Paintings

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has decided to auction three paintings by Thomas Eakins, the 19th century American artist, to raise money for its acquisition fund. The works, which are being sold by Christie's in a public sale May 20, have been culled from the 220 pieces by Eakins in the museum's collection. The three have not been exhibited at the Hirshhorn since a survey of the artist's work in 1977. The paintings are a study for "Portrait of Mrs. Charles L. Leonard," a study for "William Rush and His Model" and a portrait of Robert C. Ogden.

Masked gunmen stole two paintings from a Dutch museum Friday, including a work by Surrealist Salvador Dali, officials said. Police said several robbers threatened a guard at the Scheringa Museum for Realism in Spanbroek with a gun before making off with two paintings. Nobody was injured. The robbers took "Adolescence," a 1941 gouache by Dali, and "La Musicienne," an oil painting from 1929 by Polish-born Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, the museum said in a statement. The paintings' value was not released, but the museum says they are among the top works in its collection.

Was Roger Kuntz the last American Scene painter? That's the unexpected thought that arises from seeing a large retrospective exhibition of work by the Los Angeles artist, who died in 1975 at the age of only 49. American Scene painting emerged from an anxiety-ridden period of national self-examination between the Great Depression and World War II. It pretty much petered out as the booming 1950s unfolded. But that's just when Kuntz was getting started. The Laguna Art Museum has assembled 63 paintings, 21 works on paper and 12 small bronze sculptures from all phases of Kuntz's 25-year career.

Jean Lowe's paintings of Bavarian palaces made over into big-box discount outlets are as reasonable and believable as they are preposterous. Their wicked mixture of giddy hilarity and deadly sobriety puts them in tune with our times, when things are not what they seem and topsy-turvy absurdity seems to have replaced levelheaded stability as society's modus operandi. From the moment you step into the Rosamund Felsen Gallery, it's clear that you're in a familiar world, a banal and terrifying place filled with Costcos and Wal-Marts as well as more ostentatious displays of wealth.

Thieves pried open the emergency door of a small Dutch museum with an iron bar and made off with six 17th and 19th century landscape paintings -- the second major art heist in 10 days in the Netherlands. The break-in at 3 a.m. Monday set off an alarm that summoned police within minutes but the burglars already had fled, leaving behind two paintings that they dropped in their haste and damaged, Mark de Kok, a spokesman for the city of IJsselstein, said Tuesday. The paintings included three by Jan van Goyen, a prolific contemporary of Rembrandt who died in 1656.

When a movie calls for artworks to be on camera, it's usually a good idea to use copies: The rigors of shooting can be damaging to fragile masterpieces. But what happens if a director insists on using authentic creations? "Summer Hours," a film opening Friday, tells of a family-owned art collection that must be sold off after the elderly matriarch passes away. In a rare close collaboration between filmmaker and art institution, director Olivier Assayas and his crew partnered with the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and several private collectors to locate works including 19th century Barbizon School paintings and rare 20th century furniture.

About 15 years ago, Philip Argent helped put L.A. painting in the spotlight by making Hard-Edge Abstraction look as sexy and progressive as it did in its heyday, when Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, John McLaughlin and their cohorts invented the hip, optimistic style in the 1950s. Argent brought the laser-sharp contours and screaming colors of their abstract compositions into the Digital Age, transforming organic shapes and pulsating patterns into supersaturated images fueled by computer technology and animated by the possibilities of instantaneous communication.

The J. Paul Getty Museum is showing two Rembrandt paintings on loan now while preparing for a major exhibition of the artist's work later this year. "Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference," reflecting 30 years of scholarly research on disparities between the 17th century Dutch master's drawings and those of his students and followers, will open Dec. 8, stocked with pairs of similar drawings that clarify what, exactly, makes a Rembrandt a Rembrandt. In the meantime, in addition to its permanent-collection display of Rembrandt paintings, museum visitors can see "Saint Bavo," from the Goteborgs Konstmuseum in Sweden, and "Portrait of a Rabbi," from an unidentified private collection.

The kernel of a powerful idea resides within "Illumination," an exhibition of abstract paintings by four women who worked in the deserts of the American Southwest and whose careers pretty much spanned the 20th century. But the kernel never really pops. One reason is that the modest galleries of the Orange County Museum of Art, where "Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin and Florence Miller Pierce" is on view to Sept. 6, are overcrowded. Seventy-seven paintings and 21 works on paper hang cheek-by-jowl in the four special exhibition rooms, overwhelming the available space.

Ruby Neri's painted clay figures and big, blazing paintings take visitors back to the heyday of German Expressionism. In the first decades of the 20th century, artists such as Franz Marc, Emil Nolde and Paula Modersohn Becker sought the crude truth in deliberately inelegant works that embraced childlike innocence, primitive vigor and the naked basics of life: pleasure and pain, love and death, food and sex. But unlike all too many second-, third- and...