David Hammons

This particular corner of Spring Street and Lafayette is strewn with street people sweating soot, conducting intricate investigations into garbage cans, weaving shopping carts between leashed dogs and parked cars, haranguing and entertaining the outdoor diners at a neighborhood restaurant where David Hammons arrives only an hour late. "Is this who you were waiting for?" asks the waitress brightly. "I thought maybe it was somebody you picked up off the street . . . just joking."

This particular corner of Spring Street and Lafayette is strewn with street people sweating soot, conducting intricate investigations into garbage cans, weaving shopping carts between leashed dogs and parked cars, haranguing and entertaining the outdoor diners at a neighborhood restaurant where David Hammons arrives only an hour late. "Is this who you were waiting for?" asks the waitress brightly. "I thought maybe it was somebody you picked up off the street . . . just joking."

Jesse Jackson, viewing for the first time the controversial painting that depicts him as a blond, blue-eyed white man, said, "It's not the picture that's the insult. It's the reality behind the picture: That's the insult." The portrait, entitled "How Ya Like Me Now?" by artist David Hammons and part of the Washington Project for the Arts "The Blues Aesthetic" exhibition, was placed on a street corner Wednesday evening.

This being the Sabbath, it must be time for some irreverent religious satire. So says Mike Yaconelli, a Christian minister and San Diego refugee who for 20 years has been editing "The Door," a stick-it-in-your eye satire magazine specializing in the follies of the devout. Call his slick bimonthly the Evangelical National Lampoon, and Yaconelli won't mind. Call it the Religious Mad Magazine and he'll be downright pleased.

This being the Sabbath, it must be time for some irreverent religious satire. So says Mike Yaconelli, a Christian minister and San Diego refugee who for 20 years has been editing "The Door," a stick-it-in-your eye satire magazine specializing in the follies of the devout. Call his slick bimonthly the Evangelical National Lampoon, and Yaconelli won't mind. Call it the Religious Mad Magazine and he'll be downright pleased.

Jesse Jackson, viewing for the first time the controversial painting that depicts him as a blond, blue-eyed white man, said Sunday, "It's not the picture that's the insult. It's the reality behind the picture: That's the insult." The portrait, entitled "How Ya Like Me Now?" by artist David Hammons and part of the Washington Project for the Arts "The Blues Aesthetic" exhibition, was placed on a street corner Wednesday evening.

Samella Sanders Lewis--one of the most prominent African American art historians--describes her pieces as memories collected in the form of art. Now those works, as well as items from 30 other master artists, will be displayed through an exhibit, "The Samella Lewis Collection--Fifty Years," at the Third World Art Exchange in Los Feliz.

Recycled Treasures: Forgettable objects become poetic monuments to the everyday in Tony Feher's unassuming mixed-media sculptures at Richard Telles Fine Art. A few glass bottles, marbles and Styrofoam bricks rescued from the trash heap are all that Feher needs to evoke the internal rhythm of prosaic activities, while simultaneously investing his Minimalist vocabulary with contemporary relevance.

This may be the information age, but more specifically, it's the mash-up moment.  Images, sounds, words -- all are retrieved instantly from our collective digital memory bank by artists and advertisers alike, shaken, stirred and spilled back out. In the day when collage really did involve scissors and glue, the discontinuities it invoked had more power to jolt and disarm. Think Höch and Heartfield. Now, makers are mixers and the visual fabric of the everyday is a busy, buzzing patchwork.

* Current position: Curator of contemporary art in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, since September, 1990. * Born: 1950. * Education: B.A. 1972, Swarthmore College; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, summer, 1978; M.A. 1978, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. * Art Experience: An abstract painter for more than 20 years.

Jesse Jackson, viewing for the first time the controversial painting that depicts him as a blond, blue-eyed white man, said, "It's not the picture that's the insult. It's the reality behind the picture: That's the insult." The portrait, entitled "How Ya Like Me Now?" by artist David Hammons and part of the Washington Project for the Arts "The Blues Aesthetic" exhibition, was placed on a street corner Wednesday evening.

Last year will go down in MOCA history as a tumultuous year of board resignations and criticism of the museum's leadership, but it will not be known as the year in which gifts to the museum dried up. The Museum of Contemporary Art reports that it has acquired a total of 117 pieces, through museum funds and gifts of artworks or money from donors, adding to a collection of more than 6,700 works. MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch singled out several as particularly significant: a 1980 installation donated by Mike Kelley, an original storyboard for Kenneth Anger's 1949 film "Puce Moment," a 1974-75 David Hammons body print, a 2012 gunpowder drawing by Cai Guo-Qiang (above)

"Facts and Figures: Selections From the Lannan Foundation Collection" is a rich, stimulating exhibition in which numbers don't add up and facts never speak for themselves. Inspiring profound doubt, this 14-artist show also invites poetic license. As viewers are called upon to interpret its 45 representational images, subjective impulses intermingle with mute objectivity, charging the installation with psychological complexity.