Does Olympic beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh's kinesio tape--which she uses to increase blood flow through her muscles—look like it could've come from the atelier of Martin Margiela, or is it just us?

Michael Bracewell, that ravenous culture vulture, novelist, curator, art critic, and ubiquitous contributor to Britain's broadsheets, has plucked 16 artists from the 250 members of Studio Voltaire to present their work in this year's annual exhibition at the London gallery. With co-judge English punk performer Linder, Bracewell has selected artists who best express the ethos and potential of Studio Voltaire's talent pool. Southwest London's first and only artist-led gallery and studio complex, Studio Voltaire is housed in a former church and provides affordable studio space for artists working in all media. Among the work annointed by Linder and Bracewell for the summer show are Jeremy Glogan's acrylic paintings on German plastic airport carrier bags, Alex Frost's mosaics of brand logos, and Charlie Tweed's sci-fi videos of dystopias that are even worse than the cultural wastelands Bracewell decries in his pop-criticism.

When the first issue of BUST came rolling off the presses 15 years ago, observers would have been hard-pressed to call its debut anything so official as a "launch." After all, the "presses" amounted to a photocopier in the Viacom offices where Debbie Stoller and Laurie Henzel worked back then, and their friends were pretty much the only "observers." But if the culture-at-large paid BUST no mind, the minds behind BUST were turning a close feminist eye on the culture, and for a generation of women primed on Liz Phair and "Heathers," BUST filled a void. It wasn't long before the Xeroxed and stapled-together 'zine went glossy, and in the years since, BUST has emerged as the puckish and punkish voice of young feminism. Last night, the magazine celebrated its 15th anniversary with an Amy Sedaris-hosted, Morningwood-headlined event at the Spiegelworld tent in Manhattan; here, Stoller and Henzel talk to Style.com about bad girls, good news, and a decade-and-a-half of DIY.

What inspired you to start BUST?
Debbie Stoller: Oh, you know, a sense of dissatisfaction with the available options at the time. Me and my friends, we were in our late 20s, and yet our favorite magazine was Sassy, because it was smart, and it made us laugh. Most of the other women's magazines struck me as condescending, whereas the stuff for men—like, Details—those magazines existed to make men feel great. They were all about pleasure. I thought there should be a magazine that did that for women.

How do you feel BUST has evolved in the past 15 years?
Laurie Henzel: Well, obviously the physical magazine has changed a lot. The first issue was black and white, Xeroxed, arty, very "zine" But right from the start, we were focused on personal stories from real women.

DS: We've kept adding to the magazine, though—I think one of the strengths of BUST is that we're willing to embrace a lot of content that often gets derided as frivolous, because it appeals to women. Sewing, for example. I mean, we've been really ahead of the curve on the DIY stuff in general, and that's turned into a movement much bigger than BUST. Or, it's like, OK, is there room for lip gloss in a feminist woman's life? We think there is, and we try to look for opportunities to add features that celebrate any kind of pleasure women claim for themselves. But well always have our own slant.

I wonder if you've seen a change in your readership over the years? I mean, when BUST launched, it was at a very particular moment in the culture. There was Sassy, for example, and the "Buffy" movie, and the music scene was being completely revolutionized by women like Kim Gordon, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey… The spirit feels different now.
DS: I think everyone looks back on their teen years and thinks, boy, things were sure different back then. The good news and the bad news is that our readers still grapple with the same basic problem, which is that our culture is very male-dominated. Women are still represented as supporting players; types. Sexy girlfriend, sexless mother, bitch. Pop culture comes to us through male eyes, and women internalize that. We try to present a woman-centered world. But these issues, I swear, it's like playing whack-a-mole. One thing gets better, and then—BAM!—some other thing pops up.

LH: It's also worth mentioning that our readership is much larger now than it was back in '93—we reach almost half a million people. But I think even if young women are coming to us for different reasons, or in different ways, they're as grateful to find BUST as they ever were.

Do you have any particular favorite issues or articles from BUST?
DS: The"Bad Girls" issue. Courtney Love wrote an article for the back of the magazine, "How to be a Bad Girl"

I remember that.
DS: Definitely one of my favorites, I mean, that's BUST in a nutshell. Take a way of condescending to women, and make it empowering. Even if—or especially if—it's controversial. Some of my other favorite features have turned stereotypes on their head that way, like, post-9/11 there was all this talk about, oh, if women ran the world… Let me tell you: Women are just as capable of nasty brutishness as men. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but come on, can't we drop the gentler sex cliché? So we ran an article about these women in the Tamil Tigers—:apparently, they’re considered the very best terrorists.

LH: We've also been pretty ahead of the curve in terms of picking up on celebrities. We had Tina Fey on our cover before anyone else. Amy Poehler, too. And Jon Stewart! In fact, I have to say—one of my favorite things to work on is our "Men We Love" issue. Just because we make a magazine for women, it doesn't mean we can't love men, too.

Come August, summer's early sensuality turns into a Cole Porter chorus of "I ain't up to my baby tonight, 'cause it's too darn hot." Happily, L.A.'s Jancar Gallery offers an antidote to humidity-induced apathy with "Narratives of the Perverse: No One Under 18." The show's ten participating artists offer up erotic paintings and drawings, including scenes from Ignacio Noe's graphic novels, Sherie' Franssen's Cecily Brown-inspired abstractions laced with saucy sex scenes, and Amanda Church's pornographic paintings, brilliantly disguised as benign colorful shapes. Roger Herman even sexes up his charmingly wonky ceramic bowls and mugs with images of limber young ladies in unladylike poses. And Katina Huston's doodle line drawing looks dirty, too, though you can't quite say why. But maybe that's just the heat getting to your head.

With his unruly locks, dangling pendants, and a manner that's simultaneously intense and laid-back, Sam Bassett comes across as a Haight-Ashbury hippie reincarnated as a twenty-first-century fashion and portrait photographer-cum-skater dude. The effect is hardly undermined by his living quarters: He resides on the roof of Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, in the same wooden aerie where actress Sarah Bernhardt was said to keep a coffin to entertain lovers.

Being something of a character, the 30 year-old New Jersey native finds himself drawn to other strong characters, and living in the Chelsea, he has a few of those under his nose. That's one way to explain the genesis of his latest project, "Bettina," a recently completed feature-length documentary about the artist (and hotel resident) Bettina Bashyi. When Bassett first encountered Bashyi, her apartment had been declared a fire hazard, and she was about to be evicted. "Bettina" tracks his efforts to help her clear out the furiously cluttered space, and while the film's highly personal style may not be every cineplexgoer's cup of tea, the emotional payoff couldn't be more resonant. The cleanup not only unearths a trove of Bashyi's earlier work, but also offers a moving portrait of a woman emerging from decades of intense isolation. "She's a huge inspiration to me," says Bassett. "And it's nice to think that in my own way, I've helped inspire her, too."

"Bettina"—which Bassett has started showing at informal rooftop screenings—is just the first film in a planned six-part documentary series. Other subjects include the poet Ira Cohen, gay-rights pioneer Storme, and the Chelsea Hotel itself, which is in the midst of a transition as its idiosyncratic, tolerant ways meet the forces of contemporary Manhattan real estate. It's not hard to guess which side of the divide Bassett stands on. As he says, "All the films relate to my interest in independence of spirit."

Visit Bassett's Web site to preview his movies.

When most premature "obituaries" of Kate Moss (this was post-drug allegations, back when it looked like her career was in permanent nosedive) took the form of "Kate Blows" T-shirts, British-born artist Adam McEwen brilliantly skewered our mean-spirited fixation on watching stars fall from the limelight by writing a New York Times-style obituary of Moss for the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Now McEwen, who read English lit at Oxford, cues up feelings of schadenfreude over today's technology-induced epidemic of flagging language skills. At Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, which brings the spirit of the East Village to the Hamptons, McEwen presents a series of haiku messages, written like texts. Sparky, smart and sharp, these little missives might be missing punctuation and conventional spellings, but their gritty articulate observations and clever wording remind us that good writing, like Ms. Moss's eternal allure, will never die. "Adam McEwen: Chicken or Beef" opens tomorrow, August 8.

On New York's hot streets these days, what French-born, Big Apple-dwelling Beatrice Coron terms "human interactions with the urban environment" are usually uncomfortable, sweaty, and testy. But the intricate images Coron creates by slicing into painted paper with an X-Acto knife tell a different story. Her delicate silhouettes, currently on display at the city's Grady Alexis Gallery, create complex scenes of people at work and play. Their lacy beauty not only previews one of Fall's biggest runway trends, it reminds us of the unexpected beauty of urban life—think of her work as an antidote to the sweltering world outside.

Those in search of a gift idea for friends celebrating a birthday this month may want to keep an eye out for "Glamour of the Gods (Steidl), which spotlights Hollywood portraiture during the industry's golden age (perfectly suited to any Leo, right?). Cherry-picked from the archive of the John Kobal Foundation in London (one of the world's top resources for Hollywood portraiture) these dramatically styled black-and-white images taken between 1920 and 1960 perfectly exemplify why Kobal was the twentieth century's preeminent authority on Hollywood photography. Among the stars included in the book are Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlon Brando, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Rock Hudson, Grace Kelly, and Rita Hayworth. How times have changed.

Magritte's famous surrealist painting showing a picture of a pipe with the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" was not only not a pipe, it was also not just a painting. It was also a joke to make viewers aware of their willingness to suspend disbelief when looking at art. In "This Is Not a Drawing" at New York's Spencer Brownstone Gallery, three artists present works on paper that also play with our expectations about the medium. One jester is Jeff Gabel, whose graphite and colored pencil illustrations of his blog turn the generic Web template into something truly personal. As the title states,"Ceci n'est pas un dessin." That's right—instead, it's an interesting and rewarding summer show.

New York's Jones Beach may not be renowned for its natural splendor, but it does offer sumptuous sights and insights to what London's Michael Hoppen Gallery calls the "melting pot of humanity" as it fuses together under the summer sun. In his second solo show at the gallery, Ohio-born photographer Joseph Szabo presents 30 years' worth of touching, playful black-and-white images shot at New York's historic hub for sun-worshipper socializing. In his images, a glistening bodybuilder holds hands with his small, smiling son; a little vixen strikes a sassy pose while her mother sits poised beneath a mask of makeup and a massive cloud of hair. Sexy, slinky teenagers groove on the boardwalk, and an awkward adolescent hunches over her cigarette. Jones Beach might not be an idyllic outdoors paradise, but after looking at these images, no one can assert that it isn't a hot spot to cool off.

As the world housing market falters, the British phrase "safe as houses" sounds more and more ominous. But as London's Karsten Schubert gallery demonstrates in its exhibition of the same name, houses are still solid and insightful sources of artistic inspiration. Included in the show of six leading contemporary artists are images of "House" by Rachel Whiteread, whose cast of the interior of the last terrace house in London's East End, "House," sparked recent controversy over the rightful purview of public art. Also in the show are haunting black-and-white photographs of the weathered exteriors of simple suburban houses by Bernd and Hilla Becher. Nearby, Richard Wentworth's iconic images of claptrap boxes and crates make even the most depressing house appear snug. While none of the structures on view seem particularly appealing as potential domiciles, all the art itself would be a safe bet for adding real value to anybody's home.

Muggy weather notwithstanding, art lovers flocked to the Hamptons by the Jitney-loads this weekend to attend the SCOPE Art Fair. For four art-filled days, East Hampton Studios was transformed into a spacious arrangement of stalls featuring more than 40 galleries from 15 countries. Highlights included the Keszler Gallery (Southampton) booth, which exhibited a fabulous Marilyn Monroe installment from its current exhibition, "Fame + Shame" (the title refers to images of real celebrity mug shots), a series of Andy Warhol-inspired silk-screens by the British-American artist Russell Young. But one of the most eye-catching pieces on the East End this weekend came from Chinese artist Zhong Biao. Artgoers practically gawked at his neo-realist diptych, "Grandma's Sky," at the ChinaSquare booth, which juxtaposes a contemporary figure with references to a forgotten China.

From birthdays to baby showers, I seem to be buying a lot of presents lately. Which means the pressure is on to find the perfect gift for a variety of different people. Enter the Charmingwall gallery on West Fourth Street, which specializes in prints of original artwork, priced at a recession-friendly $20 ($40 will get you a matted print, while a mere $80 will see the whole package framed). The gallery's owners, Patrick and Julie Lockley, got interested in illustration-based art after running their own small printing company. One thing led to another, and Charmingwall opened last year. Though I'm partial to the work of the delightfully named Treasure Frey (whose original drawings are on display until Wednesday), Charmingwall's ever-growing roster of artists cover many tastes.

Taking "The Wisdom of Crowds" by The New Yorker's business and financial columnist James Surowiecki as its point of departure, the Brooklyn Museum's summer group show, "Click," asks whether the general public can be wiser collectively in identifying art than any single expert. "Click" began when the museum sent an online open call to photographers, asking them to digitally submit images representing "The Changing Face of Brooklyn." The museum then asked the site's viewers to rank the images according to preference and also to specify their level of art knowledge. Ranging from striking architectural shots to a shot of a man mooning the camera with "gentrify this" scrawled on his posterior, the photos are now displayed according to their relative ranking by the viewers. Whatever image ultimately "wins" first place, it is clear that Brooklynites of all stripes care about art that shows off the borough's diversity. Should their collective assessment trump the experts? The jury is still out.

Film is said to capture fleeting moments. But while it can crystallize an ephemeral image, the medium itself is as fragile as flesh. This off-putting contradiction underlines the powerful and piquant art of New Orleans-raised, New York-based photographer Clayton Cubitt. Cubitt buries his clean and crisp fashion photos, portraits, and pornographic images in earth, where natural decay eats into the imagery, creating a disquieting counterpoint to our efforts to fight mortality. The work he's showing in "This Eclectic Explosion," a group show curated by Peter Miszuk at the Tribeca Grand hotel, has an added layer of personal and political poignancy. "The more recent work, the personal and the fashion work," he reveals, "where I'm literally degrading the quality of the image—injuring it, damaging it—is a result of Hurricane Katrina, what it's done with New Orleans, and what it's done with my family. It's that notion of beauty—not in spite of decay but because of decay. It becomes so horribly beautiful that you can't look away."

"It's kind of a gut thing, stuff that gets lodged in my mind for one reason or another," Adam & Mia's Adam Dugas explains of his wide-ranging musical repertoire—think Irving Berlin, Kraftwerk, and a little Britney—the likes of which were on display last night at one of two July performances of "Ravens and Roses" at Chelsea's Metropolitan Room. Accompanied by harpist Mia Theodoratus, with whom the singer/actor/writer (and Citizens Band co-founder) is currently recording an album of duets, Dugas, a former Angeleno, agreed that his darkly melodic, elegantly playful cabaret-style shows may ultimately be better suited to the Big Apple. "For live performance, it's New York," Dugas says. "I don't wanna slam L.A. New York is just so immediate. It's easier to get around here, too, so it's easier to take a risk and just go see something." Gothamites should heed that advice: Ladies and gentlemen, he'll be here next Wednesday, too.

While skaters gain renown for their antisocial interaction with city streets, their successful moves mostly go unrecorded and they have only witnesses or injuries to confirm what went right or wrong. Skater/photographer Lia Halloran's photographs create a haunting and graceful documentation of her navigating Los Angeles skate parks, backyard ramps, and public surfaces. In "Dark Skate," her first New York show, now up at the DCKT Contemporary gallery, Halloran presents ten photographs taken at night. While neither her body or board can be seen against the rich nocturnal settings, these ghostly images are Halloran's enduring way of leaving her mark as artist and skater alike.

The idea of "being with the band" may conjure late nights, crowded quarters, and constant travel, but photographer Livia Corona's experiences on the road owe little to traditional lore. Her companions? The Enanitos Toreros, troupes of little-people bullfighters, with whom she trekked for eight years across Mexico and the U.S. while still an art student. "Like most people, I did not know anything about dwarfism," the New York and Mexico City-based Corona explains in the intro to her new coffee-table book of photos and interviews from that era, "Enanitos Toreros" (powerHouse). "The issue had rarely come up in my life, and when it did it was usually presented for comic effect." Though Corona’s shots aren't devoid of levity, they also stand in marked contrast to stereotypical caricature, imbuing her subjects with a refreshing degree of normalcy. "I hope to share a perspective on the relativity of scale and appearance," she notes. Expect to see eye to eye with her on this one.

If you've seen the debut video for She & Him's single "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" the ethereal lighting and animated birds circling a wide-eyed, porcelain-faced Zooey Deschanel (in a wardrobe of signature sixties shifts) were probably what you were expecting from the two-piece fronted by Deschanel and producer extraordinaire M. Ward. The banjo-playing ghosts and the ax decapitations may have come as a bit of a surprise, though. "We put the kibosh on the fake blood," makeup artist Vanessa Rose Price says of the terms she and Deschanel hashed out for the video's exceedingly cute hair and makeup, which stand in stark opposition to the plot's macabre leanings. "Zooey usually likes to look very pretty and very doll-like," Price says, explaining that the extra lashes and deliberate excess of Benefit's Posie Tint that she applied on the actress-turned-singer's lips and cheeks were meant to be cartoonish—a compromise that didn't involve the grotesque. That, Price says, was left for post-production.

The Vice photo issue hits stands this week, and it includes images by Style.com's photo associate Nicola Kast, who describes her work as exploring "the unraveling, construction, and consequences of German social identity and war." Pick up Vice to see more, or check out Kast's Web site, www.nicola-kast.com.

Back when they were spray-painting subway cars in the eighties, the five members of Tats Cru never could have guessed that one day, they'd be commissioned to redecorate Fifth Avenue. But that day has come: As part of its Art in Action program, Lord & Taylor has given Tats Cru the run of the windows at the department store's flagship in midtown, and in related news, if Rudy Giuliani weren't still alive, he'd be rolling in his grave. "Initially, Lord & Taylor wanted us to paint live, in the windows," says Tats Cru tagger Nicer Nazario. "But then we saw how big the backdrops are, and we were like, uh, you have no idea what a mess we'd make." Clearly, Nazario and confrères How and Nosm Perre, BG183 Ortiz, and Bio Feliciano have gotten a mite more polite since they shook up their first cans of Krylon 26 years ago. "Man, we're dinosaurs," Nazario recalls with a laugh. "We've been doing this since forever. We've done murals for the Smithsonian. But Fifth Avenue? That's crazy. Any artist would kill for that exposure. I guess we've come a long way."

Kate Moss gets a bad rap. Sure, she may set the bar for wild-child style in these staid times, but Moss has got a lot of nada on Uschi Obermaier. The sexually adventurous German supermodel came to fame while living at the Berlin commune that seeded the Baader-Meinhof gang, spent the better part of the sevenites hopping between Mick's bed and Keith's as a member of the Rolling Stones groupie scene, and then turned down a star-making movie contract with Carlo Ponti in order to travel the third world in a customized bus with the self-promoting, brothel-owning, semi-unhinged love of her life. Now Obermaier is the subject of "Eight Miles High," a bullet-point biopic that goes into limited release today. Suitably stunning newcomer Natalia Avelon plays Obermaier, often in the nude, and you can see why she gave Pallenberg a run for the money. Better yet, when Avelon is dressed, you can see why brands such as Gucci and Chloé decided to resuscitate radical rock 'n' roll chic for Fall: Uschi Obermaier may have been a bad, bad girl, but she looked damn good.

Classic still-life painters used organic material as subject matter to capture the beauty and heighten viewers' awareness of the fragility of life. Anya Gallaccio achieves the same paradoxical ends by bringing products such as organic chocolate, sugar, and fresh fruit into the gallery. The juxtaposition of the decaying and withering of the natural materials and the steadfast nature of the precious metals and other conventional art media that Gallacio uses illustrates life's fleeting pleasures. Beginning tomorrow at the Camden Arts Centre in London, new work by Gallacio is paired with two installations and screenings of classic films by legendary director Chantal Akerman. Both artists are fascinated by the passage of time and our futile efforts to arrest it—catch this exhibit before the opportunity dies away.

Unfortunates stuck in a hot metropolis this summer will appreciate London's Mumford Fine Art's effort to make cities seem cool. "The City," on view at Mumford's Soho Rooftop Gallery, includes three artists from three different urban centers who make a strong case for the beauty of a glittering, pulsating, even steaming cityscape. Robert M. Swedroe's "Cyber" collages use interior-decorating samples and architectural illustrations to show off the vibrant Pop potency of Miami. New Yorker Stephen Canino depicts the Big Apple's manic energy through exuberant abstraction. And Notting Hill-based photographer Emily Anderson's triptych "An Eye View of Trelick Tower (London)," which she shot from a ladder perched on the tower (which brought her to a height of 332 feet from the ground), first ran in Matchbox magazine, which declared that the work makes one "proud to be a Londoner." Hamptons: your move.

Part of the pleasure we get from makeup is the tactile experience of applying it—it's like finger paint for adults. Amae, the all-male Italian artist team (named after a Japanese word for "collaboration"), understands the sensual allure of cosmetics. In its series of makeup videos (like "Constructing Berenice," above), which screen at 9 p.m. at the Giardino delle Duchesse in Ferrara on July 10, the three-member collective films women coating themselves in brightly colored beauty products until their flesh is hidden under a flood of lotions, liquid foundation, glitter, and color, showing us that the rich creams and silky powders can feel even more sensual and attractive than they look. As the videos aptly demonstrate, women don't necessarily make up their faces to attract men or impress other women. The barefaced fact is that we make ourselves up to fulfill our own creative fantasies, and to feel really good in the process.

Peers can be harsher and more intimidating judges than critics or curators. Which is why artist-run galleries and artist-curated exhibits offer unmatched insight into emerging talent. At the Deutche Guggenheim in Berlin, American visual artist, critic, and teacher Collier Schorr has cherry-picked 19 artists to represent America's art scene today. In "Freeway Balconies: Contemporary American Art," up-and-comers mix with more seasoned names, including Shorr herself, who believes that functioning as a self-aware judge of her contemporaries means contrasting her work with that of her peers and possible successors. Among her photos on display is this loving portrait of a rather butch-looking Brooke Shields, which offers a micro synopsis of the show's unspoken theme, the ways in which we all create, express, and establish our personal and creative identities.

Artists are often stereotyped as brooding misanthropes who equate antisocial behavior with originality and integrity. And art communities are often perceived as cliquish scenes closed to the uninitiated. But London-based Matthew Stone is a real-deal artist who creates work that is unique, wondrous, and exciting precisely because it's neither hostile nor exclusive. Stone's photographs, films, and performances are all by-products of his complex word-of-mouth happenings, in which viewers are invited to participate the divisions between art and play, audience and artist, are all submerged into one harmonious stew. In explaining his July 5 transformation of London's Alma Enterprises into a temporary artists' salon/Sunday morning disco, Stone says, "We're installing a stage throughout the entire gallery, which in a very simple way suggests that everything that occurs within the space will be an elevated performance, whether conscious or not. The different nature of the two events will allow for the different ways that artists/shamans approach knowledge."

Though she was born in Paris and has lived in New York for the last 60 years, the first comprehensive Louise Bourgeois exhibit debuted at London's Tate Modern last year. But now the artist's adopted city is fortifying the show with added insight into the sculptress' last 97 years. "A Life in Pictures," curated by Nancy Spector of the Guggenheim Museum, which opens today, will feature more than 75 personal and professional photographs cherry-picked from the artist's archive (including some that reveal Bourgeois' thoughts on fashion) . These images will be shown alongside entries from her journals and sketchbooks. As an added plus, a stellar roster of contemporary art stars such as David Altmejd, Karen Finley, and Marina Abramovic will lead walking tours of the exhibition.

Androgyny and hyper-femininity weave in and out of fashion, but Ursula K. Le Guin's classic science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" depicts a universe where the inhabitants go one step further and change genders every lunar cycle. With Le Guin in mind, curators Sarvia Jasso and Yasmine Dubois of New York's Project gallery have gathered a group of 15 artists who freely scramble gender boundaries. Included is a sculpture by Sarah Lucas of a rusty bed frame, pantyhose, and bucket, arranged to mimic male and female genitals. And Michael Bilsborough has created—or, as he puts it, "given birth" to a mural: "Born full-grown, like the goddess Athena, he is already 11 feet tall and much smarter and better looking than his father."

London-based Chantal Joffe began painting from fashion magazines as "a ready-made, endless source for images of women." But for her new show at London's Victoria Miro gallery, Joffe presents a body of work painted from life. Invited behind the scenes at Paris fashion week, Joffe acts as an updated Degas—who painted ballerinas as they prepped backstage at the Paris Opéra—of the modeling world. But while Degas was interested in depicting the dancers' stretching and preparing, Joffe aimed to capture glimpses into the girls' identities. "In Degas you get an extreme physicality: bending backs and cropped legs," she says. "In one sense what I saw backstage was like that, perhaps, but it was also something completely other. You are plunged into thinking about the sort of girls who model and what was happening to them socially."

Finally, a magazine that understands that just because you have an ever growing pile of work papers scattered across your living room, it doesn't mean you're not interested in what your personal space looks like. Introducing Apartamento, a biannual publication spotlighting design and interiors via intimate snapshots of office and living spaces. Founding editors Nacho Alegre and Omar Sosa sought out a cast of creatives to profile in the debut issue (including director Mike Mills and CSS band member Luiza Sá), none of whom turned down the request to be photographed. Here's hoping issue number two, which will debut in the fall, will be met with the same open-mindedness.

Cosmetics ads promise to turn faces into works of art. In a related move, the seven artists, designers, and fashion photographers in the "Lip-gloss and Lacquer" show at London's Spring Projects gallery pay homage to the seductive allure of beauty products with works that emulate the flawless finish and high sheen of a lip lacquered with lip gloss (in the case of Lawrence Weiner's sculpture made from lipstick, this is literally true). Though the works all radiate a shiny aesthetic, not all the participants in the show are wholeheartedly supportive of high-fashion spin and the high hopes it generates. In other words, the magic is leavened with reality.

Cool women cooling themselves off wearing hot clothes in hotter climates are the subjects of "Echo From Cairo," Egyptian painter Hani Rashed's new show at Dubai's B-21 Gallery. The simple, cartoon-inspired images of faceless girls trying to find relief from oppressive temperatures represent "simple people, with whom I could engage in a way others don't. They are people that attracted me, people I felt close to," the artist says. Although it's unlikely that anyone would want to be close to anyone else during the summer (this is one is proving especially scorching) in Dubai, besides in a nicely chilled shopping mall. Or art gallery.

"I was just out of school and I really had no idea where I could show my work," explains Sophie Morner of her inspiration for Capricious magazine, which just released its eighth issue. "It turned out that a lot of my friends had no idea where to show their work, either." A similar inspiration drove Morner to create Capricious Space in Williamsburg. The new gallery opened on Friday with a show of photos from the new Capricious magazine; later this month, the space will play host to an exhibit featuring work by artists such as Mirabelle Marden. Future shows in the works will be guest-curated by the likes of photographer Collier Schorr and Hedi Slimane. For all the starriness, Morner is characteristically low-key about her new project. "I don't even want to call it a gallery, you know? I'd like it to be a place where lots of stuff can happen, like we can have a thrift shop for plants, for example." A thrift shop for plants? "Well, people move, and they have these plants that get left behind. I'll be happy if Capricious can be the place for those kinds of random things."

When Hani Rashid, the founder of radical New York-based architecture firm Asymptote, isn't designing a building in Abu Dhabi or overseeing the construction of 166 Perry Street, the fabulous new residential building currently rising up on the West Side, he's organizing exhibitions. Currently on view at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York, "Atmospherics" is a formal investigation of objects being subjected to variables such as speed and movement. As the building blocks for his works, Rashid uses a unique, geometric form called M-Scapes (Motion-Scapes), which straddle the line between object and architecture. "These days," explained Rashid, "you have buildings that look like objects and you have objects that aspire to become buildings. The most important works of the twentieth century blurred these lines." Accordingly, the stunning "LQ Chandelier de Pury" begs the question: ornate chandelier or the show's pièce de résistance?

In 1974, when Elias and Florence Katz founded the Creative Growth Art Center in the San Francisco Bay Area with the intention of showcasing the work of artists with developmental, physical, and mental disabilities, they never thought that 34 years later they'd be opening the doors to an international outpost. But this week in the Canal St. Martin neighborhood in Paris, the couple is opening Galerie Impaire ("the odd gallery"), thereby marking "an important step in the evolution of how artists with disabilities are being seen as part of the contemporary art world" says CGAC director Tom di Maria. In its quest to blur lines, the space will show works from artists with disabilities (such as William Scott, above) alongside bodies of work by contemporary, self-taught artists, including a Creative Growth artist portrait series by New York photographer Cheryl Dunn.Galerie Impaire, 47 rue de Lancry, Paris, 75003.

Fake Estate, Julia Trotta's diminutive Chelsea Arts Building gallery, hosted the opening of its first group show yesterday. Curated by photographer Glynnis McDaris, "What Comes Naturally" takes flowers as its subject. Eleven artists riffed on the theme, with Liz Goldwyn's gold-dipped conch shell buckle standing in for wearable art, while Sarah Wood's black paper and vinyl rose sculptures could just as easily have been ill-fated Manhattan house plants. Flowers were on the minds of Armory Show alum Marc Swanson and fashion photographer Joe Mama-Nitzberg, whose photographic renderings of Halston (an orchid) and the Germ's Darby Crash (a wreath of blue hydrangeas), germinated from the couple's gay icon project. The duo will stick to using organic materials to commemorate the rest of their subjects, one of whom is rumored to be Anna Nicole Smith. Make space on your living room wall.