Sculpture

The Supreme Court, in a victory for artists and authors, ruled Monday that a homeless-rights group is not the exclusive owner of the copyright to a sculpture it commissioned an artist to create. The 9-0 decision (CCNV vs. Reid, 88-293) ordered further lower court hearings to determine whether the Community for Creative Non-Violence and its founder, Mitch Snyder, may share in the copyright of a work entitled "Third World America," which depicts the plight of the homeless. Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing for the court, said the sculpture is a "work made for hire" and, therefore, its creator, James Earl Reid of Baltimore, must at least share in the copyright.

Edouard Manet (1832-83) was arguably the first Modern artist. Partly that's because the 19th century painter's work was made in direct, conscious response to museum art - in those days a newfangled institution. Before, painters and sculptors made art in response to popes, kings and burghers as well as to paintings and sculptures other artists made for popes, kings and burghers. But the museum was something new. The museum codified art and its history. Manet painted in the self-conscious hope of gaining admission to the ranks.

FORGET the stiff family portrait, the black-and-white nature photography, the tasteful print so carefully framed. Why hang art when the wall itself can be sculpture? New panels and wallpaper tiles aim to transform boring blank rooms into textured, three-dimensional canvases. These products range in size from 12-inch squares made of recycled paper to 4-foot-by-8-foot panels made of medium density fiberboard.

At a time when technology seems to be all about getting more people to see more images more quickly and clearly than ever before, Jennifer Pastor's “Endless Arena” comes across as a wonderfully nutty throwback to a bygone era. The spindly sculpture, in a small back gallery at Regen Projects, resembles nothing so much as the armature for some kind of homegrown experiment or the framework for an ad-hoc stage set. It's both and more. But you won't know that if you don't look closely.

Abraham Cruzvillegas's first exhibition with Regen Projects builds on the story of a Mexican jazz musician - apparently based on the artist's great-uncle - who travels the world playing the trumpet in the height of the swing era. A pachuco who dresses in flamboyant suits with broad lapels and baggy pants, he lands in L.A. in time for the Zoot Suit Riots, drifts through Cab Calloway's New York and the heated clubs of Nazi-occupied Paris. He  gradually crumbles into alcoholism and returns to his native Michoacán.

Perhaps the least glorious chapter in the creation of Walt Disney Concert Hall has finally ended in a confidential settlement of the 2-year-old lawsuit over "Collar and Bow," the gigantic sculpture that architect Frank Gehry envisioned extending a lighthearted greeting from the concert hall's doorstep -- until it literally began to fall apart during fabrication.

After six years of controversy about whether it was art or junk, the Split Pavilion sculpture garden overlooking the beach in Carlsbad is being dismantled. The public art project began as an effort to beautify the Carlsbad bluff, but quickly deteriorated into ridicule, outrage and then political backlash. The sculpture, commissioned by the Carlsbad Arts Commission from New York artist Andrea Blum for $35,000, cost the city an additional $350,000 to install.

"Chain Reaction," the anti-nuclear weapons sculpture by the late Paul Conrad, has received landmark status from Santa Monica's Landmarks Commission. The group voted unanimously on the designation late Monday at its monthly meeting. Monday's decision "provides a level of protection for the sculpture, but there are still opportunities [for the city] to relocate it," Scott Albright of the commission said in an interview. He said that future efforts to remove Conrad's sculpture would be reviewed by the commission.

In response to " 'Novel Ideas' Bound by Literal Works" by Cathy Curtis (Calendar, Nov. 16): With all my respect to one of (The Times') most vicious art critics, who knows her stuff very well, I would like to set one very important item in that article straight, which will completely change the distorted and wrong way she reviewed my sculpture "The American Dream." The book I was given was a double paperback by Edward Albee, the author of "Who Is Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" The actual title of the book was "The Zoo Story" and "The American Dream" (two stage plays)

With iPhones and cameras out, crowds virtually stampeded the white concrete path to view Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass," which opened Sunday morning at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The famously reclusive Heizer was on hand for the opening ceremonies and stood at the exit with LACMA director Michael Govan, shaking hands with museum guests and signing tickets. Govan cut the ribbon with a pair of gold-handled scissors to officially open the $10-million sculpture.

The L.A. County Museum of Art has signaled its commitment to African art by paying $1 million for a 3-foot-high "Gwan" sculpture of a mother and infant, believed to help ensure healthy childbirth by the Bamana peoples of Mali. "It's one of the oldest surviving wood sculptures of Africa and probably the oldest Gwan figure in existence," said Polly Nooter Roberts, a curator of African art at LACMA and professor at UCLA. According to carbon dating, the piece was made between 1432 and 1644, earlier than Gwan figures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

There are at least three great reasons to see "Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome," the newly opened antiquities exhibition at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. A major sculpture anchors each of the show's three rooms, and together they tell an accelerating story of artistic and social power on the ancient Mediterranean island. Chronologically, the first is a straightforward male torso, his finely chiseled marble body quietly brimming with latent energy. Second comes a preening charioteer, physically just larger than life but expressively very much so. And third is a depiction of a minor god with major fertility on his mind, his powerful physicality an embodiment of the contortions of carnal lust, both corporeal and psychological.

Santa Monica will soon be sporting a new piece of civic art by Olafur Eliasson, and while it's on a considerably less massive scale than the giant temporary waterfalls the Danish-Icelandic artist installed along the East River in New York City as a public art project in 2008, it has the advantage of being permanent. The 9-pound table-top piece is the icing on a $1-million cake -- Santa Monica already having been awarded the cash component by Bloomberg Philanthropies, headed by New York City's multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

Authorities on the East Coast are searching for Bigfoot. No, really. Vermont State Police are hunting for a Sasquatch sculpture reportedly swiped from a Westford couple's driveway over the weekend. The couple purchased the 8-pound, 15-inch-tall Yeti from a SkyMall magazine. Police say the statue is valued at around $100, the Associated Press reported, and the owners would be satisfied if it was simply returned to their front lawn. In addition to police efforts, the couple is using community network Front Porch Forum to search for the sculpture.

From a distance, the Watts Towers rise as a beacon of pride in a community that has struggled for years with poverty and crime. But up close, tiny cracks are tearing through the historic sculpture. One particularly nasty fissure starts thin at the base of the 99-foot center tower, then widens and snakes over colorful tiles, branching like a network of veins from an artery. Decorative ornaments - pieces of glass, seashells and pottery that artist Simon Rodia painstakingly affixed - are falling off, bit by bit. The towers have been deteriorating for years, prompting quick patch jobs that did little long-term good.

SICILY, Italy - Two years ago, the J. Paul Getty Museum ended a lengthy dispute with Italian cultural authorities by returning a towering limestone and marble statue of a Greek goddess to Sicily. The sculpture is now the pride of the relatively modest Museo Archeologico in Aidone - and by far its biggest attraction. The tiny hilltop town in central Sicily, near an excavation of the ancient city of Morgantina, is also the home of a Hellenistic silver collection repatriated in 2010 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A stolen sculpture by British artist Henry Moore valued at $770,000 could end up being sold for scrap, officials have speculated. The 22-inch bronze sundial from 1965 was taken this week from the Henry Moore Foundation, the sculpture's former home-turned-museum in Hertfordshire near London. This is the second time a Moore sculpture has been lifted from the 72-acre property: In 2005 thieves used a crane to steal the 12-foot bronze statue "Reclining Figure," worth an estimated $4.5 million.

In "Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites" (1991-99), an exceptional installation sculpture made from untidy clusters of plush toys suspended from the ceiling and sleekly lacquered reliefs attached to surrounding walls, the only element that stands on the floor is the viewer. Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) had a way with upending expectations, and manipulating audiences into his artistic projects was a common gambit. The sculpture, shown in earlier and slightly different iterations in several European venues, is having its West Coast debut at Perry Rubenstein Gallery.

One of the world's largest sellers of Lladró porcelain, Regis Galerie in Las Vegas, is inviting shoppers to meet the company president this weekend. Rosa Lladró, the daughter of one of the founders, will be autographing sculptures from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, March 10. The gallery, in the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, is known for its broad range of art collectibles bearing names such as Daum, Faberge and Lalique. Buyers often acquire pieces with the expectation that they will increase in value, and signed pieces often are worth more.

Re "I yam what I yam - but is it art?," Opinion, Feb. 12 I agree with Crispin Sartwell's assessment that the "authorities at the upper end of the art world" can lead us into the "worst of all possible aesthetic worlds. " Like him, I am not a fan of Jeff Koons' art, except perhaps as an enormous joke at the expense of the all-too-precious art world. I regret, however, that Sartwell did not say outright that good art does exist and that it enlightens and elevates us personally and culturally.