Sculptures

If you don't look very closely or think very clearly, Carlos Amorales' mixed-media works seem to be the real thing: complex objects that reward every inch of attention brought to them. But if you want more from your art than the mere appearance of seriousness, you soon see that the internationally exhibited artist's pieces at the Orange County Museum of Art are too lightweight, silly and self-impressed to be engaging, satisfying or memorable. In a very blunt nutshell, Amorales' art is conceptually flimsy and materially stingy.

The last of an absorbing trio of small Pacific Standard Time shows charting an especially rambunctious moment at Pomona College between 1969 and 1973 looks at the work of nine artists who were either students or on the school's faculty. Ranging from accomplished to unresolved, the paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations often ricochet off one another in form and content, underscoring an era of ferment. At the Pomona College Museum of Art, senior curator Rebecca McGrew and Getty Research Institute specialist Glenn Phillips have chosen 53 works for Part 3 of "It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles, 1969-1973.

Standing in a forest of sinuous, black totems spiraling into the lofty heights of the main room at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, Herb Alpert is surrounded by an art form he has practiced for the last two decades — sculpture. By his account and that of those who know him, he's a man who lives on the right side of his brain — he percolates on the creative and the intuitive. "I do something every day, whether sculpting or painting," he says. "It definitely feeds my spirit when I sculpt or paint or blow the horn, that's an essential part of my being."

In a short video produced by LA Louver in advance of Ben Jackel's solo show, one encounters the artist taking an ax, quite literally, to one of his sculptures. He's chipping away at a block of Douglas fir to form an enormous replica of the head of a pole-mounted weapon called a halberd, in a style traditionally carried by the personal guards of the elders of Saxony around the year 1600 - as he quickly clarifies when I mistakenly call it a spearhead. The piece, which, at 131/2 feet tall, would clearly do damage if it fell on you, is titled "Pay Attention.

The last of an absorbing trio of small Pacific Standard Time shows charting an especially rambunctious moment at Pomona College between 1969 and 1973 looks at the work of nine artists who were either students or on the school's faculty. Ranging from accomplished to unresolved, the paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations often ricochet off one another in form and content, underscoring an era of ferment. At the Pomona College Museum of Art, senior curator Rebecca McGrew and Getty Research Institute specialist Glenn Phillips have chosen 53 works for Part 3 of "It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles, 1969-1973.

Elizabeth Catlett, a sculptor and printmaker who was widely considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century despite having lived most of her life in Mexico, has died. She was 96. Catlett, whose sculptures became symbols of the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, said her eldest son, Francisco. Her imposing blend of art and social consciousness mirrored that of German painter Max Beckmann, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and other artists of the mid-20th century who used art to critique power structures.

These sculptures, photographed by Times reader Eric Davidoff, adorn the rooftop of La Pedrera, an apartment complex in Barcelona. The dreamlike quality of these figures matches the surreal look of the building itself. Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, known for his whimsical creations, designed La Pedrera. You can find La Pedrera on Paseo de Gracia in Barcelona. Other Gaudi creations in Barcelona include La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral more than a century  in the making, and Park Guell.

John McCracken, an artist whose fusion of painting with geometric sculpture in the mid-1960s came to embody an aesthetic distinctive to postwar Los Angeles, died Friday in New York. He was 76. McCracken had lived in Santa Fe, N.M., since 1994 and, according to a spokesman for his Manhattan gallery, had been in ill health. One among a group of artists whose work was variously described as representing the L.A. Cool School, thanks to its rejection of emotionally expressive gestures; Finish Fetish, in recognition of its pristine color and high-tech surfaces; and Minimalism, because of its reliance on simple geometric forms, McCracken in fact made singular painted sculptures that value a clarity of perception infused with spiritual connotations.

Reporting from Encinitas, Calif. ? On opening night of Alison Saar's exhibition and residency at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, sculptures stood on the floor and on pedestals, hung from the ceiling and were mounted on the wall, much like any of her gallery installations. But in one corner lay a dozen planks of Douglas fir, laminated into a solid block and held together by furniture clamps. By the end of Saar's monthlong working retreat, which concludeded last week, that lumber had come to life, and in place of the artist's materials and a cartful of tools stood a figure of compelling presence: a woman, slightly larger than life-size, carved in wood and clad in patches of copper.

By early 2006, John Frame had given up on art. He had whittled away the year before in silence, as static in his work as the motionless sculptures that populated his cramped Wrightwood studio. He couldn't start a single project. Everything seemed wrong. "I had shut down," he said. But then, a week or two after closing his studio door for good, he woke up from his artistic torpor ? at 2 in the morning, inspired like he'd never been before. "It came as a single download," Frame said.

Over at the Getty Villa, a fantastic hybrid sculpture is holding court in a powerful exhibition that explores the ancient Mediterranean goddess Aphrodite. Based on a lost Greek original, a 1st century Roman carving of an exquisite hermaphrodite, part man and part woman, seductively writhes in a self-possessed erotic dream. Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently opened a similarly dazzling show centered on another ancient hybrid being -- this one a plumed serpent.

PARIS - When Théo Mercier talks about his work - sculptures with tribal masks sticking out their tongues or flora sprouting around fleshy pink, bulbous posteriors - he does it with a straight face. His sculpture, "The Loner," is "a kind of monster monument," he said, then paused. "In spaghetti. " The 27-year-old's sculptures can be disturbingly funny but beautiful creatures to look at. "We never know … if we are dealing with something amusing, or something sad," he said of his creations.

Elizabeth Catlett, a sculptor and printmaker who was widely considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century despite having lived most of her life in Mexico, has died. She was 96. Catlett, whose sculptures became symbols of the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, said her eldest son, Francisco. Her imposing blend of art and social consciousness mirrored that of German painter Max Beckmann, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and other artists of the mid-20th century who used art to critique power structures.

The floor sculptures that Mel Bochner made in the early 1970s now rank as classics of conceptual art. Arrangements of stones, coins and on occasion hazelnuts on the ground, they were designed to lay bare the first principles of sculpture. "I was trying to find out what the minimum definition of a sculpture was — what could be a sculpture and only a sculpture. It has to be three-dimensional," the artist said, reached by phone in New York. "And I wanted it to be a useless thing. A lot of pebbles you could put in your driveway; an individual pebble has no exchange value.

Kenneth Price, a prolific Los Angeles artist whose work with glazed and painted clay transformed traditional ceramics while also expanding orthodox definitions of American and European sculpture, died early Friday at his home and studio in Taos, N.M. He was 77. Price had struggled with tongue and throat cancer for several years, his food intake restricted to liquids supplied through a feeding tube. Despite his infirmity, he continued to produce challenging new work and to mount critically acclaimed exhibitions at galleries in Los Angeles, New York and Europe.

Over more than a century, Dorothea Tanning collided and consorted with artistic titans of the 20th century who included Pablo Picasso, John Cage and Joseph Cornell. She designed sets for George Balanchine ballets, played romantic matchmaker for poet Andre Breton and appeared in Hans Richter's avant-garde films - but she remained best known as the wife of Surrealist Max Ernst, to whom she was married for nearly 30 years Tanning, who was also a celebrated American artist and poet, and came to be known as "the last living Surrealist," died Tuesday at her New York City home, according to the Dorothea Tanning Collection and Archive, a foundation she established in 1995 to preserve her work.

Situated where mountain, sea and sky abruptly meet at the westernmost tip of this city, Eduardo Chillida's sculpture "Wind Combs" stands as an eloquent statement of the war between the elements and the artist's vision. The three sets of huge steel prongs that comprise the sculpture are situated so that an almost palpable tension ebbs and flows among them. Although others have built larger sculptures, few have made such articulate use of such a large space.

The picture accompanying "Denver Show, African Roots," [News, Tips & Bargains, May 30] was magnificent. Readers who cannot travel to Denver this summer should mark their calendars for late July because they will have an opportunity to see in Pasadena an array of African sculpture from Zimbabwe carved by second- and third-generation Shona artists. Exhibit-goers can stroll through the grounds of Neighborhood Church, 301 N. Orange Grove Ave., where I am a member and volunteer, to view large garden sculptures on the lawn, as well as smaller sculptures in the airy chapel.

A cloud hangs over cartoonist Paul Conrad's anti-nuclear war sculpture in Santa Monica. Faced with having to raise as much as $423,000 to repair the two-decade-old "Chain Reaction," city staffers have instead advised spending $20,000 to remove it. After hearing from activists eager to preserve the Civic Auditorium sculpture, the city's Arts Commission has recommended that the City Council vote to remove, or "deaccession," the work - ...

The new Matthew Marks Gallery in West Hollywood isn't just the first ground-up building by the 42-year-old Los Angeles architect Peter Zellner. A clean-lined, windowless stucco box on Orange Grove Avenue just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, it is also almost entirely free-standing. Attached on one of its four sides to a mortuary, it is otherwise visible in the round, making it one of the most conspicuous architectural debuts to appear in Southern California in a number of years. At the same time, Zellner's design operates in large part as the straightforward and accommodating backdrop for an artwork by the 88-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly.