AP - Two artists have used wax from the thousands of candles that Czechs lit to mourn the death of President Vaclav Havel to create a large heart honoring him.

AP - A black skillet, a heat gun, pigments and beeswax take up a corner of LeRone Wilson's art studio in Harlem.

Reuters - Britain's National Portrait Gallery launched a major show of the late figurative painter Lucian Freud's work Wednesday, showcasing the fleshy portraits which made him one of the world's most revered artists in his lifetime.

Reuters - Britain's National Portrait Gallery launched a major show of the late figurative painter Lucian Freud's work Wednesday, showcasing the fleshy portraits which made him one of the world's most revered artists in his lifetime.

Reuters - Christie's on Tuesday kicked off a fortnight of major London art sales with a bang, hitting or exceeding the most optimistic pre-sale expectations and extending 2011's record-breaking run into the new year.

AP - Three top works from the late Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor's art collection have sold at a London auction for nearly 14 million pounds ($22 million), the auctioneer Christie's said Tuesday.

AP - A wine steward who plucked artwork off hotel and gallery walls in a bicoastal spree admitted Tuesday to stealing a $350,000 drawing in New York, resolving charges here after serving jail time in California.

Reuters - Works by Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha and Roy Lichtenstein are among Post-War and Contemporary art that will be sold by Christie's at an auction next month that will also feature 45 works from the collection of Silicon Valley pioneer Peter Norton.

Reuters - The St. Louis Art Museum is rearranging galleries by theme rather than time period, seeking to make them more accessible to visitors as part of a $162 million expansion.

Reuters - Auction houses pinching themselves after bumper 2011 sales are now turning their attention to 2012, amid cautious optimism that the two-year bull run for top works of art will continue.

Reuters - American street artist Mark Jenkins's human sculptures staged in provocative poses in the middle of cities have proved so uncannily life-like they have sparked calls from passersby to the ambulance service or the police.

Reuters - Christie's shrugged off the euro zone crisis and slowing economic growth in 2011 to post record revenues, selling art worth 3.6 billion pounds, or nine percent more than in 2010.

AP - Grammy award-winning singer John Legend surprised a high school choir Tuesday at the Kennedy Center to help start a program encouraging young artists to confront social issues with their art, in honor of the late Marvin Gaye.

AP - Singer John Legend is joining the Kennedy Center in Washington to start a program in honor of the late Marvin Gaye encouraging young artists to engage in social issues.

Reuters - In the history of currency, earplugs have, unsurprisingly, never been widely used or accepted. So when a man offered Belgian artist Delphine Boël 10,000 earplugs for her print "The Source of Identity" at the Truc Troc contemporary art exhibit in 2006, her reaction was, "God, he's crazy."

Reuters - Old Masters paintings brought in more than $120 million at auction sales this week, with several works selling for more than $5 million each and records set for some artists.

AP - A New York art dealer has been charged in a $4 million fraud for selling works by Picasso, Matisse and others without informing the owner or giving him the proceeds.

Reuters - Denmark's Queen Margrethe II said that painting landscapes helps to recharge her batteries in an exclusive interview with Reuters ahead of this week's opening of a major exhibition for her art.

Reuters - Standing on a large floor map in a Jeddah art gallery, Hamza Serafi places a yellow sign inscribed "Caution: revolution (take 2)" over Egypt and then turns to Saudi Arabia.

Reuters - An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion euros ($1.82 billion), a monument to the "madness" he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust.