Tom Otterness

Lush brushwork and simple compositions come together in Roberto Gil de Montes' new paintings at Jan Baum Gallery. Big and bold, yet subtly intriguing, these hypnotic nudes, portraits and still lifes rank among the best he has made. In the past, Gil de Montes' intimately scaled images were generally stronger than his larger, often wall-size canvases. In this exhibition, however, the tables have turned: The most captivating pictures are also the biggest.

This troubled town currently is not territory one thinks of as a bower of Arcadian bliss, but there are sylvan places here and it is a good time to find solace in them. Take UCLA's Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. Anyone clever enough to negotiate the Byzantine ordeal of getting a space in one of the Westwood campus's parking structures will likely feel sufficiently harassed to need some relaxation. The garden does the trick.

"Dick does the driving, but Nancy does the navigating." That's how Times columnist Patt Morrison described the partnership of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Nancy Daly Riordan. "Dick has the vision of where they're going," she said, "but Nancy makes sure they get there." Morrison, a founding host and commentator on KCET's "Life & Times Tonight" emceed the dinner last Wednesday honoring L.A.'

Got a record player? If you didn't chuck it out at some point during the successive waves of new technologies that rolled over recent decades--eight-track tape, cassette, CD--can the player that you kept accommodate a 45? Does it have a fat spindle that fits the big hole in the middle? If not, did you keep the spindle adapter? And if records themselves are today an endangered species, has a spindle adapter yet made the transition from plain household object to precious, hard-to-find antique?

FIFTEEN years ago, interest in Midcentury architecture and modern design was limited to a handful of fans: historians, preservationists and people with a taste for fine things overlooked by the mainstream. Today, the sleek forms of homes and furniture from the 1940s, '50s and '60s are more popular and critically acclaimed than ever. Just visit IKEA or thumb through some high-end shelter magazines.

Remember when they used to decorate public buildings and monuments with finely wrought symbolic relief sculptures about important stuff--your local ruler's victories in battle, solemn processions of mythological bigwigs, scenes from the Bible? Well, OK, it's been a while since the completion of the Parthenon, the Ara Pacis in Rome, Chartres Cathedral or even the Arc de Triomphe.

After five years in gestation, Kiki Smith's first permanent outdoor sculpture was installed recently on the campus of UC San Diego, without a hitch. Students and faculty passing between the Basic Science and Medical Teaching buildings where the sculpture stands were taking great notice of the new addition, Smith observed a few days before the work's official dedication on Oct. 24.

There's still time to catch the most beautiful exhibition mounted in Los Angeles in 1991--the retrospective of abstract paintings by American artist Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967), which is at the Museum of Contemporary Art through Jan. 5. A considered homage to a rigorous clarity of thought and feeling, this bracing show is as good as they get.

We all missed it. On Sept. 11, an announcement about six winners of $35,000 did not catch our attention. There was no media hype, no champagne, no gala, no news at 11. "LOS ANGELES--The Lannan Foundation today announced the recipients of the 1990 Lannan Literary Awards celebrating literary excellence in fiction, nonfiction and poetry." In an era of aggressive self-promotion, a private family foundation was guarding its own privacy, plus the privacy of its lucky winners.

There was much clucking of tongues last fall when the New York Times Magazine ran a laudatory profile of New York mega-dealer Arne Glimcher of the Pace-Wildenstein Gallery. There was Glimcher on the cover surrounded by his stable of talent--all of them solidly established male artists on the downside of 50.