Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

New York City has picked its latest big public art project. And it doesn't involve setting up a water show in the East River or wrapping up Central Park in brightly colored fabric. It's going to be distributing seven million Metrocards with the word "Optimism" printed on the backs. It's cooler than it sounds:

Composed in clean, bold, sans-serif letters, it floats in a sea of white just beneath the boilerplate fine print... At first glance, the word appears simple and unassuming, a non sequitur easily overlooked amid the blur of travel in the city.

So simple and unassuming, in fact, even the people who came up with the brilliant idea "acknowledge that many subway and bus riders may never see it."More

Jeanne-Claude Heads to the Pearly Gates | Jeanne-Claude, the artist who, along with her husband Christo, turned Central Park into a sea of orange for two weeks in 2005 for no other reason than it looked super cool, has died. She was 74. [NYT]

The Second Coming of Cristo | Artist Sam Bassett wanted to attract some attention. So he headed over to Sotheby's on Tuesday to show off his work, the day when the auction house was holding one of its biggest sales of the year and many of the world's most important collectors would be on hand. The only glitch: Bassett's medium is "tape sculpture," and it involves him stringing up colored masking tape across buildings, lamp posts and streets. It wasn't long before he was carted off to jail. But he did leave with a few new fans. "The cops liked the concept, one cop called me the new Cristo," he says. [NYP]

More Pain for Peter Brant | As if Peter Brant didn't have enough to worry about now that he's in the middle of a messy divorce from Stephanie Seymour, a silk-screen painting by Andy Warhol which Brant put up for auction at Christie's on Tuesday night—and was estimated to be worth $6-8 million—found no takers. [NYT]

Si Newhouse Catches a Break | It looked like Condé Nast boss Si Newhouse was going to lose big when he put a prized sculpture up for auction at Sotheby's last night. But he ended up doing fine! Or close to it, least. Instead of losing as much as $10 or $12 million on the sale, he only came up $2.8 million short in the end: More

It's been a brutal few weeks at Condé Nast as the magazine giant has shut down four magazines and slashed hundreds of jobs. The pain, however, isn't limited to the rank and file. A prized piece of art from the collection of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse goes up for auction tomorrow at Sotheby's and despite the fact he stands to lose much as $10 million by selling now at the market abyss, Newhouse has opted to try and unload the piece anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures, it seems.More

Gagosian Goes Retail | Larry Gagosian's new "art store" (or museum gift shop on steroids) debuted last night. Looking to treat yourself to a Marc Newson marble credenza ($375,000); Richard Prince "Nurse Hat Chair" ($175,000); or Jeff Koons-designed puppy-shaped vase ($7,500)? Look no further! [WSJ]

Bernie Madoff Portrait Needs New Home | We really can't imagine why, but Bernie Madoff's old assistant, Eleanor Squillari, has decided to auction off a portrait of Madoff that the fraudster gave her as a gift back in the late '80s. (Squillari mentioned the photo in the June issue of Vanity Fair: "Once, he gave me a picture of him taken by Karsh, the famous Canadian photographer, saying, 'Here, hang this over your bed.'") It's estimated to sell for between $3,000-$5,000. But hurry up! Bidding ends tomorrow. [Artnet via Dealbreaker]

NYC's Homeless Will Never Forget Dash Snow | It's been a few weeks since downtown artist Dash Snow died of a heroin overdose. But photographer Ryan McGinley is now speaking out about the death of his close friend. In the new issue of Vice, he recounts some of the great times they shared over the years, like "sniffing coke off toilet seats [and] doing bumps off each other's fists" in "the bathroom of every bar below 14th Street." Oh, and how Snow and one of his other friends would get wasted and have fun at the expense of homeless people: More

Signs of a Comeback | Things appear to be looking up for the art market. After five months of consecutive falls, prices are finally beginning to rise again as buyers become more confident and auction houses get a bit more realistic about prices. The renewed confidence appears to be having a positive effect on the auction houses themselves: Shares of Sotheby's have nearly tripled over the last five months. And galleries seem to be more bullish, too. Earlier this week, it was reported that Larry Gagosian is planning to add to his chain of eight galleries with a location in Athens. But not every segment of the market is bouncing back. Experts say that areas that became over-inflated in recent years due to "speculative bidding" are still losing value. Steve Cohen isn't out of the woods just yet, in other words. [Wealth Bulletin]

Katie Meets Britney | Writer Fred Bernstein took his 7-year-old twins to P.S. 1 in Queens recently to take in a little contemporary art. The problem was that he missed the tiny sign at the entrance which warned that the galleries contained "graphic imagery," which meant he had to usher his sons out of the room when he realized one of the exhibits contained  "a giant photo of Katie Couric delivering the evening news with her genitalia exposed." Really? No, not really. It's Couric's head attached to Britney Spears' body. But who knew the museum was home to such a cultural treasure? If you're not working today—or you are at work, but you have a boss who appreciates the boundary-pushing nature of contemporary art—the photo can be seen in all its glory here. [NYT/City Room]

Left: Andrew Hearst imagines what a shotgun merger between Out and Car & Driver might look like. Right: The work of artist Nate Page, who carves out layers of fashion magazines to "reveal the rainbow of colors behind the images," an artistic style, we're guessing, that's become considerably more difficult now that most glossies have been sliced in half. [Vanity Fair, PSFK]

Annie Leibovitz has been facing serious financial problems for a number of months now. But things took a turn for the worse last week when Leibovitz was served with a suit by the financial firm that lent her $24 million earlier this year, and she now faces the grim prospect she'll eventually have to relinquish control of her real estate holdings and the rights to her archive of photographs. The big, unanswered question, though, is where, exactly, all the money went. On top of the $24 million she borrowed from Art Capital Group, she takes home an estimated $2 million-a-year salary from Condé Nast, and collects millions for her advertising work. Is she just really bad at managing her money? Or is it something else? Bloomberg News' Katya Kazakina, who suggests Leibovitz might be better off filing for bankruptcy rather than fight her creditors in court, looks into another possible money pit. More

Non-Heist of the Century | Ever hear of the Nicholas Roerich Museum? It's located on the Upper West Side. A tourist attraction it is not: The museum says it gets just 25 visitors a day. And yet "brazen art thieves" have hit the museum in two separate heists in recent weeks. Call us misguided, but "brazen" is storming into the Met with a dozen machine gun-toting friends and pulling a bunch of Van Goghs from the walls. This just suggests that New York City's art thieves have gotten lazy. Or maybe they've been busy transitioning to the booming business of bank robberies? [NYP]

Cock-and-Bull? | Yesterday, the guy who created the bull sculpture down by Wall Street filed a lawsuit over what he said was an attempt to exploit his work without permission. Today, a body turned up on top of it, clad only in his underwear. Coincidence? [Dealbreaker]