Painting

"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.

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.

The pension fund for California teachers and school employees will run out of money by 2044 if lawmakers don't take drastic action, according to a new report from the Legislative Analyst's Office. The report said problems with the pension fund, known as CalSTRS, "may be state's most difficult fiscal challenge. " The costs are massive and growing. The latest estimate pegs the fund's unfunded liability at $73 billion as of June 2012, up from $64.5 billion the year before. "This is more costly the longer we wait," said Ryan Miller of the Legislative Analyst's Office during a hearing Wednesday.

Aaron Jackson got his colorful idea while stalking the Westboro Baptist Church on Google. The 31-year-old activist wanted to see what the notorious church looked like. For years, Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro protesters have been picketing soldiers' funerals with anti-gay messages. Jackson, who runs a global orphanage and antipoverty nonprofit, was seized by curiosity. He panned the camera around on Google Earth to get a ground-level view of the neighborhood and saw a house for sale across the street.

This post has been corrected. See the note below. PARIS - France on Tuesday gave  seven paintings once destined for display in an art gallery for Adolf Hitler back to the families of those who had lost or sold them as the Nazis pushed through Europe. Four of the paintings had been hanging in the Louvre in Paris. French officials said during a ceremony at the Ministry of Culture that the effort was part of the government's push to return art and cultural objects looted before and during World War II. Six of the seven paintings returned Tuesday had belonged to Richard Neumann, a collector of works by 18th century Italian painters, who was living in Vienna before the war. Neumann was forced to leave behind part of his collection when he fled to France in 1938.

A portrait of Rembrandt, long believed to be painted by one of his pupils, has been attributed to the 17th-century Dutch master. The crude brushwork led researchers in 1968 to conclude that the painting, which features the artist's signature and is dated 1635, was by one of Rembrandt's students. But a recent investigation led by Ernst van de Wetering, the world's leading Rembrandt expert, found that the painting was indeed by Rembrandt. "Over the past 45 years, we have gathered far more knowledge about Rembrandt's self-portraits and the fluctuations in his style," he said.

Only in Los Angeles would a liberal Democrat who has campaigned time and again with strong labor support stand accused of being this city's version of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who earned labor's undying enmity for ending collective bargaining rights in his state. And yet that's precisely the latest wrinkle in the Los Angeles mayor's race. As The Times reported Wednesday, Controller Wendy Greuel made her pitch for labor support in part by suggesting that her opponent in the May 21 runoff election, Councilman Eric Garcetti, violated collective bargaining rules when he supported a change in retirement benefits for city employees last year.

At a time when all sorts of artists are abandoning painting to make works that spill onto the floor and fill the room with all manner of stuff, it's exciting to see Laura Owens pack everything she's got onto a flat canvas. She's got a lot. At 356 S. Mission Road, “12 Paintings by Laura Owens” is exactly that: 12 gigantic canvases lined up on two long walls in a massive industrial space whose raw beauty has not been obliterated by overeager renovation. The first hometown solo show of paintings since Owens' survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003, her straightforward setup plays with space so effectively that every cubic foot of the gargantuan gallery matters.