Peter Goulds

When Peter Goulds arrived in Los Angeles from his native England in 1972, Pop had crested, Conceptualism and Minimalism were gathering steam, and Nicholas Wilder was L.A.'s ranking dealer. The glory days of the slick Finish Fetish style associated with Southern California had passed, Bruce Nauman and his cronies were cooking up a hot little scene out in Pasadena, Chris Burden was doing performance pieces that were to become legendary, and New York was still dissing L.A. as Nowheresville.

Anyone following the making of the region-wide, six-month-long 2011 visual arts extravaganza "Pacific Standard Time" knows it as a museum initiative, having grown out of an oral history project by the Getty Research Institute designed to document the birth of the L.A. art scene. And it will culminate with museums, as nearly 50 local institutions are staging exhibitions exploring one big theme: the history of art in Southern California from 1945 to 1980. Now, some of the city's leading commercial galleries are getting in the spirit, organizing their own shows that shine a light on the early days of the L.A. art scene.

Portraits by David Hockney will fill Loyola Marymount's Laband Art Gallery Friday through March 14. Organized by the gallery director Ellen Ekedal, the exhibition consists of works in pen and ink, graphite and crayon, dated 1966 to 1984. Style ranges from realistic depictions to more abstract variations; several self-portraits are included, as well as drawings of Hockney's friend Celia, and more publicly known figures such as Cecil Beaton, Stephen Spender and Billy Wilder.

When Peter Goulds arrived in Los Angeles from his native England in 1972, Pop had crested, Conceptualism and Minimalism were gathering steam, and Nicholas Wilder was L.A.'s ranking dealer. The glory days of the slick Finish Fetish style associated with Southern California had passed, Bruce Nauman and his cronies were cooking up a hot little scene out in Pasadena, Chris Burden was doing performance pieces that were to become legendary, and New York was still dissing L.A. as Nowheresville.

Anyone following the making of the region-wide, six-month-long 2011 visual arts extravaganza "Pacific Standard Time" knows it as a museum initiative, having grown out of an oral history project by the Getty Research Institute designed to document the birth of the L.A. art scene. And it will culminate with museums, as nearly 50 local institutions are staging exhibitions exploring one big theme: the history of art in Southern California from 1945 to 1980. Now, some of the city's leading commercial galleries are getting in the spirit, organizing their own shows that shine a light on the early days of the L.A. art scene.

R.B. Kitaj, a figurative American painter who became a significant contributor to the British Pop Art movement during his nearly four decades of expatriate life in London, has died. He was 74. Kitaj died Sunday evening at his home in Los Angeles, according to the Marlborough Gallery, his official representative in New York. The Los Angeles County coroner's office was looking at his death as a possible suicide and conducted an autopsy Tuesday, a coroner's spokesman said.

Peter Goulds, the only major Los Angeles art dealer to open a New York gallery during the art market boom in the late 1980s, is retrenching. Louver Gallery, Goulds' elegant show space in SoHo, will close around the first of July, but L.A. Louver's Venice gallery will get a new home, scheduled to open in September, 1994, with a show of Richard Deacon's sculpture.

Entr'acte cocktails just aren't the same without David Hockney. With its intimate lighting and graceful floral arrangements, the Oval Bar at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is an elegant refuge for thirsty music lovers. But the bar's polished charm and the sleek video monitors for latecomers aren't the only draw--there's also the art.

An L.A. art crowd partied at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Wednesday night at an opening reception for "Cy Twombly: A Retrospective." The comprehensive survey of the works of the American abstract painter--most recognizable for his gray and white "blackboard" paintings--runs through June 25.

A lofty collection of architect superstars, academicians, art collectors and dealers turned up last weekend for a private viewing of the retrospective "Arata Isozaki: Architecture 1960-1990," which opened to the public Sunday, and tried to get close to the quiet man in the Issey Miyake tuxedo. Friday evening's event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which Isozaki designed, also was billed as a birthday party for the Japan-based architect.

Portraits by David Hockney will fill Loyola Marymount's Laband Art Gallery Friday through March 14. Organized by the gallery director Ellen Ekedal, the exhibition consists of works in pen and ink, graphite and crayon, dated 1966 to 1984. Style ranges from realistic depictions to more abstract variations; several self-portraits are included, as well as drawings of Hockney's friend Celia, and more publicly known figures such as Cecil Beaton, Stephen Spender and Billy Wilder.

There are parts of Hollywood that are considered dangerous, but no one had ever included the design on the bottom of a swimming pool before. No one, that is, until county officials spotted the 4-month-old underwater artwork of painter David Hockney at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's outdoor plunge.

Plans to expand L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice are on again, thanks to a favorable ruling Tuesday by a Los Angeles City Council committee that overturned a decision that gave a short-lived victory to a neighborhood group opposed to the project. The decision by the City Council Planning and Land Use Management Committee reverses a setback suffered by the internationally known art gallery in August, when the Board of Zoning Appeals refused to grant a needed coastal development permit.