Art

Auto leasing deals abound these days, with offers that often seem too good to be true. How about a well-equipped Honda Accord for $250 a month with no down payment or any other drive-off fees? Or better yet, $199 a month for a Chevrolet Malibu? So, what's the catch? There isn't any if you know what you're getting into. There are always details. You need top-tier credit to qualify. You pay a penalty if you turn that Honda in with more than 36,000 miles. And the payment is not $250 a month because of that little matter of tax. It is more like $275, depending on where you live.

"The View" 10 a.m. Thursday, ABC: performance from “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “Open Call” 9 p.m. Thursday, KCET: Fine Cut Festival of Student Films: Hosted by mezzo-soprano opera singer Suzanna Guzman, “Goat Rodeo Live: Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile” 10 p.m. Friday, KOCE: The four string virtuosos combine bluegrass and classical music at a concert at Boston's House of Blues. “Burt Wolf: Travels & Traditions” 5:30 p.m. Saturday, KLCS: The Great Rivers of Europe: Cologne to Zell: A museum dedicated to mechanical musical instruments; Lorelei Rock; the city of Zell.

This is a story about an embattled art form that refuses to die. The subject? Portraiture. True, it isn't what it used to be. Photography and electronic technology have made images of people so plentiful that the notion of having a portrait laboriously painted or sculpted seems a bit archaic. Portraiture has also taken a hit from 20th-Century guilt. Unless you move in certain rarefied social circles, it just isn't cool to glorify yourself in a grand portrait over the fireplace.

LAS VEGAS -- Dana White was upset and wanted to make something clear. Last Friday night, as White attempted to lounge inside his office building where cable network FX films live fights for the Ultimate Fighting Championship's reality show, "The Ultimate Fighter," he wanted to return to the topic of mixed-martial-arts journalism. As president and chief promoter of the UFC, White seeks as much attention as possible for his organization, but occasionally — if not often — he is chafed by the accuracy of online reporting by MMA writers.

An arbitration panel on Thursday awarded $860,000 to two former Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners who accused the self-proclaimed "Painter of Light" and his company, Media Arts Group Inc., of fraudulently inducing them to invest in the business -- and then ruining them financially. While not singling out Kinkade in its finding of fraud, the panel ruled that the Morgan Hill, Calif.-based company and one of its executives, Richard F.

He went away and hewed to the line. He came back and carved a life. That's what happened when Gardena celery farmer Heishiro Otani was shipped off to an American internment camp during World War II. To while away the time, Otani whittled. A half-century later, he's still at it. But don't think for an instant that the 84-year-old is some old codger rocking on the porch, lazily putting knife to stick. He works on a grander scale. And his works have a look of grandeur.

IT'S the tuft of hair on the chin, the relief of a goatee on the smooth aluminum surface of the face, that gives the character's identity away. Otherwise, the 17-foot-high statue of a big-eyed "Oval Buddha" could be just another of Takashi Murakami's cute creations: a wandering space alien, perhaps, or a member of a tribe of ghosts. The character sits like Humpty Dumpty on the lip of a flower vase, his oversized head far too big for his tiny torso. He has a potbelly. His spine sags.

Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping. As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance-enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life.

Vandals have scratched a panel known as the Blue Buffalo out of existence in the last three weeks, destroying priceless rock art created about 200 years ago in Utah's southeast desert. The decimated rock art featured a shield, several figures and a bison painted on a large sandstone panel tucked into a canyon about 15 miles northwest of Moab near Mill Canyon. The 16-foot-long panel was unusual because of the blue paint and the depiction of a bison in motion, said Bruce Louthan, an archeologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Moab.

ONE of the most dazzling tidbits in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's big show "The Arts in Latin America 1492-1820" is enshrined in a gallery devoted to silver. A richly ornamented chalice made in Mexico City around 1575 and given to the museum by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1948, it stands a mere 13 inches tall. But in terms of 16th century Mexican silver, the chalice has everything: silver gilt, rock crystal, boxwood and hummingbird feathers. Hummingbird feathers?

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama Alison Bechdel Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 290 pp., $22 First things first: If you haven't read "Fun Home," Alison Bechdel's 2006 family memoir in comic form, drop everything and get a copy right away. In its pages, Bechdel does the miraculous: tracing deftly and with nuance her complex, claustrophobic relationship with her father, an English teacher and closeted gay man who died in 1980 (in what was either accident or suicide), shortly after Bechdel came out as a lesbian.

An Acton man convicted of building-code violations for constructing an elaborate home complex dubbed "Phonehenge West" was ordered by a judge Friday to perform two months of community service and repay Los Angeles County at least $83,488. Alan Kimble Fahey, 60, a retired phone company technician, was found guilty last June of a dozen building code violations because he did not obtain proper permits to construct the ornate Acton property, which many of his supporters considered a work of art. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Daviann L. Mitchell ordered Fahey to perform 63 days of community service, "of which a minimum of five days must be served at the L.A. County or Kern County morgue," Mitchell said.

"Natural Selection," an intriguing and intelligent first effort from indie filmmaker Robbie Pickering, digs deep into the heart of Texas for its soulful tale of small town saints and sinners and a road trip to redemption. Laced with humor and regret, the film rests on a finely textured performance by Rachael Harris, a prolific character actress especially memorable as the harpy of a fiancée perpetually haranguing Ed Helms in "The Hangover. " Here she's dialed it down to a bare whisper for the 40ish Linda White, whose quiet life of desperation is about to be dissected.

“The View” 10 a.m. Thursday, ABC: performance from “Once.” “Dudu Fisher: In Concert From Israel” Noon Thursday, KCET: Singer Dudu Fisher performs Broadway tunes and Israeli songs. “Open Call” 9 p.m. Thursday, KCET: "Kenny Burrell: Master and Mentor": Hosted by mezzo-soprano opera singer Suzanna Guzman, Open Call features a wide variety of productions from profiles of artists. “Soulful Symphony With Darin Atwater: Song in a Strange Land” Noon Saturday, KCET: Artistic director Atwater conducts an 85-member orchestra in compositions exhibiting styles ranging through gospel, jazz and symphonic music.

ART English musician Will Sergeant is famous for being the guitarist in the darkly melodic Liverpool rock band, Echo & the Bunnymen. Now he's turned his attention to art, opening his first major United States exhibition, "My Own Worst Enemy," at the Substrate Fine Art Gallery. Abstract paintings, collages and screen prints open a window on this brash entertainer's inner vision. Substrate Fine Art Gallery, 709 N. Ridgewood Place, L.A. 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fri. Free. (323) 833-6459; facebook.com./substratefineartgallery.

WASHINGTON - Joan Miró, the great Spanish painter of dreams and symbols, lived through so many harrowing eras of the 20th century that critics believe his masterpieces surely reflect the tensions of political events in one way or another. But Miró's world of art was so special - with stars and moons, biomorphs and delightful dogs and sly monsters and wonderful color - that it has always been difficult to find much politics there. An exhibition that just arrived at the National Gallery of Art - "Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape" - makes a spirited attempt to find and explore the politics.

Now entering their fourth decade as faceless anti-stars, the avant-garde multimedia art collective the Residents brings its masked musical act to the Southland for a rare live appearance. The band's signature eyeball helmets and tuxes have given way to three new characters, Randy, Chuck and Bob, which features singer "Randy" in an old man mask, accompanied by two cohorts wearing dreadlock wigs and optical gear. The El Rey, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Sat. $25. (323) 936-6400. http://www.theelrey.com.

Let's play a quick word association game. I say "Houston," and you say, "(Fill in the blank). " You probably did not answer "quirky. " "Astrodome," maybe, or "humid," or "We've got a problem. " All solid, serious words that evoke the opposite of quirk. But there's probably more quirk than you'd think. America's fourth-largest city (population 2.2 million) may not be a Berkeley, Austin or ? pardon me, ? L.A., but Houston has a passel of offbeat art sites. They're also off-the-beaten-path art sites (Houston's sprawl can make L.A. feel like Manhattan)

Nothing seems to stop "Jungle" Jack Hanna. Facing down dangerous animals and persnickety late-night hosts, the congenial wildlife expert and dedicated conservationist in the trademark khaki suit has been TV fixture for the last 30 years. Now, despite having just undergone a double knee replacement, Hanna is doing a national theater tour that comes to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach on Saturday. "As long as I don't have to run around too much after any animals I will be fine," he laughed by phone from his home in Montana, where he is recuperating.

BEIJING - Orgies and anal sex hardly seem the usual fodder of traditional Chinese folk art, but that is exactly what one Chinese artist is depicting in a series of provocative paper-cuts that are now being exhibited in Los Angeles for the first time. Paper-cuts originated in Eastern Han Dynasty China (AD 25-220) and are hung on windows or doors for good luck. But instead of the usual decorative flowers and birds, Xiyadie, whose pseudonym means "Siberian Butterfly," portrays graphic and daring depictions of homosexual love - long considered taboo in China.