Art Exhibits

It was all in the service of a muse that artist Wade Guyton, a participant in the Hammer Museum exhibition "Oranges and Sardines: Conversations on Abstract Painting," began prowling Los Angeles nightclubs not long ago, searching for a male go-go dancer who not only had superior technique but also would look good in silver lame shorts. Call it the artistic opposite of a still life: Guyton had to find a living, breathing, moving performer to be part of an artwork for the show -- a re-creation of the late Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres' 1991 installation "Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform)

When Leonard Cohen famously turned his back on the music industry in 1994, he retreated to a Zen monastery more than 6,000 feet above sea level on Mt. Baldy, in the San Gabriel Mountains near Claremont McKenna College. The musician took the name Jikan -- meaning "the Silent One" -- and devoted himself to an ascetic lifestyle and to the study of Rinzai Zen philosophy. His five years in seclusion left a gaping lacuna in the musician's eclectic career. Few people know why Cohen, born to a Jewish family in Montreal, ensconced himself in the monastery's regimen of meditation and reflection.

Warhol and what? No, that's "Warhol and Watts." DeAnthony Langston, program director for the youth organization Urban Compass in Watts, loves that the name of tonight's one-off exhibition at the Pharmaka art gallery in downtown L.A. causes people to do a double-take. "Warhol and Watts," Langston says, savoring the words. "It's like peanut butter and jelly -- and mustard." Urban Compass' tiny office is in the back of Verbum Dei High School, a Jesuit-run institution on South Central Boulevard that represents something of an oasis in a troubled neighborhood.

Photographer Daniel Nicoletta remembers when he met Harvey Milk at the Castro Camera shop in 1974. The young Nicoletta was looking for a place to develop some Super 8 film he had shot for a class when he happened to wander by Milk's modest camera store in San Francisco. "He was so friendly and very gentle. Unbeknownst to me, I was being cruised," Nicoletta recalled. "I was barely out at the time, so I was pretty naive." So began a friendship that lasted four years to 1978, when Milk was gunned down at his San Francisco office.

Why is that big bunch of colorful plastic stuff on the plaza at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art? Is it a Tupperware party gone awry? A 99-cent Only Store sidewalk sale? Neither, but the second guess is close. The eye-popping assembly is "HappyHappy," an artwork by Choi Jeong-Hwa. The artist purchased his raw materials -- a slew of bright colored plastic bins, tubs, funnels, pitchers, strainers and bowls -- at the nearby 99-cent Only Store. Choi, an internationally recognized figure known as the father of South Korea's Pop art movement, designed the piece as an introduction to "Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists From Korea," a major exhibition opening Sunday in LACMA's Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

If you can ride a bicycle, you could be part of Jessica Findley's public art project "Aeolian Ride." On Oct. 1, the Brooklyn-based illustrator and designer will make Santa Barbara the next stop in her series of "live happenings" in which members of the public don wind-inflated suits in whimsical shapes -- bubble, bunny and teardrop, your choice -- and cruise through town. The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum is seeking 52 volunteers to take part in the ride, a collaboration of the arts organization, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition and Wheelhouse bicycle shop.

More than 20 Norman Rockwell paintings belonging to Steven Spielberg have until next July to get ready for their close-up, which will come when they're hung in a special exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington -- along with more than 30 other Rockwells from the collection of his fellow filmmaker-to-the-masses, George Lucas. Then there's the one sitting in climate-controlled sequestration, somewhere in Las Vegas, and there's no telling when it'll be seen again.

Nobody can accuse glass artist Dale Chihuly of thinking small. Since he discovered the art of glass-blowing as a student in the 1960s, Chihuly has helped propel the medium to the forefront of the modern art world with enormous, undulating, platter-like creations and whimsical glass sculptures assembled by 10-person teams.

Artwork by Orange Unified School District students is on display today at Chapman University's Guggenheim Gallery. The Exposition of the Arts is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University's gallery, with musical entertainment by the district's vocal, instrumental and drama groups in the Argyros Forum. The goal of the exposition is to promote art in the schools, officials said. Students of all grades participated, and Chapman art instructor Carol Abell chose the 100 best pieces for the competition.

Does a civilization ever stop sifting through the records of its wars, searching for some moral high ground in killing? It seems not, and no war abraded America's conscience as relentlessly as Vietnam. As can be seen in "Decade of Protest: Political Posters From the United States, Vietnam and Cuba," at the Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica through March 9, it was a war that united the Vietnamese as much as it divided Americans.