Ten artists found a way to make vacant commercial space incredibly exciting. I wandered by 25 Central Park West on a walk in my neighborhood a few days ago and saw artists inside. They were hard at work cleaning, preparing and hanging their pieces. Tapping on the window was one of my smartest moves this week. By doing so, I learned of a new exhibition, which opened Wednesday night. The show, 10 from 25: Emerging Artists using Photography, is set to run through December 13, 2009. It includes flat art and video, bringing to life an empty space in a part of Manhattan generally forgotten by the art community.

The artists, including Bess Greenberg, who gave me a tour of the space as she and the other artists prepared for opening night, have created an integrated show that doesn't sacrifice the message of each of the participants. So, in addition to a group exhibition, visitors are treated to 10 individual efforts, in which one can appreciate a specific style without having to cope with the intrusion of other pieces on his experience.

Much of the time it's easy to predict the top lot in an auction, one of the highest estimated pieces usually claims the honor. But that's not always the case. How's this for an exuberant art market moment, Emil Filla's "Still life with a Lemon, Bottle of Olive Oil, Bell Peppers and a Bowl of Vegetables", 1925, sold for $266,000 against a pre-auction estimate of just $15,000-20,000 on November 17 at an auction at Bonhams & Butterfields in Los Angeles. The auction set a new world record for the artist at auction. The auction was simulcast to the firm's San Francisco auction rooms.

This auction also included the unused Beatles album art created in 1968 by Jim Dine we discussed earlier this week. The collection of five graphite and watercolor works on vellum sold for $51,850 against an estimate of $25,000-35,000.

On my recent visit to Holland, sponsored by the Netherlands Board of Tourism, we ventured up to The Hague (Den Haag) for the Dutch Fashion Awards and some museums. Though it wasn't originally on the itinerary, everyone on the trip was dying to see the Escher Museum (Escher in het Paleis).

The museum is located in the royal Lange Voorhout Palace, and features well kept original fixtures as well as several rooms dedicated to showing what the winter palace of Queen Mother Emma used to look like. Since then, the legendary Dutch graphic artist who's still blowing our minds almost 40 years after his death has been moved in, and the juxtaposition of decadence and mind-bending art is surprisingly harmonious.

If you're taking a trip to Amsterdam, a 45-minute trek up to The Hague is worth it just to see the museum, which not only has a far more extensive Escher collection than any of us believed was possible, but which also features a stunning array of crystal chandeliers in almost every room.

The chandeliers, like the enormous "Rain Cloud" in the foyer (above), are all works by Hans van Bentem (1965), a ceramics and glass artist from Rotterdam who happens to have a penchant for designing elaborate and unusual chandeliers. How unusual are they? Check out the gallery for a crystallized firefly, shark, trophy, umbrella, seahorse and more. The Hans van Bentem chandeliers are an exhibit all their own, and have appeared in the museum's formerly royal rooms since 2003. This is the full collection:

This trip was paid for by the Netherlands Board of Tourism, but the ideas and opinions expressed in the article above are 100% my own.

Art Work Partners revives the centuries-old technique of pietre dure (inlaying stones in beautifully intricate partners) for modern times. This artistic medium descended from Byzantine mosaics but found its greatest expression during the Italian Renaissance. The pieces combine a jeweler's precision with an artists sensibility and a stonecutters expertise. Art Work Partners has two main lines, one of stone art made to hang on a wall like a painting, and another of furniture pieces with stone tops. The picture above highlights both showing a stone version of Marilyn Monroe by Marcos Marin made of black granite and marble as well as a table set with a stone version of Lots of Love by Romero Britto. Pieces generally cost between $5,000 to $12,000. Check out the gallery below for more pieces.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this keyring from Scott Amron was the Jon Franklin quote: "Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegance."

Also called the Split-Ring-Key, this refreshing, unexpected hybrid key-and-keyring can be brought to your local key cutter, who can craft it to fit any regular KW1 or SC1 keyholes. At just $3.50 each, this is one of those luxuries that won't break the bank.

Amron, who also brought us the black leather bandaids this past summer, has a number of cool and outside-the-box usable-art ideas on his website. We also love this wine stopper, which looks like a talon digging into your bottle. Very goth chic.

The Phillips de Pury auction on Thursday night raked in what once would have come from a single painting. Despite parading out pieces by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince, the sale was good for a mere $7 million, with individual lots moving for prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thirty-nine went under the gavel, and eight didn't sell.

The Chelsea auction house lacks the savvy, knowledge and reach of Sotheby's and Christie's, so it had to lean on British art collector Charles Saatchi, who has agreed to complete most of his transactions through Phillips de Pury. In trade, subsidies from the auction house help keep access to Saatchi's gallery free.

Roughly a dozen of the lots came from Saatchi, while the others are said to have been rejected by Sotheby's and Christie's. In general, the pieces were "pretty skimpy," according to Manhattan art dealer Edward Tyler Nahem, who observes that the auction house "did pretty well with what they had."

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was the top seller, with her painting "Infinity Nets (T.W.A.)" busting past its high-end presale estimate of $400,000 and settling at $842,500 (including fees). Kusama's performance follows a well-hyped exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery this year.

Now through November 19, artnet Auctions is featuring Faces & Figures, a special sale of 375 photographs by famous artists including Nan Goldin, Santé D'Orazio, David LaChapelle, Helmut Newton, Bert Stern and Pamela Hanson. The stunning sale features several nude supermodel portraits, including a nude of Carla Bruni by Hanson from 1994, vastly underestimated at $1,500 - $2,000 considering an identical one sold over the summer for $18,000. Other highlights include nudes of Frederique Van Der Wal from 1990 by D'Orazio, $1,000 - $1,500; a sexy snap of Gisele Bundchen by Mark Seliger (above) from 2000, estimated at $8,000 - $10,000; and a nude Gisele astride a horse by Walter Chin, $4,000 - $6,000. A nude of Pamela Anderson by LaChapelle is expected to fetch $18,000 - $24,000, and there several famous nudes of Marilyn Monroe by Stern. Also included are portraits of rock stars including the Rolling Stones, artists like Warhol and Basquiat, and celebs like Jackie Kennedy and Marlon Brando.

The Christie's crowd on Tuesday may not have been ready to shell out big bucks for Andy Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster," but the crowd at Sotheby's was more than happy to by a boatload of currency. The top pop artist's "200 One Dollar Bills" found a buyer for a monstrous $43.8 million at the Sotheby's art auction in New York on Wednesday.

Pauline Karpidas, an art collector in London, offered the piece, Bloomberg News reports but wasn't able to verify with the collector herself. It looks like she scored with this one. "200 One Dollar Bills" carried a presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million, which didn't last long.

The piece consists of what its title states: 200 real-sized one dollar bills reproduced in black on grey ... and with a blue replica of the Treasury Department seal. If they were real cash, the sale price was greater by a factor of 219,000.

This wasn't the only success of the evening, and overall, the outcome was fantastic. Only two of the 54 lots failed to find new homes, and the final number, $134.4 million, thrashed the presale estimate of $97.7 million.

Christie's tried in New York with a 1983 piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat and didn't succeed. The auction house may have been too aggressive in estimating the 16-foot piece at $9 million. That's what's tough about the art market right now. There are signs of recovery, and it can be tempting to push for higher prices. Unfortunately, it's easy to get a bit excited. The painting had the highest estimate at the auction. The piece with the second highest presale estimate, a piece by Andy Warhol, met a similar fate.

The Basquiat piece, "Brother Sausage," was offered anonymously by a buyer later revealed by Bloomberg News to be Peter Brant, an art collector based in Connecticut. The piece may be a casualty of his divorce from model Stephanie Seymour. Well, it won't be financing post-marital discord and could remain a contested asset for a while.

Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster" was projected to move for up to $8 million and, like the Basquiat painting, didn't receive any bids. Art dealer Robert Mnuchin of L&M Arts was stuck taking it home.

Yet, some works beat the odds in an auction that raked in $74.2 million, within the presale range of $61.5 million to $88 million. Nonetheless, this was the lowest result we've seen from a Christie's New York contemporary art effort since May 2003 and down 81 percent from the top of the market two and a half years ago.

The painting shown above, a 1968 watercolor by American artist Jim Dine, has an interesting story. The work was originally commissioned by Capitol Records for a Beatles album which was never made because the Beatles left Capitol and formed the Apple Records label. The graphite and watercolor on vellum lot of five works depict individual toothbrushes labeled for each member of the band The pieces, which are expected to bring $25,000-35,000, have been in the private collection of former president of Capital Records, Sal Iannucci, and his wife Aileen.

These unique pieces are part of the Bonhams & Butterfields fall auction of Modern, Contemporary and Latin American Art on November 17, 2009 in Los Angeles. The over 200-lot sale will include pieces by Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Pedro Coronel, Emil Filla, George Grosz, Armand Guillaumin, Henri Lebasque, Fernand Léger, Maximilien Luce, Diego Rivera, Frank Stella, Maurice Utrillo, Andy Warhol and Francisco Zúñiga, as well as a selection of contemporary Asian art. The auction catalogue's cover lot, Study for a Blue Nude, 2000 by Tom Wesselmann is expected to bring $50,000-70,000.

There are few automobiles we could truly consider works of art. And most of them are expensive. Bentley surely ranks among them, but the British luxury automaker has taken things one step further.

In a new project, Bentley invited its designers to create works of art inspired by their work. No fewer than 22 participated, working in every medium from photography and painting to sculpture. The results are truly intriguing, and will be auctioned off on December 1 in a charity auction held by Bonhams to benefit cancer research at Manchester's The Christie Hospital. The event is by invitation only, but you can view the pieces in the gallery below.

Diehard enthusiasts and collectors of famed Italian watch brand Panerai, known as the Paneristi, came together recently to raise money for those less fortunate. The global members of enthusiast site Paneristi.com celebrated the online forum's 10th anniversary with an event at artist and Panerai collector Eng Tay's Tribeca studio. Tay (above) created a special series of images showing an outstanding collection of vintage and classic Panerai timepieces along with his artwork for a calendar celebrating Paneristi.com's 10th anniversary. All profits from the limited edition $300 calendar are being donated to The Mulliganeers, a children's charity created by Paneristi.com moderator and founder Paddy Conway. Most copies of the collector's item sold out within two weeks but there a few left; you can contact Paddy@CotswoldGardens.com for info. on ordering.

It looked like to sculptures by Damien Hirst were headed for court. The two pieces, worth an estimated $47.6 million, were part of a broader lawsuit involving Udo Fritz-Hermann Brandhorst, an art collector and heir to the Henkel AG & Co. fortune. Brandhorst's former mistress, Venetia Kapernekas, sued Brandhorst in federal court for the artwork.

Kapernekas, a 49-year-old art dealer, agreed to drop the lawsuit over the weekend in exchange for custody of the daughter she had with Brandhorst, a one-time $100,000 payment, a $500,000 trust for their daughter's education, a loft in Soho (worth around $5 million) to be held in the daughter's name and $640,000 to cover her legal expenses. She'll also get $5,000 a month in child support.

As part of the deal, Kapernekas will be able to sell an Andy Warhol painting she received from Brandhorst. It's a heart-shaped blue and red piece called "Candy Box Open" from 1983. She has chosen Sotheby's in London to handle the sale, and it could go for $40,000. She won't be able to sell another Warhol, "Heart," because it belongs to her daughter.

You may remember she hit pause. studios from our previous article on the gritty, sexy polaroids when they went up at Alison Nelson's Chocolate Bar at Henri Bendel (Sexy Polaroids at Henri Bendel). Well, we're not the only ones who love artist Matt Schwartz's provocative photography -- Catherine Zeta-Jones does, too.

"She will be hanging them in her dressing room for her new Broadway show," says Schwartz, who sold five photos to Zeta-Jones. The Oscar-winning Welsh superstar will be making her Broadway debut alongside Angela Lansbury in a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical "A Little Night Music," which is slated to open December 13. This is Schwartz's first major celebrity sale. We knew about him first, CZJ!

You can order prints unframed or framed in the artist's signature weathered barnwood from she hit pause -- check out some of the new photos, like the above "white legs + bridge (brookyn)," here, or see them in person at the Union Square Holiday Market November 23 - December 25.

Celebrate if you own an Ed Ruscha print. At a Bohnams and Butterfield's auction last week, excited bidders pushed Standard Station (E.5) past its high estimate of $40,000 ... all the way to $170,000 and a new record for Ed Ruscha's work. The previous top spot for Ruscha was $133,000 for Hollywood, which was attained during the art boom in 2007.

The record-setting piece features a red gas station, an image now associated with Ruscha, and is #33 in an edition of 50 (a pretty large run). The strong auction performance follows an enormous retrospective held for the artist at London's Hayward Gallery and recognition by Americans for the Arts with its Artistic Excellence Award.

But, there's no prize so grand as an outstanding performance at auction.