Portraits

This is a story about an embattled art form that refuses to die. The subject? Portraiture. True, it isn't what it used to be. Photography and electronic technology have made images of people so plentiful that the notion of having a portrait laboriously painted or sculpted seems a bit archaic. Portraiture has also taken a hit from 20th-Century guilt. Unless you move in certain rarefied social circles, it just isn't cool to glorify yourself in a grand portrait over the fireplace.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A South African art gallery that displayed a controversial painting showing the country's president with his genitals exposed announced Tuesday that it was closing its doors temporarily because of threats. The decision came after vandals defaced the artwork earlier in the day. Lara Koseff, spokeswoman for the Goodman Gallery, said there had been numerous threats made against the gallery after its display of "The Spear," by Cape Town artist Brett Murray.

Masters of the Close-Up, Up Close Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Grand Lobby 8949 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; noon to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through April 17. Admission is free For more information call (310) 247-3000 or go to http://www.oscars.org

Willie Robert Middlebrook, a photographer who sought to enlarge public perceptions of the African American community through painterly depictions of its people and places, died Saturday at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City. He was 54. The cause was complications of a stroke suffered last month, said his daughter, Jessica Middlebrook. Middlebrook's death came just a week after the unveiling at the new Expo/Crenshaw Metro station of one of his largest public installations, a series of 24 mosaic panels based on his photographs.

They were expert stylists, artists and athletes. Devoted mothers and fathers, and outdoors enthusiasts too. Six women and two men were shot to death Wednesday in Seal Beach when, authorities say, Scott Dekraai opened fire at Salon Meritage, killing five employees, two customers and a man parked outside. It was the deadliest shooting in Orange County history. Friends, family members and clients offered these portraits of the victims. :: Michelle Marie Fournier's calling was cutting and styling hair.

Leon Chavez Teixeiro, a large, silver-haired man who walks with a limp, could pass as an ordinary workman instead of one of a handful of Mexican songwriters struggling to breathe new life into their nation's stagnant pop music scene--at least until he started singing at Saturday's political fund-raising concert at Fritchman Auditorium.

L.A. photographer Jeff Sheng started traveling the country last year to document gay military personnel. Now, just as the Obama administration is moving to end the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, Sheng has published the first volume of his intimate portraits.

Audiences have always been fascinated with the art of portraiture, whether it's Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" or Andy Warhol's turquoise painting of Marilyn Monroe. It's a staple in most museums' exhibition schedules. The Hammer Museum has dug into its own collections for an interesting view of the art in "Other People," 75 works drawn from the historical collections of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts and the Hammer Contemporary Collection.

IF rich Russians want to pay Nikas Safronov big bucks for new portraits in old styles ["Stars in His Eyes," by Jeffrey Fleishman, March 31], that's their privilege, but shouldn't The Times, rather than report this as something new under the sun, provide some perspective? Back in the '30s, quirky Hollywood artist John Decker painted the Marx Brothers in the styles of Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Gainsborough. What's more, anonymous studio craftsmen since the dawn of movies have been executing such portraits to provide gags and plot points for the flicks.

Two portraits whose authenticity was in doubt have been verified as real Van Goghs, the museum named for the Dutch master confirmed Friday. One portrait is the face and torso of a woman in a hat. In the second, a lady sits with gloved hands folded in her lap. Because the themes were so common in the 19th century and the paintings had little similarity to the rest of the work by Vincent van Gogh, their authorship was in doubt, said spokeswoman Natalie...

Against Wind and Tide Letters and Journals, 1947-1986 Anne Morrow Lindbergh, edited and with an introduction by Reeve Lindbergh Pantheon: 358 pp., $27.95 "A woman writer is 'rowing against wind and tide,'" Anne Morrow Lindbergh told her daughter Reeve in 1972, quoting Harriet Beecher Stowe. "We cannot - or only with the greatest difficulty - produce a great 'body of work.'… And it isn't just being a woman. It is some other deeper conflict between art and life.

Skittles candies have been front and center lately, usually accompanying an image of Trayvon Martin -- the 17-year-old who was carrying the confection when he was slain by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. Now a Denver artist has taken the totemic use of the rainbow-colored candy a step further and spun it on its head, or rather, Zimmerman's. Art student Andy Bell used purple, yellow, orange and lime-colored chews to construct a 36-inch by 48-inch mosaic portrait of a Zimmerman mugshot.

The family of Abdul Arian remembered the 19-year-old young man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police officers after a high-speed chase Thursday morning for his desire to become a police officer. "He wanted to be an LAPD cop," said Hamed Arian, the youth's uncle, "and the LAPD killed him. " But as details of Arian's life emerge, the picture of his ambitions becomes more complicated. A police narrative of the shooting on the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills suggests a troubled end for the young man who placed a 911 call during the pursuit and told authorities he was armed with a gun. Police did not recover a gun from the scene.

There are basically two kinds of fans of HBO's comedy "Eastbound & Down," which wraps up its third, and what will probably be its final, season Sunday. One kind gets the joke. The other is the joke. "They are some scary people," said Danny McBride, 35, the star and co-creator of the series. "They like the show, but for the wrong reasons - like they want to be Kenny Powers. " For those who may not have been properly introduced, Powers is perhaps the sharpest - and certainly raunchiest - satiric portrait of a redneck ever to be loosed on television.

What if they picked a pope and he went AWOL? That's the premise of Nanni Moretti's new film, a gentle fable whose humanist heart beats in Michel Piccoli's nuanced performance. As a man of faith facing a secular crisis — over a life unfulfilled — the seasoned actor is stirring. Yet "We Have a Pope" ("Habemus Papam") is too gingerly to be persuasive. In his imagining of the papal conclave, Moretti aims for basic verisimilitude but avoids grounding topicality. There's only the slightest reference to contemporary troubles in the Roman Catholic Church, and no sense of politics or ambition among the cardinals assembled to choose a new pontiff.

Tony Millionaire spends his nights in the garage. That's where you'll find him, in a space built just wide enough for a Model T, bent over his drawing table until 4 a.m., a beer never far from his fingertips. The wife and kids can hear him in there, listening to talk radio or laughing and shouting, with the occasional crash when things are not going well. He is happy this way, a cartoonist left to his own whims and solitude at his 1926 home in Pasadena, drawing his weekly "Maakies" comic strip about a hard-drinking, suicidal crow or his ongoing series of portraits of the famous and infamous for publications such as the Believer and New York Magazine.

I write this letter while watching the unveiling of the Clinton portraits on Monday. Never has George W. Bush been more impressive. Never has Bill Clinton been seen more clearly as a man who deserved to be president. How I hope this moment in history will inspire the best in the people of our great country. Don Brown Beverly Hills I want to nominate President Bush for a courage award. Monday, he had to preside over a ceremony in the White House as they unveiled the Clintons' portraits to be hung there with all previous presidents and first ladies.

One glance at the titles of Janeita Eyre's photographs--"Twins Modeling Identical Leech Gowns," "The Day I Gave Birth to My Mother" or "Two Fakirs Waiting for an Audience"--reveals more than a little about this young Canadian photographer's wickedly unsubtle sense of humor.

SANFORD, Fla. - For many Americans, George Zimmerman has become the face of barbarous vigilante justice. For Olivia Bertalan, he was the face of compassion: a neighbor of consummate graciousness and low-key gallantry. About six months before Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in his town house complex, he was standing in Bertalan's doorway, asking what he could do to help her. A group of young men had just broken into Bertalan's town house as she and her infant cowered in a locked bedroom.

The Odds A Love Story Stewart O'Nan Viking: 179 pp., $25.95 This is how we meet them: "The final weekend of their marriage, hounded by insolvency, indecision, and, stupidly, half-secretly, in the never-distant past ruled by memory, infidelity, Art and Marion Fowler fled the country. " This middle-age Midwestern couple doesn't go far: just to Niagara Falls, where they spent their honeymoon. There is a cache of cash involved and a desperate gambling plan that, if Art has his way, will make everything right.