Why the Beatles Were a Band and Not Artists, Shepard Fairey Legal Drama Ends, and More Top News

- THE BIG STORY -

Is that strange, blotchy composition you're looking at an off-kilter painting by German Expressionist painter Franz Marc? Nope, it's actually by the Beatles. All of them. Heading to sale at Philip Weiss Auctions next week, Images of a Woman is a 1966 painting that the Fab Four made while taking refuge one night from Japanese Beatlemania at the Tokyo Hotel—supposedly the only collaborative artwork that John (a bona fide artist and draftsman), Paul, George, and Ringo made together and all signed. The painting came about when legendary Beatles manager Brian Epstein dropped off some art supplies to help the touring band while away its hours hiding out from rabid fans, and it was once purchased by record salesman Takao Nishino for the insane price of $500,000. Now when it goes up for auction it is expected to earn $120,000 at most.

- QUOTE OF THE WEEK -

"After spending a great amount of time, energy and legal effort, all of us at the Associated Press are glad this matter is finally behind us. We hope this case will serve as a clear reminder to all of the importance of fair compensation for those who gather and produce original news content." - AP CEO Gary Pruitt's statement after Shepard Fairey was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and two years of probation at the conclusion of the artist's grueling, never-ending court battle over his appropriation of the news agency's image for his pro-ObamaHope poster (an infraction he compounded by tampering with evidence to throw investigators off the trail).

- MUST READ -

Court to Decide Whether Lap Dances Are Art - A perennial question that has bedeviled art critics from John Ruskin to Meyer Schapiro—should lap dances be considered works of art, and thus deserving of a New York State tax exemption?—advanced to oral arguments on Wednesday, which cost extra. (Gothamist)

Artinfo's Must-See Fall Shows - The good folks at LBM's rollicking online portal have compiled a list of 40 shows they're looking forward to this season, from Kim Gordon and Karen Kilimnik at 303 Gallery to Mickalene Thomas at Lehmann Maupin. (Artinfo)

Wall Street Journal's Fall Art Picks - See what Kelly Crow and co. are looking forward to this season, from Florentine Renaissance painting at the Getty to the Met's big Warhol show. (WSJ)

Target Sells Warhol Soup Cans - On Sunday the megastore chain began selling 1.2 million cans of the Pop artist's beloved Campbell's Soup in four Warholian color schemes (and with quotes from the artist) to celebrate "the Art of Soup." (AP)

MoMA Makes the Wright Move - Three years after the Guggenheim held an exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs and maquettes for this seminal buildings, the Museum of Modern Art and Columbia University have joined forces to acquire the great American architect's archives, with the 3-D models destined for MoMA and the paper-based schematics and designs heading to the university's Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. (Gallerist NY)

- ART MARKET -

Raphael Artwork Heads (Ahem) to Sotheby's - A Head of an Apostle drawing that the legendarily masterful Renaissance draftsman executed in around 1519 is going to go up for auction on December 5 with a high estimate of $23.8 million, which, by point of comparison, is just $200,000 above what Jeff Koons's Hanging Heart sold for at Sotheby's in 2007 (a record for a work by a contemporary artist at the time). (NYT)

The Great Warhol Foundation Sell-Off - A few months after the foundation decided that it would stop authenticating the Pop artist's work (due to the enormous legal fees it rang up fighting lawsuits over its sometimes questionable declarations), it has announced that it will auction off its entire thousand-some-work collection through Christie's this fall to raise an estimated $100 million for its endowment. (Artinfo)

Auction Dealers Form Impressionist Supergroup - If you're looking to spend a few million dollars on one of the vanishingly few significant Impressionist paintings not already in a museum collection, the odds are you'll want to deal with the combine of Connery, Pissaro, Seydoux, a new firm composed of weather-making Christie's and Sotheby's salesmen, with Impressionist scion Lionel Pissarro and his wife, Sandrine, based in Paris alongside Thomas Seydoux, and with Stephane Connery running things in New York. (NYT)

See 10 of London's Top Upstart Dealers - Artinfo has compiled a slide show of "young British dealers to watch," some of whom have jaw-dropping spaces and some of whom are notably photogenic. (Artinfo)

Want to Buy Some Art From Knoedler? - Now's your chance, with the forgery-lawsuit-wracked Upper East Side auction house selling off 34 works by Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, and others through Doyle Auction House-and not Christie's or Sotheby's, as would surely have been the case before the scandal-this November. (Gallerist NY)

- IN & OUT -

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery will be moving from its Lower East Side home on Orchard Street to 327 Broome Street this fall, with the new two-story, 4,000-square-foot site that it will share with Jack Hanley Gallery-with the two dealers taking turns using the prime street-level space-opening by early December. (Press Release)

Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas was named winner of the fifth Yanghyun Prize by a jury consisting of über-curators Kathy Halbreich, Philippe Vergne, Fumio Nanjo, and Kasper König. (Press Release)

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has named Patrick Moore to be its new deputy director under Eric Shiner, promoting Moore from his previous post as director of development. (Gallerist NY)

Former MoMA PS1 curator and general man about town Neville Wakefield has been retained by Playboy magazine (that's right) "to consult on special marketing projects." (WWD)

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will reopen after renovations on September 23, while the the easygoing city's Rijksmuseum will reopen after a ten-year makeover on April 14, with Rembrandt's The Night Watch remaining the august institution's centerpiece. (NYT)