The Week in Culture

The arts may be suffering on almost every front, but thanks to patron (saint) Brad Pitt, painter Neo Rauch now has a nice $1 million nestegg to help afford new oils and canvases. Pitt purchased a rainbow-colored painting of an overturned race car by the artist at Art Basel in Switzerland this week, an event the actor has attended two years in a row. Elsewhere in Europe, Pitt's face was turned into useful art—in the Russian city of Omsk, officials placed cardboard cutouts of Pitt dressed as a traffic cop along busy highways in an effort to cause drivers to slow down and stop speeding. Apparently it's working—but it's only a matter of time before the distracted Pittian gawkers start causing crashes.