Artists

Mister Cartoon eyeballed a blank spot on the giant graffiti mural and rattled his can of spray paint. An aerosol hiss filled the air. With a few fluid swipes of his beefy arm, an image began to take shape: a cluster of storm clouds massing above a Windex blue hot rod. "If I knew the cops were coming to bust me, I could probably finish this whole thing in an hour," the street artist joked.

Four decades ago, Bay Area artists filled their posters with raging flames, extravagant skeletons and bare, engorged breasts. This overstuffed style became the visual symbol not only for many late-'60s English and American bands but also a recognizable signature of the entire psychedelic era.

From the house we built With blood and soil To the road on which The moonlight procession Flies forth on their boat Of shooting stars It is a pity you did not wish To stay here with us The poet had crafted those words so long ago. Flush from the victory of a People's Revolution in Iran that ousted a repressive monarch for a bearded cleric who spouted promises of freedom and quality, Partow Nooriala all too soon came to believe that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had deceived them.

Leo Politi captured some of Los Angeles' most charming places with his two dozen children's books and countless artworks. With brush and pencil, he immortalized the city's crumbling Victorian mansions, its parks and its ethnic diversity long before "multicultural" entered the language. Hailed as "the Artist of Olvera Street," Politi, who died in 1996, is commemorated in other neighborhoods and in cities including South Pasadena, Redlands and his native Fresno.

Writer Will Blythe asked artist Rachel Mason to accompany him and draw the candidates as he covered the John Edwards campaign last year. It's an electronic world these days, jittery with what passes for communication, especially on the campaign trail. Case in point: the Citadel, Charleston, S.C., July 2007. Here we are in yet another spin room after yet another presidential debate, this one for the Democrats, sponsored by CNN and YouTube.

PARIS -- At age 96, artist Louise Bourgeois has lost none of her ability to startle and unsettle: Her latest major series includes giant etchings of her own body -- including esophagus, stomach and intestines -- all soaked with blood-red gouache. The 11 panels are a gallery-sized lament on the limitations of the body, with Bourgeois describing her own physical sensations in spindly handwriting. One panel almost moans: "The breathing, the palpitations, THE HOT FLASHES."

It's A quiet Sunday morning in this city of cacophonous ambition. Construction has yet to hit a deafening pitch, and traffic is still moving. But, as the temperature rises, all sorts of art activity bubbles up in the historic Bastakiya district, a low-lying island of traditional Arabian houses in a sea of modern high-rises.

Los Angeles has long been known as one of the best places on Earth to be an artist just getting started. Affordable rent, plentiful exhibition opportunities and collectors on the lookout for inexpensive art -- which just might be the next big thing -- make for a scene filled with possibilities.

Stephen Sondheim and Georges Seurat. John Guare and Wassily Kandinsky. Edward Albee and Louise Nevelson. Throughout theater history, writers have mined the works and biographies of artists to create such vastly different dramas as "Sunday in the Park With George," "Six Degrees of Separation" and "Occupant."

TWO OF Cuba's artistic exports -- 20th century Modernist Wifredo Lam and emerging artist Carlos Luna -- have landed side by side at Long Beach's Museum of Latin American Art, in shows offering two variations on the theme of Cuban identity. "The identity of being Cuban is not a one-way road," says painter and sculptor Carlos Luna, via his wife and translator, Claudia.