Paint

The can of spray paint sat on the ledge of a downtown Sacramento office tower. A tool for etching glass lay below. The body of Craig Fugate was tangled in some ropes about nine stories up the tower. Authorities on Tuesday were trying to piece together the bizarre death. They believe Fugate was somehow killed Monday while trying to vandalize the office building. "They found the spray paint where he climbed down" but no actual tags, Officer Doug Morse said. The Sacramento coroner's office is still trying to determine a cause of death.

Swastikas and the word "skinhead" were painted at a Costa Mesa elementary school's baseball field, officials said Monday. Kaiser Elementary School Principal Deborah Granger said staffers first noticed the slurs when they got to school. Swastikas were painted on trash cans, and the word "skinhead" with a swastika had been painted on part of the backstop, Granger said. The tops of benches had also been painted white. Over the weekend, a usually locked gate that is used by other campuses had been left open, Granger said.

A painting by Pablo Picasso is at the center of a recent lawsuit filed by descendants of a prominent German Jewish banker who claim the artwork was lost during the Nazi regime. The plaintiffs are suing the German state of Bavaria for refusing to return the painting. The descendants of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy claim that "Madame Soler," a painting created by Picasso around 1903, belongs to them. They maintain that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was compelled to sell the painting during the Nazi regime as a result of the financial hardship he endured as a Jew.  Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a relative of composer Felix Mendelssohn.

Tucked away and forgotten for years in a museum storage bin, the small oil painting held a great secret and was just biding its time, waiting for someone to notice it. And then one day someone did. So began the Case of the Curious Curator. It all started in 2000 (actually a couple centuries earlier, but that's getting ahead of the story) when a canvas in dreadful condition called "Venice: The Molo from the Bacino di S. Marco" was bequeathed to the Denver Art Museum from a deceased local collector's foundation.

In six new paintings, Brad Eberhard goes scuba-diving in the ocean and spelunking in caves. From the sea he returns with rapture of the deep (and perhaps a bit of decompression sickness), while the caves are filled with Plato's treacherous shadows -- which may or may not describe reality. “Way Out,” the most beautiful of the six, is a cave painting. Blood-red pigment was poured along the upper edge of the 4-foot-square canvas and ran down the surface, recalling methods used by Jackson Pollock and Morris Louis.

"Gimme the Loot" shouldn't be as appealing and exuberant as it is, it really shouldn't. It's set in the Bronx, the grittiest of New York City boroughs. Its larcenous teenage protagonists are introduced stealing spray paint from a hardware store; the world they live in is rife with drug dealing, robbery and all manner of hustles and petty scams. This could be the set-up for a sequel to "The Wire," but in writer-director Adam Leon's hands it is anything but. PHOTOS: Movies Sneaks 2013 In a feature debut that succeeded at Cannes after taking the best narrative prize at last year's SXSW festival, Leon, who himself won Film Independent's Someone to Watch award, has made a small-scale, warm-hearted film that is both upbeat and intimate.

Dan McCleary is one of the finest figure painters working today. Since 2010 he has also directed Art Division, an after school arts program for young adults. Now he is showing with Javier Carrillo and Emmanuel Galvez, talented former students at Art Division. Their recent paintings begin with a stylistic clarity and precision familiar from their teacher's example, while wholly transforming his precedent in distinctive ways. McCleary's three large genre paintings at Craig Krull depict simple scenes.

Has billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen purchased Picasso's "Le Rêve" from billionaire hotel and casino magnate Steve Wynn? A story in the New York Post this week reports that Cohen has bought the coveted painting for $155 million . If true, the sale would be one of the most expensive single art transactions in U.S. history. A spokesman for Cohen declined to comment on the matter. "Le Rêve" is the painting that Wynn famously damaged by accident in 2006 when he punctured the canvas with his elbow.

Original design details preserved in this gated Spanish Revival home include the owners' crests and emblems, hand-painted in the early 1940s, and the ceramic tiles of the fireplace. Among updates, the living room includes three plasma-screen televisions hidden behind canvases depicting bullfighting. Location: 1284 Temple Hills, Laguna Beach 92651 Asking price: $5.995 million Year built: 1940 House size: Four bedrooms, five bathrooms, 4,855 square feet Lot size: 0.4 acre Features: Media room with 10-foot screen, open-beam ceilings, wall murals, office/den, exercise studio, dual walk-in closets in the master suite, copper hammered tub, touch-pad entertainment and security system, multiuse sport court, swimming pool, live-in carriage house atop the three-car garage, motor court for additional parking, ocean and coastline views, olive trees, flagstone walkways, lawn About the area: Last year, 430 single-family homes sold in the 92651 ZIP Code at a median price of $1.273 million, according to DataQuick.

Amid his pensive, engrossing paintings now at Roberts & Tilton, Noah Davis has planted something of a joke: a tight, U-shaped mini-exhibition space formed by temporary walls covered in scuffed gray fabric. Three small oil paintings hang within but are impossible to see well. "Stacked Cubicles/My Last Art Fair" offers an uncharacteristic moment of levity from Davis, a knowing poke at the crowded and often claustrophobic conditions of art fairs, a self-deprecating snicker at his allotted sliver of visibility.