MADRID (AFP) ― A sculpture of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco set inside a fridge was a star attraction at a major contemporary art fair which opened Wednesday in Madrid.The work by Spanish artist Eugenio Merino depicts the general wearing a green uniform and dark sunglasses with his knees bent inside the fridge, which is decorated with a white and red design similar to the Coca-Cola logo.Merino said his piece “Always Franco” is meant to be a comment on how the former dictator, who rule

NEW YORK (AFP) - The funeral on Saturday for pop superstar Whitney Houston will be broadcast live from the New Jersey Baptist church where she grew up singing in a gospel choir, the funeral home owner said Wednesday.“Her publicist has chosen one person who will be allowed into the sanctuary and who will be streaming (video) to you all,” Carolyn Whigham, whose Newark funeral home is handling preparations for Houston‘s service, told AFP.Whigham said that jumbo screens would be set up outside the N

BERLIN (AFP) ― A sweeping Chinese epic set against the bloody upheaval of the early 20th century emerged Wednesday as a front-runner at the Berlin film festival, which is dominated this year by revolutions and their consequences.“White Deer Plain” (Bai lu yuan) by Wang Quan’an had its world premiere at the event and despite its three-hour running time, drew enthusiastic applause at a press preview.Wang captured Berlin’s Golden Bear top prize in 2007 for “Tuya’s Marriage,” an unconventional love

LONDON (AP) ― Thirty years ago, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat secretly signed one of his paintings in invisible ink, says Sotheby’s auction house, which discovered the hidden autograph as it was preparing the painting for sale.Sotheby’s experts uncovered the secret this month as they were examining “Orange Sports Figure,’’ which goes on sale Wednesday. The vibrant image of an abstract crowned figure is estimated to be worth between 3 million pounds and 4 million pounds ($4.7 million and $6.3 milli

Arirang TV, the state-run English-language broadcaster, will hold “Peace Concert” featuring Korean traditional music, or “gugak,” on March 26-27 to commemorate the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit.The concerts will be held at the main theater of the National Gugak Center near the Seoul Arts Center in Yangjae-dong, southern Seoul. The concerts will offer interesting performances of various forms of gugak, ranging from traditional to fusion, featuring traditional musician Kim Yong-woo, pansori s

LONDON (AFP) ― A provocative masterpiece by Irish painter Francis Bacon on Tuesday fetched 21.3 million pounds at a London auction while a Gerhard Richter abstract netted almost 10 million pounds.Bacon’s 1963 work “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes,” which features a naked model sprawled on a bed, was snapped up by an unnamed telephone bidder at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art auction.The Bacon auction record is $86.3 million for his 1976 “Triptych” which was achieved at Sotheby’s New York i

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) ― The reunited Beach Boys will celebrate sunshine and summer at the 2012 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival with Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phish and Bon Iver.The always eclectic four-day festival also will include Skrillex, Foster the People, The Avett Brothers, The Shins, The Roots and Alice Cooper on the 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. Bonnaroo will be held June 7-10.The lineup has something of a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. Several acts had notable n

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― An expert in ancient art who has overseen museums in England, the U.S. and his native Australia was named Tuesday to head the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.Getty officials said Timothy Potts, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, will take over Sept. 1. Potts takes over two huge, architecturally impressive museum campuses, one at The Getty Center in the hills overlooking Los Angeles and the other at the Getty Villa, in the hills above Malibu.The Getty

LONDON (AFP) ― Hundreds of works by celebrated Dutch expressionist artist Karel Appel have been discovered in a British warehouse ten years after they went missing, the Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday.Appel never recovered from the loss of his lifetime’s work of drawings, sketches and notebooks, which disappeared in Amsterdam in 2002, and died aged 85 in 2006.The 400 pieces were found by a British storage company when it cleared out the contents of a warehouse that it had bought before Chris