Drawings

"My aim has always been to entertain people," says British artist Gerald Scarfe. "When I first took on 'Orpheus in the Underworld,' I thought, 'Ah, this is opera: I've got to be very serious about all this.' I approached it all wrong, and it took some weeks before I realized everybody wanted me to do what I usually do--have a little bit of satirical fun." One of Britain's most respected and controversial illustrators, Scarfe had more than a little bit of fun with his version of "Orpheus," which premiered at the English National Opera in 1985 and opens at the Music Center Wednesday for 17 performances through July 2. He transformed Offenbach's spoof of classical mythology into a contemporary freewheeling socio-political satire.

At the Children's Museum in downtown Los Angeles there hangs a row of drawings on irregular pieces of paper, displayed about chest-high to an adult. They are the work of keen-eyed observers. Telling only what they have seen without dramatizing or editorializing, these artists depict soldiers as big and heavy-booted men. The soldiers' guns and polka-dotted camouflage uniforms are drawn in detail befitting their dominance. In a show of aggression, some of the soldiers bare their teeth.

"MY work is very hard to take apart," says Vija Celmins, gazing around the exhibition of her drawings at the Hammer Museum. "That's why I am always talking about it." Always? Her conversations with artists Chuck Close and Robert Gober are available in books, and she recently talked to Hammer chief curator Gary Garrels in a public program that filled the museum's Billy Wilder Theater. But the works in her show still raise questions.

With his show "Place Settings" at the Buenaventura Gallery, David James Smith generates his version of an artistic travelogue. Last year while abroad, mostly in Italy with his family, Smith sketched scenes he found enticing. Then back in the home studio, the artist elaborated on his sketchbook entries with larger, color versions of the sketches. The exhibit offers both the before and after depictions of his travels.

Robert Miles Parker, a free-spirited artist who sparked an architectural preservation movement in San Diego and translated the personalities of Los Angeles and New York into distinctive pen-and-ink drawings of their buildings, has died. He was 72. His partner, David Van Leer, said that the cause was unknown, but that Parker, who died April 17 at his home in New York City, had numerous health problems since being diagnosed with AIDS 20 years ago. Parker published three collections of his drawings, which include "Images of American Architecture" (1981)

Disegno in Italian means "drawing," but an English speaker would not be entirely misled by the similarity of the word to the English design ; for, as Nicholas Turner explains in his introduction to this collection of drawings from the British Museum, disegno was for the Florentines "the animating force uniting the different arts."

Who done it? In the case of Rembrandt, it's a persistent question. Hundreds of paintings formerly attributed to the 17th century Dutch master have been demoted in the course of a massive research project funded by the Dutch government and investigations by specialists around the world. And the work goes on. A separate effort to determine who actually made unsigned drawings ascribed to Rembrandt is no less daunting -- or intriguing -- as an upcoming exhibition reveals. "Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference," opening Dec. 8 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, contains 103 drawings, 53 of them by Rembrandt.

Police believe that they are "just a telephone call away" from finding at least one man who savagely beat and killed a 72-year-old woman in her Van Nuys home two months ago. Detectives on Wednesday released a composite sketch of the man they think killed Aliza Levi on Oct. 11 after breaking into her house.

In a show of solidarity, some of the nation's top animators and print cartoonists are rallying to the aid of a fellow artist with a special auction of original artwork on EBay. The auction will benefit Matthew Hodge, the 18-year-old son of artist Tim Hodge, who was injured in an auto accident in August and has been in a coma since then. The sale of more than 165 pieces includes drawings and cels from "Mulan," "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Sleeping Beauty" and "SpongeBob SquarePants," as well as original comic strips of "Mutts," "Zits," "Baby Blues" and "Pogo."

Drinking at the Movies A Graphic Memoir Julia Wertz Three Rivers Press: 192 pp., $15 paper "On the day I turned twenty-five," Julia Wertz tells us at the beginning of "Drinking at the Movies," her charming graphic memoir, "I came to consciousness at 3 a.m. in a twenty-four-hour Laundromat in Brooklyn, New York, eating Cracker Jacks in my pajamas. … To understand how I got there, we need to go back one year… " For Wertz, this admission — accompanied by a full-page black-and-white self-portrait, dazed and confused — operates as both entry point and metaphor, a bold yet subtle statement of her displacement in the world.