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• Sale of vast Reynolds Tobacco collection begins Friday 

Talk about a garage sale to beat all garage sales.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s 7,000-piece collection of artwork, pottery, books, antiques and collectibles from its offices all over the world goes on sale Friday through Sunday to benefit the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

Items range from small ceramics for $10 to $20 to large items such as grandfather clocks for $3,000. Reynolds acquired the pieces over more than 100 years and donated the collection to the arts council, which will use the proceeds for grants and programs.

"One of our main goals at the arts council is to put it into the community again, so it's priced for that," said Rebecca Parker, who has been cataloging the vast collection since May in preparation for the sale. . . .

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," New said. The sale gives people a chance to buy a piece of local history and support the local arts community at the same time.

Much of the collection is antique. There are large sculptures, brass nautical items and a statue of a young man lighting a pipe. There are newer things, too. Many of the oil paintings, prints and photographs appear to date to the 1970s and '80s, Parker said.

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Letter: HOCKNEY: The pleasures of tobacco  

For every person who smoked and died young I can give you other names, especially in my own profession, who didn't: Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and a lot more (Letter, 1 February). Are there no doctors who would admit they haven't a clue why this is so? I for one am not sure medicine is a science – human beings are messy and all a little bit different, and I rejoice in that. . . .

If Mr Chapman is concerned about children, this week's news that 3 million children in the US are on Ritalin, a drug prescribed for attention deficit disorder horrified me. I intend to stick with my far more natural, delicious, pleasure-giving tobacco.

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Cuban makes statues using tobacco leaves 

A Cuban sculptor uses tobacco leaves to create wonderful pieces of art, and has made life-size as well as miniature sculptures of Winston Churchill, Che Guevara, John F. Kennedy, Charles Chaplin, Luciano Pavarotti and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With his unique work, Janio Nunez Leal has pieces in many private collections around the work, the Prensa Latina news agency reported.

Nunez, who worked as a "torcedor" or cigar twister in many cigar factories, first took up the idea of becoming a tobacco sculptor in 1994.

His work will be on display at the 14th Habano Cigar Festival to be held Feb 27-March 2.

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• Letters: CHAPMAN: David Hockney should stick to painting 

The 85% of Australian suburban non-smoking philistines whose taxes helped assist in the 1999 $4.9m purchase of his A Bigger Grand Canyon for the National Gallery in Canberra will be devastated to know that David Hockney thinks they don't cut the mustard as Bohemians (Letters, 27 January). Hockney's unctuous spray about efforts to reduce tobacco-caused disease was painfully deep in personal rationalisation. Like some Russian roulette survivor convinced the game is safe and that it makes him all interesting and insightful, he apparently cannot see past his own longevity as evidence that the case against smoking is exaggerated.

Yes, we all die. But Richard Doll's 50-year British doctors cohort study showed half of long-term smokers die from a tobacco-caused disease, with those dying losing an average 12 years off normal life expectancy. Patrick Swayze (57), Nat King Cole (45), George Harrison (58), George VI (56), Betty Grable (56), Mary Wells (49), and Beach Boy Carl Wilson (51) were all lifetime smokers.

Many who die from smoking, like those with emphysema, live wretched lives for years with their lungs shredded.

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Letters: Smoke and mirrors  

• Thank you for yet another of David Hockney's comedy rants (Letters, 28 January). If he needs material for his next sketch, he can start with the statistic that one person dies from lung cancer every 15 minutes in the UK. That'll have them rolling in the aisles.

Dr David Harper

Cambridge

• You must be relieved your senior smoking correspondent has not been distracted by all the recent attention given to the artwork he has managed to produce in his spare time.

Lawrence Jarrett

Luton

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Xu Bing Tobacco Project 

Xu Bing, one of China's most acclaimed contemporary artists, is known especially for his exploration of language. In Tobacco Project he furthers that interest, presenting the culture of tobacco as a far-reaching system of signs and symbols. Using tobacco as both subject and object, the exhibition includes Xu Bing's adaptations of historical texts and graphics: a book made of whole tobacco leaves and printed with an early-seventeenth-century account of Jamestown, Virginia; a poem composed from historical tobacco brand names and printed on cigarette paper; and Chinese cigarettes printed with selections from Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (the "Little Red Book").

Tobacco engages Xu Bing on many levels simultaneously, allowing him to raise questions, make new discoveries, and expand the viewers' awareness. Above all, he sees it as a medium of cross-cultural exchange—one that first linked Virginia and the American colonies to Europe and other parts of the world in the age of discovery and which continues to provide a connective thread in the age of globalism. Tobacco engages Xu Bing on many levels simultaneously, allowing him to raise questions, make new discoveries, and expand the viewers' awareness. Above all, he sees it as a medium of cross-cultural exchange—one that first linked Virginia and the American colonies to Europe and other parts of the world in the age of discovery and which continues to provide a connective thread in the age of globalism. In addition, he appreciates tobacco's unique formal properties. Tobacco Project appeals to the sense of smell as well as sight, and Xu Bing is conscious of permeating the gallery with the rich, sweet odor of tobacco. . . .

Tobacco Project contains elements of sociology, history, politics, and personal narrative, but ultimately it is an artist's take on tobacco—a subject that fascinates Xu Bing for its history of innovation as much as for its exploitation and self-contradiction.

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• Xu Bing on His Plans to Light a Giant Cigarette at the Aldrich Museum, Even Though He Doesn't Smoke 

At the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, Chinese artist Xu Bing is showing some highly addictive work. His installation, called “Tobacco Project,” uses the eponymous poisonous leaf as its muse and medium, turning the material into maps, books, and printed poems that confront the omnipresent ills of a nicotine-dependent culture.

At the exhibition’s opening this coming Sunday, January 29, Xu will light a 42-foot-long cigarette for his piece “Traveling Down the River.” The sculpture will slowly burn on top of a replica of a famous Chinese scroll painting by Song dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan, commenting on the relentless spread of smoking across China: studies have shown that the country has the largest number of smoking-related deaths in the world, yet two thirds of Chinese people think smoking does little or no harm to their health.

In this Q&A, BLOUIN ARTINFO asked Xu Bing what made him choose tobacco as a medium, and what cigarettes mean to him. He also explained his own personal history with tobacco. . . .

l issues.

Why did you choose cigarettes as the dominant medium for the show?

In 1999 I visited Duke University to give a lecture. When I entered Durham I was immediately aware of the scent of tobacco in the air. Friends explained to me that the Duke family was built on a tobacco fortune, and thus Durham had come to be called “Tobacco City.” Moreover, because the Duke University School of Medicine excelled in treating cancer, Durham has also come to be known as the “City of Medicine.” A multifaceted connection exists there between tobacco and cultural history. . . .

Since the initial show at Duke, I went on to expand the show to the Shanghai Gallery of Art in 2004 — there is a deep historical connection between Shanghai and Durham as a result of the tobacco trade that flourished at the beginning of the 20th century — and then to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond in 2011, where collectors Carolyn Hsu-Balcer — whose family has a long-standing connection to tobacco — and her husband, René Balcer, encouraged me to pursue the history of tobacco in Richmond. The Aldrich contemporary art museum in Ridgefield will be the project’s only venue in the New York area. . . .

When I treat tobacco as a material and come into close contact with it, I realize that it should not be the object of further subjective judgment. It has already taken on the burden of too much social significance. I don't want my work to function as little more than a contribution to the body of tobacco-related propaganda. There is no reason for me to spend my energy saying something that everyone already knows. By viewing tobacco as something neutral, by returning to its innate qualities, I am simply engaging the material in a discussion, in an exchange. If the material is approached with a sense of moral or ethical judgment, then its true aspect will never be visible.

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• VIDEO: Smoke and Minors: Photographer Frieke Janssens captures disturbing images of children puffing on cigarettes  

Cherubic cheeks framed with gentle ringlets - they are the faces of innocence and beauty.

But with cigarettes lingering between their fingers or pipes perched between their lips, their images are repulsive.

In an attempt to play the attractiveness and vulgarity of smoking off each other, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens has captured 15 eerie images of children puffing on cigarettes, cigars or pipes in a collection entitled 'The Beauty of an Ugly Addiction'. . . .

She intended to show that the addiction, while often unattractive, can also be the opposite, and can appear regal or sophisticated.

The photographer did not use real cigarettes during the shoot. Instead, she relied on sticks of chalk or cheese for props, and used candles and incense to create smoke.

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• Frieke Janssens' Controversial 'Smoking Children' Images (PICTURES) 

Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens has produced a series of disturbing and controversial photographs that depict children smoking.

In May 2010, the internet spent a good day or two expressing its outrage at a YouTube video that showed an Indonesian toddler lighting up.

While the rest of us moved on fairly quickly, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens was so affected by the video it inspired her to make her own images representing children and tobacco – a series called Smoking Kids.

“The video [on YouTube] highlighted the cultural differences between the east and west, and questioned notions of smoking being a mainly adult activity,” she says on her website.

“[With Smoking Kids] I wanted to isolate the viewer’s focus upon the issue of smoking itself… there is a nod to less attractive aspects, on the line between the beauty and ugliness of smoking.”

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICTURES . . .

Naturally there were no real cigarettes on site - chalk and sticks of cheese were used instead with candles and incense to produce the smoke.

How effective Smoking Kids is as an anti-smoking message is open to debate.

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• Striking on the Modern Matchbook  

No one knows what exactly prompted Joshua Pusey, a lawyer and the inventor of the modern toboggan, to patent a folded piece of cardboard carrying matches and a striker in 1892. Though legend suggests it had more to do with vanity than with safety. "I heard that he was a patent attorney and always wearing suits and vests," explains Mark Bean, president of the match division of New Hampshire's D. D. Bean & Sons Company, which has been in the trade since 1938. "And that the box of wooden matches was bulky and awkward to carry around."

Pusey called his brainchild "flexibles" quite possibly because, unlike their predecessors, which smokers carried in silhouette-marring match safes, they slid into a dandy's pocket with nary a bump. His contraption soon caught the attention of a company called Diamond. In 1896 it purchased the patent for $4,000, thereby charting its course toward world matchbook domination. . . .

As recent antismoking crusades have dried up the remaining ad business, today's beautifully designed books are often inspired by nostalgia (or branding, or a combination of the two). And the rest are plain, undecorated white. "There's an affiliation with smoking that's hard to avoid," says Chris Scherzinger, president of Jarden Home Brands, which bought Diamond in 2002. "Not that I have anything against smokers."

PHILLUMENY 101

Monte Beauchamp, an art director and author of "Striking Images," a collection of matchbook-cover art, reflects on the hobby.

Why did you become interested in matchbooks?

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• Artist Hockney jokes about appointment to Order of Merit 

British artist David Hockney has responded to his appointment to the Order of Merit with typical humour, saying he was glad his controversial campaign for smokers' rights had not worked against him.

Hockney, who came to prominence during the British pop art movement in the 1960s, was named as a member of the exclusive order on Sunday by Queen Elizabeth II.

Accepting the royal honour is a turnaround for the 74-year-old who famously turned down a knighthood in 1990, has refused to paint the queen and once said he sees no value in prizes.

Asked for a response to his appointment to the Order of Merit, Hockney told the Guardian newspaper: "No comment -- other than it's nice to know they are not prejudiced against the older smoker."

Hockney is a pro-tobacco campaigner who has regularly spoken out in favour of smokers' rights.

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• C215: Kicking habit inspires smoking exhibition 

It wasn't until Paris street artist C215 stopped smoking two years ago because of a bout with meningitis that he was able to step back and really look at the act. He says he realized it was the perfect subject for a new series of street-art stencil portraits, on display in "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Recent Works by C215" at Shooting Gallery. After all, where does one usually find smokers?

"You usually find them on the street - they're forbidden in places in Paris," says the personable, heavily accented Christian Guémy, 38, who goes by the C215 nom de guerre.

He's been doing research on the history of smoking and tobacco-brand iconography - advertising that has promised its users that they will look thinner, smarter or fashionable with a cigarette on hand. Guémy says he has been understanding how advertising uses images of "people in dominant classes" smoking in order to influence "housewives, immigrants, soldiers, people bored in life."

Guémy's own brooding smokers, illuminated in the darkness with the flickers from lighters, are based on the images of friends and art heavyweights such as Georges Braque and David Hockney and sprayed on recycled ephemera and detritus like old canvas, metal and cardboard.

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Culture Flash: smoking in cars 

But if they're looking for a useful, readymade health warning from the arts, they've got their work cut out. . . .

Negative portrayals are rare, unless you count Michael Mann's anti-big-tobacco masterpiece The Insider. Let's not even try to deconstruct the 1980s Star Wars anti-smoking ad in which C3PO catches R2D2 sneaking a fag. . . .

TV has made fingerwagging hints that people who smoke are ill-educated (Coronation Street, EastEnders, etc), ill-disciplined (current Aussie series The Slap) or simply evil, such as the Cigarette Smoking Man of The X-Files, or The Simpsons' raspy-voiced, ash-haired Patty and Selma. Then again, would Mad Men work if nobody was allowed to smoke or discuss advertising tobacco? Or if they all had stained teeth and halitosis? . . .

As for the visual arts, Alphonse Mucha's elegant art nouveau smokers could have inspired Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's look, but Van Gogh's Skull with Burning Cigarette should be printed on every fag packet.

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• Controversial ‘Smoking Kids’ Glamour Shots: Artistic or Absurd? [VIDEO] 

Now there is the "Smoking Kids" pictorial spread. Belgian photographer Freike Janssens was inspired by the YouTube video of the two-year-old Indonesian boy who chain smoked 40 cigarettes a day.

So she developed "Smoking Kids." The glamour shot series includes 15 portraits of children, dressed in various ornate garments, smoking cigarettes. They are meant to visually mimic adult figures, like military personnel and Old Hollywood actresses.

Titled "The beauty of an ugly addiction," Janssens supposedly confronts viewers with the contradiction of an unhealthy habit and the alluring attraction of cigarette smoking, according to ILoveBelgium.com.

The children in the photos are between the ages of four and nine.

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Nazi-looted painting found in Swiss museum 

A painting looted from a Berlin Jewish family by Nazis has been found by US authorities at the Kunsthaus museum in Zurich, museum officials said Tuesday.

Confirming a report by local media, the museum said that the painting was an 1887 portrait called Madame La Suire by Swiss painter Albert von Keller, who was popular in Berlin and Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century.

The painting was acquired by the Sommerguths, a rich Jewish couple from Berlin who had a substantial collection of 106 paintings, including Renaissance masterpieces as well as works by Camille Pissaro.

But after the Nazis came to power in Germany, they were forced to give up the collection, which was sold during an auction in 1939.

Alfred Sommerguth, who acquired his fortune as co-director of the German tobacco manufacturer Loeser & Wolff, managed to flee to Cuba in 1941 at the age of 82, before reaching New York where he died a destitute in 1950.

His wife Gertrude died four years later.

The painting was found by chance, during an exhibition on von Keller organised by the Zurich museum.

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