Friday's Art Notes

_An artist performs during the rehearsal of 'Mord im Burgtheater' by Bulgarian author and director Ivan Stanev at the Maillon theater in Strasbourg, France. Photo by Frederick Florin/ AFP/ Getty Images_ * A painting that was determined not to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci "went for a not-so-shabby price at Sotheby's on Thursday":http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/arts/design/29vogel.html, bringing in $1.5 million. Experts debated the origin of "Portrait of a Woman, Called 'La Belle Ferronnière'" for decades, now believing it was painted by someone in the style of da Vinci sometime before 1750. * Some of our favorite places to get music (the symphony hall, the independent record store) are making themselves more convenient to homebody customers. The Philadelphia Orchestra "has worked out a deal to sell its live recordings on the internet":http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/peter_dobrin/20100128_Orchestra_hooks_up_with_online_distributor.html. And, like a handful of other small but prominent record shops, San Francisco's Amoeba Records says "it's going to offer a new digital catalog of music for sale online":http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/01/heres-an-extended-version-of-a-story-that-will-run-in-fridays-calendar-section-----young-adult-novel-the-vinyl-princess.html. * What happens when you give actors real vodka to drink during a performance instead of water? "Four of Germany's top actors decided to test this question on stage recently":http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/german-actors-drunken-chaos-schauspielhaus. The results? Some very painful prat falls. * Artists in London turn a gallery into a garbage can "by throwing their least favorite works into a room-sized trash bin":http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jan/28/michael-landy-art-rubbish-dump for six weeks. Michael Landy, the artists who came up with the project, is an expert at the artistic purge. In 2001, he threw away all of his 7,227 belongings.