Art Review

Who is Pacino di Bonaguida? Giotto we know. Giotto di Bondone (about 1267-1337), the star with Pacino of a new exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, was Italy's first painter of world significance. FOR THE RECORD: "Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance": In the Nov. 13 Calendar section, a photo caption that accompanied an art review of the Getty Museum's "Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance" identified Taddeo Gaddi as the creator of a work showing the Virgin Mary and Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Paul.

Nancy Haynes carries the torch of postwar abstraction into the present with breathtaking sensual intelligence. Her nine recent paintings at George Lawson are modestly scaled (the largest is 28 x 34 inches), intimate and luminous. Most of each canvas is occupied by a chromatic or tonal progression, a broad band in which one color morphs into another, or a light shade grows dense and dark. These smooth, meticulous gradations are bordered, top and bottom, by a sort of behind-the-scenes peek at the seamless illusion: discrete, short brushstrokes that feather off quickly.

Chris McCaw's stunning photographs start with a small act of defiance: shooting directly into the sun, a basic no-no. Other deviations follow, but the work never strays from its grounding in awe and reverence. The pictures pay homage to photography's essential nature as a record written by light, and they chronicle, with profound beauty and elemental simplicity, what it means to occupy a specific place on earth at a specific time.  McCaw's third show at Duncan Miller extends the "Sunburn" series he launched, by accident, nearly a decade ago when an overnight exposure burned a hole through his negative.

The annual ArtReview Power 100 list is out and this year's ranking of the art world's most influential and powerful people features a woman in the No. 1 spot for the first time. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator at Documenta (13) in Germany, occupies the top slot as determined by an international jury convened by the online magazine. Last year's No. 1 was Ai Weiwei, who ranks No. 3 this year, just behind art dealer Larry Gagosian. Rounding out the top five are art dealers Iwan Wirth at No. 4 and David Zwirner at No. 5. ArtReview said Christov-Bakargiev was chosen for the No. 1 spot because of "her influential and globally ambitious" Documenta exhibition, which this year extended to Kabul, Afghanistan; Banff, Canada, and venues in Egypt.

SAN DIEGO - Do Ho Suh's "Fallen Star" is the newest sculpture commissioned by UC San Diego's Stuart Collection, now numbering 18 permanent works, and it makes me physically ill. During a recent encounter my head was spinning, my stomach felt queasy, my focus blurred. The experience wasn't stark or dramatic but instead came in gentle waves. "Fallen Star" is frankly nauseating. I hasten to add that the nausea is a good thing - an unexpected disorientation that is indicative of the way art can move the body as a way to move the heart and mind.

Nine diverting new paintings on linen or panel by J.P. Munro conjure a kind of extravagant Neo-Post-Impressionism, re-imagined for another era. The exoticism of Gauguin, the visually fracturing dots of Seurat, the crystalline delirium of Van Gogh, the Arcadian fantasies of Cézanne and the primitive wonderment of Henri Rousseau collapse into infinitely receding pictures within pictures. His paintings have the roseate glow of burled wood antiques. At International Art Objects Galleries, Munro gives us Dionysus, son of Zeus, riding on a tiger's back into a landscape jam-packed with competing gods and goddesses - Shiva, the Buddha, voluptuous nudes - in a scene as fantastic as James Ensor's hallucinatory image of the risen Christ entering Brussels during a raucous Mardi Gras parade.

The opening of Regen Projects' impressive 20,000-square-foot building on an unlikely block of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood tilts the city's always peripatetic gallery scene eastward a notch. The new space, beautifully designed by architect Michael Maltzan, provides a large, light-filled main gallery and several smaller auxiliary spaces that can accommodate a wide range of work. That range is on full display in the inaugural exhibition, which surveys recent paintings, sculptures and installations by 32 of the 36 artists in the gallery's stable, from Doug Aitken to Andrea Zittel.

Andrea Bowers' new work continues her savvy merger of art, social consciousness and activism in unforced and revealing ways. Art with politics in mind is rarely so apt. Nine graphic works, two videos and an installation fill three spaces at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. The Occupy movement is a primary focus. Bowers ties the past year's protest movement against crushing social and economic inequality with the Industrial Workers of the World, a historic labor movement that flourished in the first half of the 20th century.

Eighty years ago today, civic leaders gathered outdoors on the second floor of an Olvera Street social club to dedicate a remarkable painting. "América Tropical," by visiting Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, was being unveiled on an outside wall of Italian Hall. Dean Cornwell, a prominent local illustrator who had just finished a sugary mural cycle about California history for the rotunda of the Central Library, said a few congratulatory words. Arthur Millier, The Times' art critic, would soon praise the politically trenchant painting for being "stern, strong, tragic.

Los Angeles art gallery Blum & Poe is opening an office in Tokyo to strengthen its ties with Asian artists, the gallery said this week. Ashley Rawlings, a former managing editor at ArtAsiaPacific, has been named director of the office. Blum & Poe, located near Culver City, already represents some prominent names in Asian art, including Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Lee Ufan and Zhang Huan. The gallery said that Tokyo was selected given the gallery's long-standing relationship with Japan and Japanese artists, as well as to "promote our entire gallery program in the region.