haven't done some nice French nineteenth-century art so we decided now was the time," said assistant curator Simeran Maxwell.

"There has been a previous exhibition, but it was only on his prints. This is the first complete retrospective of paintings, prints, drawings, etcetera."

The collection, made up of works from European and U.S. institutions including the Musee D'Orsay, the British Museum, New York's Museum of Modern Art and various private collections, includes one painting from Australia.

Lautrec adapted an unconventional style with his portraits, taking unusual points of view and with asymmetrical compositions of figures, which he would cut off or place at the front of the picture plane, almost in the viewer's space.

One example of this is "Justine Dieuhl: Woman in a Garden 1891," where her swept-up hairstyle is so high and complicated that it barely fits into the painting.

There are also ample demonstrations of Lautrec's obsession with red headed women, such as "The Redhead With a White Blouse," and his fixation on the dance halls of the Moulin Rouge and brothels of the Paris of his time.

The variety of the exhibit is particularly critical, Maxwell said, since it was a good chance to show people that Lautrec was much more than his famous posters and why he produced "these amazing images."

There is the rarity factor as well, she added. "He painted on cardboard and the test of time has not done wonderful things for cardboard so they are quite fragile."

Sue Brodie, a visitor to the exhibition, said she particularly loved Lautrec and was impressed to see that "it's not just about his posters."

"I didn't know a lot about his drawing," she added. "They are so realistic they really capture the character of the person he's drawing. I wasn't expecting that so much."

The exhibition runs until April 2, 2013.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, editing by Elaine Lies)

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Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:32pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - BP launched its promised appeal against "fictitious" and "absurd" oil spill compensation payouts on Friday and asked a judge to temporarily halt to those made on a so-called business economic loss basis.

In a New Orleans court filing, BP gave examples of businesses in industries far from the spill and unconnected with the coastline that enjoyed strengthened earnings in the spill year of 2010 and yet had received millions in spill compensation.

The British oil and gas group, which has already sold a substantial part of its business to pay reparations and fines for the disaster, said it could be "irreparably harmed" by the payouts without relief from the court, because they could cost it "billions" more than it budgeted for when it agreed to a settlement in April 2012.

BP was appealing a March 5 ruling, which upheld the way the compensation was being paid to business claimants wanting recompense.

The ruling, by the same U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier who presides over BP's ongoing trial on separate civil charges, reopened a part of the saga that appeared to have been settled almost a year ago when BP agreed terms on economic, property and medical compensation for more than 100,000 individuals and businesses who had filed a class action suit.

At the time of the settlement, BP estimated the bill would be $7.8 billion - already making it one of the biggest settlements of its kind in U.S. history.

For a graphic of BP's oil spill costs: link.reuters.com/nen26t

The actual amount is uncapped, and dependent on decisions made by Patrick Juneau, a lawyer from Louisiana who administers the payments under a complex set of rules set out by the agreement.

As the payments started to flow out, BP realized that the funds it had set aside would be insufficient. At first, it added more, reaching $8.5 billion by the end of 2012, while complaining that the payments to businesses were too generous and the terms of the settlement were being misinterpreted.

On March 5, Judge Barbier upheld Juneau's methods.

Two days later, BP said it would appeal, and it reduced the sum earmarked for payments back to $7.7 billion to underline its disapproval.

"The BEL (Business Economic Losses) policy decisions rewrite the agreement's express terms, and contradict its purpose, plain text, and underlying principles by authorizing compensation awards for claimants seeking to recover for non-existent 'losses.'" BP's Friday filing said.

"BP did not agree to pay what is already hundreds of millions of dollars, and potentially billions, to claimants with 'losses' that do not exist in reality, but result solely from the claims administrator's rewriting of the agreement."

The April 2010 spill happened when the Macondo well ruptured and the Deepwater Horizon rig that was working on it exploded and sank. The accident killed 11 men and spouted 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in the United States' worst offshore oil spill.

"ABSURD" CLAIMS

In its filing, among the examples BP offered of "absurd" claims, the British company referred to a $21 million payment made to a rice mill in Louisiana situated some 40 miles from the coast that earned more revenue than in spill year of 2010 than in 2007, 2008, or 2009.

It also cited a $9.7 million recompense for a highway, street and bridge construction company in northern Alabama, almost 200 miles from the Gulf, and which does no business in the region, and for which 2010 was its best year on record.

BP also referred to a digital printing business and a law firm that had been compensated despite strong profits.

All were unnamed.

Lawyers for the Plaintiff Steering Committee (PSC), with which BP agreed the settlement, and which is a plaintiff in the ongoing trial along with the Department of Justice, said BP had no case for appeal.

"This court has already affirmed Mr. Juneau's independent interpretation of the settlement agreement..., terms which were negotiated, co-authored and expressly agreed to by BP," said co-lead counsels Steve Herman and Jim Roy.

"Simply put, BP undervalued the settlement and underestimated the number of people and businesses that qualify under the objective formulas that BP agreed to."

Yet Internet advertisements from lawyers boast of the ease with which payments far in excess of actual losses can be obtained.

One describes the experience of a Florida bicycle retailer it represented. The shop enjoyed an increase in spill year revenue to $2.5 million from $1.9 million in 2009, and yet managed to win a payout of "almost one million dollars," the advertisement says.

Another explains how under one of the tests involved, claimants can demonstrate a loss by choosing to compare "any consecutive three months from 2010" with "a large combination of months going back to January 2007."

BP's appeal covers just one area of a raft of costs and potential costs it faces as the third anniversary of the spill approaches on April 20.

Its accounting provisions for the spill total around $42 billion - equivalent to about 30 percent of its stock market value. Almost matching that it has sold assets worth $38 billion to finance compensation, clean-ups and fines, and it has paid, or committed to pay, $37 billion. The actions have sliced $5 billion a year, or 14 percent, off its cash flow - a basic measure of its ability to make money.

Some $4 billion in criminal claims - which are capped - have been settled, and are included in the above amounts, but civil claims under the Clean Water Act covered by the trial that began in February could add another $17.5 billion.

Billions more could be piled on in economic damage claims from Gulf Coast states. A third set of claims, for natural resource damage, have yet to be quantified.

(Reporting By Andrew Callus in London; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Kristen Hays in Houston; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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VIENNA | Mon Mar 11, 2013 8:21am EDT

VIENNA (Reuters) - The famed Vienna Philharmonic has acknowledged that many of its musicians were Nazi party members during Hitler's rule and that its director may have delivered a prestigious orchestra award to a Nazi war criminal two decades after the end of World War Two.

The orchestra, which has come under fire for covering up its history, on Sunday night published details for the first time about its conduct during the Nazi era, including biographies of Jewish members who were driven out and sent to death camps.

Austria took until 1991, more than four decades after the war's end, to formally acknowledge and voice regret for its central role in Hitler's Third Reich and Holocaust.

The Alpine republic will solemnly mark the 75th anniversary on Tuesday of its annexation by Nazi Germany, an event most Austrians at the time welcomed.

One of the world's premier orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic is most popularly known for its annual New Year's Concert, a Strauss waltz extravaganza that is broadcast to an audience of more than 50 million in 80 countries.

Less well known is the fact that the concert originated as a propaganda instrument under Nazi rule in 1939. The orchestra rarely played the music of the Strauss family, known for the "Blue Danube" and numerous other waltzes, before this period.

On Sunday, the orchestra published a list of recipients of its rings of honor and medals, which were traditionally given to artists but during the Nazi period were given to high-ranking officials and military leaders.

Baldur von Schirach, a Nazi governor of Vienna who oversaw the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to concentration camps and was sentenced to 20 years in jail by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal after the war, was awarded the ring in 1942.

In one of the new articles posted on the orchestra's website (www.wienerphilharmoniker.at), Vienna University historian Oliver Rathkolb wrote that a replacement ring was delivered to Schirach in 1966 or 1967 after he was freed from prison.

According to a reliable witness, the person who delivered the replacement was trumpeter Helmut Wobisch, then the director of the orchestra and a former member of the SS, or paramilitary wing, of the Nazi party, Rathkolb's article says.

The Vienna Philharmonic's current chairman, Clemens Hellsberg, told Reuters the orchestra would now have to take a democratic decision as to whether to revoke the awards it made to the Nazis during that period.

A total of 60 of the orchestra's 123 members were either members of the Nazi party or wanted to become members as of 1942, in the middle of World War Two, the orchestra said on Sunday. Two were members of the SS.

DIFFERENT TIMES

Hellsberg wrote a history of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1992, "Democracy of Kings", in which many of the uncomfortable facts now being published did not appear. He has said he did not have access to all the relevant documents when he wrote it.

Asked on Sunday why it had taken so long to come to this point, he said the orchestra had been quietly working through its history for decades, and now realized it needed to give a proper account of itself online.

"I grew up in a different time, when the book was the most significant medium, but one has to live with the fact that the Internet is a different medium that we have to live with and where we have to represent ourselves," he said.

Hellsberg was speaking at a preview of a documentary by Austrian state broadcaster ORF about the orchestra's Nazi-era history, commissioned to coincide with the website additions.

Details of 13 musicians who were driven out of the orchestra over their Jewish origin or relations after Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938 - five of whom died in concentration camps - were also published on the site for the first time.

Conductor Josef Krips was ousted and worked in a food factory for years, but was allowed back after the defeat of Nazi Germany - and Austria - in 1945, ending the war.

Bernadette Mayrhofer, another of the independent historians from the University of Vienna, said the ostracism of Jewish musicians had begun even before 1938 under Austrofascism, a period of Italian-oriented authoritarian rule in Austria.

"It was known whether somebody had Jewish roots or a Jewish wife," she told Reuters.

Many orchestra members joined the German Nazi party, illegal at that time in Austria, before the Anschluss (annexation) of 1938. After the war, just four party members were fired during the "de-Nazification" period and another six were pensioned off.

Wobisch, the SS member, was among those sacked in 1945 but managed to rejoin the Philharmonic as lead trumpeter in 1947.

LITTLE STEP

Harald Walser, an Austrian Greens member of parliament who is one of the Philharmonic's most vocal and persistent critics, welcomed the orchestra's decision to become more transparent, although he said it did not go far enough.

"It's a little step in the right direction," he told Reuters. "But we're still a long way from having adequate access to the archives."

The three historians commissioned by the orchestra were given less than two months to write their articles following a decision by the orchestra's management after this January's New Year's concert, an annual focal point for criticism.

All three had previously done work in the field.

Fritz Truempi, one of the three, said it took him three years from 2003 to gain access to research his 2011 book "Politisierte Orchester" ("Politicised Orchestra"), a study of the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics under National Socialism.

The Vienna Philharmonic says it is not obliged to give public access to its archives, since it is a private organization, although it does grant access to selected historians and scholars.

The New Year's Concert helped promote Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' desired image of Vienna. He wrote in his diaries that the Austrian capital should be seen as a city of "culture, music, optimism and conviviality".

Truempi told Reuters: "The New Year's Concert was invented under the Nazis."

The orchestra, whose image is closely tied to the 18th century Vienna of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, has long been one of Vienna's biggest tourist attractions an integral part of the Austrian capital's branding.

Truempi reckons that the orchestra has now finally come to a juncture where it realized that its long-held policy, designed to protect its brand, was actually harming its image.

"I see it also as an issue of image management. For a long time, they tried to maintain a strict control over their brand but, in the end, the political pressure became such that it was the best solution to open up," he said.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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