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Madonna performs during the Super Bowl XLVI half-time show

NEW YORK (AFP) - Madonna's big year got even bigger Tuesday with the announcement of her most ambitious world tour ever, hot on the heels of her record-setting Super Bowl halftime show.

The Material Girl will hopscotch around the globe in support of her 12th studio album "MDNA" which comes out March 26, even as her second feature film, the romantic drama "W.E.", struggles to impress critics and draw audiences.

In a statement, concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment said the as-yet unnamed tour -- Madonna's first since her wildly successful "Sticky and Sweet" outing in 2008 and 2009 -- would kick off March 29 in Tel Aviv.

She will go on to perform in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul, before starting a 22-city swing through Europe in Zagreb on June 11 that will include Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow and Milan.

Madonna will be in Oslo on August 15, the day before her 54th birthday.

The 26-city North American leg begins August 28 in Philadelphia, and includes open-air gigs in Quebec City's Plains of Abraham park on September 1 and New York's Yankee Stadium on September 6.

"The tour will also visit South America and Australia," Live Nation said, with dates to be announced. There was no mention of any gigs in Asia.

"It will be big and can get bigger," Live Nation's chief executive Arthur Fogel told music news website Billboard.com, adding that production for the tour was in the conceptual stages.

Curiously, Madonna's hometown Detroit was missing from Tuesday's list, although Live Nation teased that "additional cities and venues" are in the pipeline.

Fogel told Billboard.com that the tour -- to wrap up in Australia early next year -- would be Madonna's biggest yet with close to 90 concerts, compared with 85 for "Sticky and Sweet."

With her 2008 divorce from British film-maker Guy Ritchie a distant memory, Madonna marked a return to top form Sunday in a 12-minute, four-song performance midway through the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, Indiana.

It was the most-watched halftime show in Super Bowl history, watched by 114 million viewers in the United States alone -- more than the record 111.3 million who tuned in for the National Football League championship itself.

Joining Madonna in an athletic performance of her just-released single "Give Me All Your Luvin" was British rapper M.I.A., whose split-second flip of the middle finger to the cameras set tongues wagging.

Some wondered if the superstar resented being upstaged by a relative upstart. Others thought M.I.A. was only keeping true to Madonna's own career-defining talent for stirring controversy and breaking with convention.

Washington Post television critic Hank Steuver marveled how Madonna had "outdone herself, executing a flashy halftime tribute to her own image ... but also honoring the concept of longevity and old-fashioned pop stardom."

Critics have been less impressed by "W.E.", a romantic tale that builds on the love affair between Britain's king Edward VIII and US divorcee Wallace Simpson, which Madonna wrote, directed and co-produced.

It premiered at the Venice film festival in December, then went on to earn Madonna a surprise best-song Golden Globe for "Masterpiece."

The Hollywood Reporter said the film, starring Abbie Cornish and James Fox, felt "artificial, programmed (and) rote." The New York Times said it "has its pull, but it never coheres, shredded by its editing and its pretensions."

Madonna's directorial debut was "Filth and Wisdom," a 2008 comedy about three London roommates.

©AFP/File / Carl Court

Vincent Van Gogh's 1889 painting entitled "Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy"

LONDON (AFP) - Works by British sculptor Henry Moore and Spanish painter Joan Miro sold for record prices at a Christie's sale that also saw a Van Gogh owned by Elizabeth Taylor fetch over £10 million.

The Moore sculpture, an abstract bronze cast of a reclining woman called "Reclining Figure: Festival", sold for £19 million ($30 million, 23 million euros) -- more than three times the £5.5 million estimate.

Christie's said the work, which was commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951, was "one of the most outstanding examples of the reclining figure in the whole of (Moore's) prodigious oeuvre".

The highest price previously set for a Moore work was just £4.3 million, for a 1957 bronze cast called "Draped Reclining Woman", sold in London four years ago, a Christie's spokeswoman said.

The record-breaking Miro sale, a 1925 canvas named "Painting Poem (le corps de ma brune)" went under the hammer for £16.8 million -- again soaring over the pre-sale estimate of up to £9 million.

"'Le corps de ma brune' is the finest work from a groundbreaking series of paintings," said Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman in Impressionist Art Department at Christie's.

"Widely considered the most important of all of Miro's work, the 'Poem Paintings' instigated a whole new way of working that Miro would follow for the rest of his life and was to significantly influence Pablo Picasso."

©AFP/File / Carl Court

Spanish painter Joan Miro's 1925 painting entitled "Painting Poem"

The painting, described by Christie's as "part lyrical free-form painting and part hand-written stream-of-conscious poetry", was sold from a private New York art collection.

The previous record auction price for a work by Miro, who died in 1983, was for "La caresse des etoiles", which sold in New York in 2008 for $17 million.

The London auction house also saw three paintings owned by the late Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor, including one by Vincent Van Gogh, sell for a total of £13.9 million ($22 million, 17 million euros).

Van Gogh's "Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy" ("View of the Asylum and Chapel of Saint-Remy"), which had been bought for Taylor by her art dealer father in 1963, went for £10.1 million.

A self-portrait of French Impressionist Edgar Degas and a landscape by Claude Pissarro, also owned by the star, sold for £713,250 and £2,953,250 respectively.

"The exceptional results for these three masterpieces by Van Gogh, Degas and Pissarro are further evidence of Elizabeth Taylor's skill and sophistication as a collector," said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas.

The British-American star had amassed an extraordinary collection of jewellery and couture as well as art by the time she died last March aged 79.

A week-long auction of her belongings in New York in December drew total sales of $156.8 million (£99 million, 118 million euros). The last of Tayor's art collection goes on sale at Christie's in London on Wednesday and Thursday.

A work by the Spanish Cubist painter Juan Gris, "Le livre" ("The Book"), also sold on Tuesday for £10.3 million.

Described by the auction house as "a key transitional work", it had been expected to sell for up to £18 million.