Whitney Bedford is a truly unique artist. Her subjects- shipwrecks, pirates, and impending disaster, are far from the norm of what L.A based painters are doing these days. In her most recent exhibit at Cherry & Martin, Bedford takes on one of the biggest celebrities of the roaring 20’s Harry Houdini. The life-sized images in ink & oil on paper catch the showman mid –escape, in his most harrowing moments. Some of the lines......

Yesterday LAist went to see Magritte at LACMA because we hadn't seen it yet and he tried new things and this is the last weekend that it will be here, so we didn't mind handing over $25 for a ticket and one of those walkman devices that tells you what you're looking at. Even though we try to be cultured we often fail, which is why we aren't usually at fancy art museums in......

The delicious, outstanding, mind-altering Magritte show at LACMA is over on Sunday, March 4th. John Baldessari has done a bang-up job presenting Magritte's work in a new context, free from the apple/bowler hat, ceci n'est pas une pipe cliches his work so often calls to mind. We’d normally say something like: run, don’t walk to the show. It’s that good. You only have six days to make it happen so you need to hustle.......

He told us that it wasn't a pipe and sure enough it wasn't a pipe, it was a revolution. Yes it looked like a pipe. It looked like a very nice pipe, actually. We would have preferred a slightly longer stem, although the giant bowl is fascinating, if not ambitious, but no it's clearly not a pipe. You can smoke a pipe. And no one has smoked a Magritte. Nor do we recommend you......

• The Knitting Factory hosts The New Year with Silkworm and Doris Henson at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $12. • MOCA presents a screening of the film This Not That – The Artist John Baldessari, with an introduction by filmmaker Jan Schmidt-Garre, and featuring interviews with Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, David Salle and Mike Kelley, at 7 PM. Admission is free, but reservations are required; call (213) 621-1776.......

At Arena 1 in the Santa Monica Airport, tonight is the artist's reception for the exhibit Santa Monica Originals, featuring the work of artists with either a historical or contemporary connection to Santa Monica. Among the artists featured are John Baldessari, Frank Gehry, Sam Francis, Lee Mullican, Lucita Hortado, Larry Albright, William Tunberg, Charles Gains, Astrid Preston and Lita Albuquerque. The reception runs from 5–8:00 PM. For more information, call (310) 397-7493. Doors at......