Chuck Close

"I don't have to wait for inspiration," says artist Chuck Close in his spacious studio in Lower Manhattan. "I always say that inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. Work kicks open doors. In the process of doing something, other things occur to you, and you end up where you didn't plan to be." Close, 66, hadn't planned to be a printmaker, but here he is surrounded by prints and proofs and plans for more prints.

ART With his instantly recognizable style and near epic status in the art world for many decades running, the return of Chuck Close to Los Angeles is suitably grand. Blum & Poe will mount an exhibition of the acclaimed artist's works — not only his first exhibition with the gallery but also his first one-person show in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years — which will occupy three downstairs gallery spaces and will feature portraits of artists Kara Walker, Laurie Anderson and Zhang Huan, musician Paul Simon and arts patron Agnes Gund, as well as the latest batch of Close self-portraits.

"I was never more worried about anything in my life than this," said artist Chuck Close of "Head-On/The Modern Portrait," an exhibition that he selected from the Museum of Modern Art's collection. It opened Tuesday at the Lannan Foundation, which is in an industrial zone near Marina del Rey. "I'm used to laying my neck on the line for my own work. But this responsibility to other artists I find really scary.

"I don't have to wait for inspiration," says artist Chuck Close in his spacious studio in Lower Manhattan. "I always say that inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. Work kicks open doors. In the process of doing something, other things occur to you, and you end up where you didn't plan to be." Close, 66, hadn't planned to be a printmaker, but here he is surrounded by prints and proofs and plans for more prints.

The opening encounter in the Chuck Close retrospective currently at the Museum of Modern Art is with the monumental black-and-white portrait heads that the New Yorker painted between 1967 and 1970. These are paintings with the power to make you rock back slightly on your heels. It's the same destabilizing feeling I had the first time I saw one of the blunt, excruciatingly detailed, 9-foot-tall portraits 20-something years ago.

The intersection of art and life is the premise of "Picasso Paints Picasso" and "Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress," two intelligent and absorbing documentaries airing back-to-back tonight on KCET. Each program profiles a major 20th century artist whose life is reflected in portraits of other people.

ART With his instantly recognizable style and near epic status in the art world for many decades running, the return of Chuck Close to Los Angeles is suitably grand. Blum & Poe will mount an exhibition of the acclaimed artist's works — not only his first exhibition with the gallery but also his first one-person show in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years — which will occupy three downstairs gallery spaces and will feature portraits of artists Kara Walker, Laurie Anderson and Zhang Huan, musician Paul Simon and arts patron Agnes Gund, as well as the latest batch of Close self-portraits.

U.S.S. Chuck Burger, a place known for burgers and a side of war stories, has closed its doors. On Monday, Chuck Bresler, 76, and his wife Vi, 70, called it quits. They have children to spend time with and other parts of the world to see. "If I don't retire now, when am I going to retire?" Chuck Bresler said simply. Since 1986 Chuck Burger had been a place where families went for a fast bite, teams congregated after a game and veterans swapped tales of their tours overseas.

At first glance, the shopping cart filled with canvases looks like it might be a work of conceptual art, an installation that equates paintings with groceries. And indeed, that's the intent at Artspace Warehouse on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles: paintings so affordable, you might consider stocking up. "The gallery is very unintimidating," said owner Claudia Deutsch, who brought the concept from her gallery in Zurich, Switzerland, to Los Angeles last year. Artspace Warehouse is laid out with paintings on movable walls that flip like pages in a giant picture book.

An auction of new art by major living artists -- part of an ongoing effort by the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager Peter Gelb to combine the visual and vocal arts while keeping his house humming along financially -- raised more than $1.8 million for future productions. Most of the lots sold Sunday night were specially commissioned, opera-themed works. Soprano Renee Fleming, for example, was the subject of pieces by Chuck Close and Robert Wilson.

The intersection of art and life is the premise of "Picasso Paints Picasso" and "Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress," two intelligent and absorbing documentaries airing back-to-back tonight on KCET. Each program profiles a major 20th century artist whose life is reflected in portraits of other people.

The opening encounter in the Chuck Close retrospective currently at the Museum of Modern Art is with the monumental black-and-white portrait heads that the New Yorker painted between 1967 and 1970. These are paintings with the power to make you rock back slightly on your heels. It's the same destabilizing feeling I had the first time I saw one of the blunt, excruciatingly detailed, 9-foot-tall portraits 20-something years ago.

U.S.S. Chuck Burger, a place known for burgers and a side of war stories, has closed its doors. On Monday, Chuck Bresler, 76, and his wife Vi, 70, called it quits. They have children to spend time with and other parts of the world to see. "If I don't retire now, when am I going to retire?" Chuck Bresler said simply. Since 1986 Chuck Burger had been a place where families went for a fast bite, teams congregated after a game and veterans swapped tales of their tours overseas.

"I was never more worried about anything in my life than this," said artist Chuck Close of "Head-On/The Modern Portrait," an exhibition that he selected from the Museum of Modern Art's collection. It opened Tuesday at the Lannan Foundation, which is in an industrial zone near Marina del Rey. "I'm used to laying my neck on the line for my own work. But this responsibility to other artists I find really scary.

You can almost hear the sighs of relief coming from art galleries and auction houses up and down California: Federal Judge Jacqueline Nguyen has declared the California Resale Royalty Act unconstitutional. The highly controversial, widely misunderstood and little enforced state law that took effect in 1977 was designed to provide artists with 5% of their resale prices under certain conditions. As written, the law would apply to a resale of an original work of art provided this sale takes place in California or the seller resides in California.

An early still life by Vija Celmins that has been hanging in its owners' kitchen for almost 50 years will go up for auction in May at Los Angeles Modern Auctions. "Untitled (Knife and Dish)," an oil on canvas from 1964, is a plain-looking painting of a knife balanced on a small white plate against a large brown background, rendered in a simple palette from a rather head-on perspective. Other deadpan works made by Celmins that year, during her time in Venice Beach, now belong to museums, including “Heater” (at the Whitney)