Painting

Thomas Dunlay's struggle to learn the traditional techniques of painting led him to despair and thoughts of a career change 17 years ago. After all, no one was interested in Classical Realism, teachers were scarce and collectors even fewer. But he stuck with traditional painting, training in the style of the once popular Boston School. And as cultural tastes turn from the unrestrained moods of Modernism to the craftsmanship of the traditional arts, Dunlay and other Boston School painters now are thriving.

Los Angeles detectives arrested a Huntington Park pawnshop owner Friday for allegedly trying to sell through Christie's auction house a $300,000 painting by Georges Rouault stolen from a gallery at the Ambassador Hotel in 1981. Robert Singer, 49, of Los Angeles was being held on $20,000 bail after an investigation revealed "he had knowledge the painting was stolen," said Detective Bill Martin, head of the Police Department's art theft detail.

A 450-year-old painting by Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder has been stolen from a Lutheran church in the southern Norway town of Larvik, police said. Art expert Gunnar Krogh-Hansen estimated that "Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me" could be worth $2.1 million to $2.8 million. It was probably painted around 1540. The theft was discovered when firefighters responded to an alarm at the church and found a broken window and a ladder outside. The roughly 3-foot-wide work, painted on wood, had hung in the church for about 330 years.

Not all the graffiti you'll see at the beach this summer will be on the walls. Some beach-goers will be wearing it on their bodies. They're treating their skin as if it were a canvas. Body painting is nothing new. The ancient Egyptians did it. So did Goldie Hawn--she often appeared on television's "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" wearing just a bikini and painted-on peace signs.

A man who stole a painting of the Virgin Mary from a church to finance an abortion for a teen he had raped has been convicted of first-degree sexual assault and felony theft. Aurelio Vallerillo-Sanchez, 39, of Omaha pleaded no contest to the charges and faces up to 70 years in prison, Douglas County prosecuting attorney Brenda Beadle said. Beadle said Vallerillo-Sanchez fled to Mexico with the 300-year-old painting worth $100,000 and the pregnant teen in March 2007. He sold the painting for $3,000 in Mexico, his daughter told police.

An El Greco painting stolen from a village church, tossed on a rubbish heap and thumbtacked to a Civil Guard wall will be restored and placed in safe keeping, a Culture Ministry spokesman said. The painting of the Assumption of Mary Magdalene, believed to be one of El Greco's last works, was stolen Nov. 4 from a church in Titulcia, a village 20 miles south of Madrid. "It is in a deplorable state," said Angel Vasconcellos of the Culture Ministry.

A painting of dazzling yellow sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh was sold today for $39.85 million, more than three times the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. The 98-year-old "Sunflowers" still life by the Dutch artist--who never sold a painting before he shot himself to death at age 37--was bought by an anonymous foreign collector, said Peter Rose, chief spokesman at Christie's auction house.

To some, the name alone--"Marilyn at Auschwitz"--pretty much says it all. After the name come the outraged gasps, the accusations of insensitivity, of anti-Semitism, of artistic freedom used to rub salt in half-healed wounds. To others, "Marilyn at Auschwitz," the words curling in blue neon light across a painting that plops the gleaming icon of sex into the barracks at an infamous concentration camp, is a cultural critique.