Galleries

The art of fine-art printing gets a loving albeit brief ode from director David Lynch, who has fashioned a seven-minute documentary about the famous Idem Paris atelier.  Idem Paris recently posted the video online and we've embedded it below. Virtually wordless, the movie observes the lithographic process with a detached eye, documenting the steps. Idem Paris was created in 1880 by the printmaker Emile Dufrenoy. The atelier is located in the city's Montparnasse district, and occupies a 15,000-square-foot space, according to the company's website.

The year 2012 was full of films that captured the essence of memorable time periods through costume. Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" was brought to life by designer Joanna Johnston's stovepipe hats and wool shawls, for instance. And what would the film "Anna Karenina" be without costume designer Jacqueline Durran's lavish bustle-back gowns? The FIDM Museum and Galleries in downtown Los Angeles is celebrating those magical feats in costume design by showcasing more than 100 designs from 2012 films during its 21st annual "Art of Motion Picture Costume Design.

Caravaggio is a great subject for music. There are fascinating parallels between the way the artist helped usher in modern painting at the turn of the 17th century and the way his Italian contemporaries Monteverdi and Gesualdo laid the foundations for modern music. In the last few years, Caravaggio, who happened to be a flamboyantly unstable character ever in trouble with the authorities, has also caught the imagination of today's musicians. He's been a subject for opera and ballet.

As one of the leading tight ends in the National Football League, the San Francisco 49ers' Vernon Davis will be one to watch during Sunday's Super Bowl game against the Baltimore Ravens. Last month, the 28-year-old Davis added another responsibility to his resume: art gallery owner. The football player opened a space called Gallery 85 in San Jose. The gallery is expected to show art by Davis as well as emerging artists. The gallery's opening in December served as a fundraiser for the Vernon Davis Foundation for the Arts, which helps fund arts education and art appreciation for at-risk youth.

Hayley Starr is a modern-day flower child. The artist and designer (whose given last name is Keenan but who describes "Hayley Starr" as her "highest self and inner superhero") may not wear fringe and flash peace signs. But a desire to promote creativity and self-confidence prompted her last fall to open the Quest by Hayley Starr, her one-stop boutique, art gallery, New Age refuge, classroom, studio and event space in Venice. The shop, which is clean and feminine but decidedly offbeat, is like a three-dimensional Pinterest page, communicating Starr's whimsical outlook via an eclectic collage of her favorite things.

As the nation watches President Obama take the oath of office Monday for his second term, Americans may notice a more mature (and grayer) version of the hopeful candidate depicted in Shepard Fairey's ubiquitous 2008 campaign poster. Since then, Obama's likeness has been cartooned, lampooned and masterfully crafted by artists of varying inclinations. Although the official presidential portrait will not be revealed until the end of his second term, some interesting interpretations are already on view.

A dozen new table-top sculptures by Patrick Nickell represent a significant evolution, which the artist also signals by titling his beguiling exhibition “Letting Go.” Serendipity has always been a prominent feature of his meandering abstractions, but now it has brought him to an implied - and sometimes even frank - figuration. Nickell's last show at Rosamund Felsen Gallery two years ago, which featured some of the mid-career artist's finest work, featured looping interlaces of painted plaster over a metal armature, painted and set on top of simple, homemade white tables that function as homey pedestals.

Mysticism isn't new to art, having prompted (among other things) the emergence of pure abstraction into the Modernist lexicon more than a century ago. At Michael Kohn Gallery, a group exhibition of about 30 paintings, sculptures, video, prints and mixed media works from the past 50 years by 14 artists shows that it's alive and well today - albeit with a suitably altered consciousness. “Into the Mystic” takes its subject loosely, proposing that ultimate insight consists of contemplative, intuitive knowledge, not merely facts.

Jason Meadows' new work at Marc Foxx Gallery gamely attempts to engage pressing social and political situations today. Three large recent sculptures and a painted wall relief try different tactics with uneven results. Least successful is “Justice League,” which collides red and blue folded fans alluding to the flying capes of cartoon superheroes. They stand atop a precariously tilting pedestal of the sort on which a politician's conventional statue might be erected. The adaptation of grandiose red-state, blue-state, right-left political conflict is too schematic to be effective, while an implied narrative of volatile collapse seems overly melodramatic.

Seven new paintings by Martin Durazo at Luis de Jesus Gallery elaborate on his slightly earlier graffiti-inspired work, while the pleasure-palace installation in the back room removes pretty much any doubt about the paintings' intentions. The large, abstract canvases are covered with big, brushy strokes and gritty squeegee-scrapings of paint, but they aren't engaged in a drama of existential doubt that might follow a trajectory from Willem De Kooning in the 1950s to Gerhard Richter now. Instead, Durazo's robust abstractions function as a kind of mise-en-scène for social interaction.