Surprise! In response to the recent financial panicmeltdowncrash, people are being more cautious about spending millions of dollars on works of art. It's not a disaster yet—although sales were slow and "softened" at London's recent Sotheby's and Christie's auctions (as well as at last week's Frieze Art Fair), there are still big works selling for big prices. Weirdly, American buyers were up by 20% this year. However, collectors used to the over-the-moon sales that have dominated the art market for the past few years will have to lower their standards "by as much as a third." Or, as an art dealer put it in today's Wall Street Journal: "Before, collectors had to take whatever art they could get from dealers and auction houses, but now those collectors are saying, 'Kneel down and ask nicely.'" Bet they're enjoying that.

Architect Zaha Hadid's Chanel-sponsored "Mobile Art Pavilion" opened in Central Park today. What's inside? Video of naked people beating each other with handbags, apparently. The ship will lift off on November 9th and it's officially sold-out until then, although a certain number of tickets are supposedly handed out every day beginning at 8AM. [Racked]

Unfortunately for dealers and artists who have become accustomed to wealthy collectors competing with each other to drop millions on contemporary art, now that everyone is tightening the purse strings, the power balance has shifted: "Before, collectors had to take whatever art they could get from dealers and auction houses," says one dealer, "but now those collectors are saying, 'Kneel down and ask nicely.'"

Anonymous subway ad vandal Poster Boy hasn't let his newfound fame go to his head. (Maybe he has? We don't know the guy personally). He's still traipsing around subway platforms with an X-acto knife and a tube of glue, busily remixing posters while slack-jawed commuters stand by unaware, presumably. After the jump are five of his newest works—I have to admit that the "FART" one is the best of all:

When it's done right, movie art is great. Stunning, provocative, intriguing, and all those other "hmm" things that make you want to see a movie that will probably end up being shit. One of my dream jobs is to be the person who puts together trailers for films. I would love to make the posters too, but I haven't the talent for design. Thankfully some people do, as evidenced by this gallery of "beautiful movie posters." Indeed, many of them are quite lovely! I've put together a little gallery of my favorites from the list (and added a few of my own) after the jump.

If you are stressed out and broke and afraid of the future (like me!) and you just need to take a break and make some lovely art, may I suggest you visit This Is Sand, a little website that acts like one of those craftsy sandboxes you used in art class when you were 8 years old. It's soothing. Not as soothing as actually being on the beach, but soothing. I made this one! [via NonSociety!]

You young people probably once sat farting in a hollowed-out pumpkin for your Anne Geddes baby pictorial, but old timer silver foxes like CNN anchor Anderson Cooper posed for the real deal: legendary maverick and possible Furry Diane Arbus. Yes, at left is a strange, somewhat unpleasant photograph by Ms. Arbus—Coop's skin looks thick and almost Plasticene, his lips appear painted—but it's going to fetch a lot of clams no matter what! (Unlike Cooper, who will never fetch clams for any reason.) It's up for auction today at Christie's for around $8-12k. You should probably buy it and add it to the rest of your shrine. (I'm talking to you, Sam Champion.) Click for larger baby-to-adult comparison. It's pretty uncanny.

Art Review has issued its "Power 100" list of the industry's most influential figures, and manages to make it semi-relevant in these troubled economic times: Erstwhile major art sponsors UBS and Deutsche Bank are conspicuous in their absence, and the list's compilers say that the murky economic climate has made established artists more desirable to big-name collectors. As a result, Damien Hirst is number one—the only other artist in the top ten, Jasper Johns, is number nine—followed by Larry Gagosian and the MOMA's new associate director Kathy Halbreich.

After 15 weeks—and a bit of controversy—Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls exhibit will bid goodbye to New York today. [NYT]

Ah high-speed photography. Destructive and gorgeous. WebUrbanist has a really cool exhibit of photos and accompanying essays which you should definitely check out. We have a modest sampling after the jump.

The Palazzo Chupi penthouse, part of artist Julian Schnabel's giant pink building on West 11th Street, has cut its asking price again, from $29 mil to to $24 mil. (It dropped to $29.5 mil from $32 mil last May.) The story isn't just that an artist can't sell a big pink mansion in the West Village, though. The slashing of the price tag on Palazzo Chupi represents not just a reverse for the building's colorful creator; it marks the end of an era for New York artists.Palazzo was the most recent and ambitious artist-designed real estate project, so it makes sense that it'll be the one to fall first, with its inability to sell and hubristic asking price. For 50 years artists have supplemented unreliable income from their work with real-estate gains. Now New York is likely to experience the first significant decline in real-estate prices in decades. Artists may or may not find the city's neighborhoods more affordable; but Schnabel and others can no longer expect to share in the appreciation of neighborhoods they make hip. It's fair to say that there won't be large projects like this in the future, and that Schnabel will be regarded as the peak of the heady days of the artist-developer.

Well then: the mysterious hooded and bearded man photographed supervising the painting of a new Banksy mural yesterday is not Banksy; it's Williamsburg artist R. Nicholas Kuszyk! As he informed us just now in an email with the intriguing subject line: "not banksy! it's kuszyk." Who is this be-aviator shaded man of mystery? A Banksy collaborator who also paints some nice robots himself! See here:

Semi-anonymous street art star and obsession of ours Banksy is opening his first official show in New York. Huzzah! And man I gotta tell you, it's weird. "Bizarre animatronic displays packed in a tiny downtown storefront" weird. All those rat murals he put up recently were just a teaser for his new, strange hobby. After the jump, check out two videos of his odd show in action—and, more tipster photos of a mysterious dude who could conceivably be Banksy!

After lots of slobbering positive reviews on our part, the anonymous subway ad vandal known as Poster Boy has finally made contact. And he sent us a present: an exclusive Photoshopped work (after the jump). Which is outside his usual methodology, but hey, since this kid is on his way to being a star, it just makes it that much more special. You can all say you knew him way back when. Suck it, New York magazine:

Guerrilla artist Poster Boy razors away parts of subway advertisements and sticks them onto other subway posters. The end result: funny social commentary, often involving the unfortunate use of celeb's faces! New York magazine talked to him about why he does it: “No matter what I do... as long as I did something to those advertisements and that saturation, it’s political. It’s anti-media, anti–established art world.”

That ridiculous solid gold statue of Kate Moss was unveiled at the British Museum yesterday. Weighing 50 kg and insured for $20 million, it's thought to be the largest gold statue since ancient Egypt. The sculptor Marc Quinn says that he chose his subject because Moss "is the only person who has the ubiquity and silence that is required in an image of divinity, that has been created through time, so that we can project onto it." We think he means that a coke-snorting, hard-drinking, skeevy musician-shagging, multimillionaire clotheshorse is the perfect icon for contemporary Western society, which is, of course, true. [Independent]

A tipster this morning sends a photo of what appears to be another mural by street art god Banksy going up in SoHo, NYC—notice that it uses the same attractive rat motif as his other NYC mural, which went up last weekend. The actual painting work has been subcontracted, obvs. We know you're in town, Banksy. We know what you look like! Seriously, email us with Banksy info, we'd like to buy him a drink. Click through for a larger pic of the rat art in action:

Look at it this way: If the day comes when the dollar is no longer worth the paper it's printed on, at least you'll be able to turn your cash into cute animals. [Art Of Moneygami via BoingBoing]

Geoffrey Raymond is the artist who's been making a name for himself with his portraits of disgraced CEOs, turning up outside office buildings and encouraging employees to "contribute" to his art by adding an inscription of their own. He was outside Bear Stearns shortly after Jimmy Cayne was ousted; last week, he stood outside AIG with a Hank Greenberg painting set up on an easel. But it isn't the safest line of work: When he appeared outside Lehman Brothers with a portrait of Dick Fuld (which he eventually sold for $10,000), he says he "almost got beaten up by a 'drunk, angry' employee wearing one of the firm's corporate softball league jerseys." [NYO, previously]

Semi-anonymous street art legend Banksy reportedly collaborated with a sign-painting company on this mural, which went up last weekend in Soho, NYC. He likes us—he really likes us! At least the rats among us. [via Gothamist]