Cultural Exchange

Lee Wen has the wiry frame and slumped shoulders of a man accustomed to making the most of scant resources. As one of Singapore's few performance artists active in the 1990s, he lived on the margins of society, surviving brushes with the authorities while forging a body of work based on spontaneous individual expression in a country where it is largely frowned upon. "Because of the unscripted nature of it, the authorities were always worried about what we were going to do," Lee said.

Hong Kong - Times were good in the 1970s and '80s for Hong Kong comics - so good that one publisher was listed on the stock exchange and a newspaper dedicated to the genre published daily for two years. They were, in the words of Tony Wong, the creator of the Oriental Heroes action series whom fans, artists and scholars have dubbed the territory's godfather of comics, "the golden years. " In recent years, comics publishers here in one of the world's largest markets for the genre have slimmed down.

For generations, French presidents have filled a nearly sacred role. They act as an embodiment of their republic's lofty ideals, and they exude such judiciousness and serenity that they often end up seeming oddly otherworldly. And then there's Nicolas Sarkozy. The fast-talking president could go toe-to-toe with Chicago's feisty incoming Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a political street fight — and finagle the United States into a war of choice with Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi. Woody Allen recently remarked to the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that he could imagine casting Sarkozy in a Joe Pesci-like tough-guy role.

"You need to create blur to create desire," Jean-Charles de Castelbajac says in English, at a swanky restaurant in the center of Paris. The manager teases him about a TV appearance as he walks in and shakes hands with a famous French actor. Later, leaning in off his seat, the 61-year-old fashion designer and artist of noble birth excitedly talks about projects and the changing fashion business. "You like to see a man you understand in one minute? If you want to be seduced you don't like some blur?

Tracey Emin always sets out to provoke — her stock in trade is the outrageous and the obscene. But it wasn't just the array of used tampons, pregnancy tests and expletive appliqué tapestry that shocked audiences at her new exhibition "Love Is What You Want," which just opened at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. Instead of her usual outbursts of profanity and perversion, Emin used her limelight to do something perhaps more shocking — she pledged her support for Britain's Conservative-led government, opining that "The Tories are the only hope for the arts.

Even residents of this sand-blown suburb ? once known for crime and middle-class flight ? used to joke that the best part of town was the road to neighboring Tel Aviv. Lately, however, traffic is moving in the opposite direction. With a dozen new museums, libraries, theaters and other cultural centers ? all focused on the city's unique rebranding around kids culture and digital arts ? Holon has become an international model for urban renewal, drawing 400,000 tourists last year.

In Europe, seeing the ministers and heads of state doing their song-and-dance routines over how best to resolve the long-running financial crisis might be commonplace, but for a brief engagement at a Berlin playhouse, that spectacle would at least offer real songs and actual dancing. "EuroCrash!," an English-language monetary unit musical, has arrived to do a send-up of the continent's currency. For the playwright, the Economist magazine's Berlin correspondent David Shirreff, it seemed a natural outlet for someone sitting on such a surfeit of fodder.

There's more than just art at issue in the current exhibition at the Finegood Gallery in West Hills. The operative term is cultural exchange. Teenage photographers from Tel Aviv and Los Angeles bring their curiosity and fresh vision to the sights and scenes of their respective cities. The work veers from well-meaning snapshots to more artful images, but the main point is young photographers sharing visions of their environments.

Robert Breen, who initiated U.S.-Soviet cultural exchanges by taking "Porgy and Bess" to the Soviet Union and pioneered federal financing for theater arts, has died of Alzheimer's disease. He was 80. Breen, who lived in Manhattan, died Saturday at Brooklyn Veterans Hospital. His revival of the Broadway musical "Porgy and Bess," which he directed and co-produced, toured internationally from 1952-56 through 89 cities in 29 countries.

BUDAPEST, Hungary - "The Sixth Coffin" has been officially buried. Derided as anti-Semitic agitprop, this work by recently deceased Hungarian playwright-politician-polemicist Istvan Csurka has been the focal point of controversy until it was finally scrubbed from Budapest's Uj Szinhaz's - or New Theater's - new season. But how this production (think: the Hungarian equivalent of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion") ever got anywhere near the performance schedule of a major municipal venue in the first place is part of a larger drama involving this country's leadership and its assault on culture.