LACMA ACQUIRES 25 MODERN WORKS

While the County Museum of Art has been noisily constructing its new facade, it has quietly acquired 25 important modern and contemporary art works to be shown at the Nov. 23 opening of the museum’s new Robert O. Anderson building.

The new paintings--Braque’s Cubist masterpiece, “Still Life With Violin” among them--assemblages, and some new sculptures will be exhibited in the new building; other sculptures will be placed around the exterior of the four-story structure.

Among the art works--all acquired within the last year:

“Cold Shoulder” (1963), by Roy Lichtenstein, typifies the artist’s Pop Art comic strip style. The painting depicts a ponytailed blonde, her back turned coldly from onlookers’ eyes.

“Sleeping Woman With Boy” (1926) is Swiss artist Hermann Scherer’s life-size wood sculpture. Scherer was influenced by German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, mentor of a group of young artists in the 1920s known as Rot-Blau (Red-Blue). The two intertwined figures are painted with eerie, unreal colors.

“Das Buch,” (1985) by Anselm Kiefer, is a monumental sculpture giving flight to an open book by adding a set of outstretched, Icarus-like wings to its pages.

“Order (Burning Planet Series)” (1985) by Robert Morris, is an apocalyptic vision combining a painting (a violent, frenzied holocaust), with sculpture (a plaster frieze depicting skulls and other bony body parts).

“Video Flag z” (1986), by Korean artist Nam June Paik, uses 84 television monitors, videocassette players, video tapes and a plexiglass modular cabinet to, as Paik says, create “pure art--pure abstract art.” Frames from TV news and sports programs, films and abstract patterns, all in red, white and blue hues, create the “stars and bars” of an electronically composed U.S. flag.

“Untitled Improvisation III,” (1914) by Wassily Kandinsky, typifies with brilliant colors and sweeping forms the Russian artist’s shift from representation to abstraction.

Other new acquisitions are by Mark Rothko, El Lissitzky, Neil Jenney, Alexander Archipenko and others.

The museum has also recently acquired several other contemporary works and an undisclosed promised gift. Museum officers declined to discuss details about them, except to say that some will be included in an exhibition curated by Howard Fox entitled “Avant Garde in the ‘80s,” scheduled for April 23, 1987.

Two levels of the 115,200-square-foot Robert O. Anderson building will be devoted to 20th-Century art works.

Ready for Auction: A Chinese courtyard provides the backdrop for today’s “Festival of the Autumn Moon Open House and Silent Auction” at the Pacific Asia Museum from 4:30-8 p.m.

Ten tables, each laden with 20 items valued between $40 and $250 apiece, will display the collectibles up for bidding. Among the objects are a pair of white jade bracelets, 19th-Century amber beads, framed Japanese woodblock prints, and a wooden Chinese rice bucket.

Items to be offered at the museum’s Oct. 11 annual “Festival of the Autumn Moon Art Auction and Dinner” will also be on display. Today’s guests may leave sealed bids on these wares, while sampling Asian hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine to flute and guitar music performed by Doug and Jill Rubio. Admission to the silent auction is $20. The museum is at 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena. Information: (818) 449-2742).

The city of Newport Beach celebrates the arts Thursday night with a progressive evening of visual and performing art, food and wine. The third annual “Newport Salute to the Arts” will feature 10 art exhibits, 18 performing art organizations, comestibles from 25 area restaurants and wine from several California wineries.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum will take part in the 5-9 p.m. affair, opening its multimedia exhibit, the “Second Biennial: The Bay Area.” Recent works by 12 Bay Area artists will be on view.

The Newport Trolley will provide free transportation to a constellation of five stop-off sites in the progressive art walk, all within the Newport Center. An art exhibit or performance, food and wine will be offered at each site, also reachable by foot.

The event is free, though food and wine will be sold, providing funds for an art-in-public-places program sponsored by the Newport Beach City Arts Commission, event producer and sponsor.

Los Angeles-based sculptor Claire Falkenstein will use traffic as a metaphor to construct a new work for the facade of the new Department of Motor Vehicles building at 3500 S. Hope St. This month, the California Arts Council awarded Falkenstein a $30,000 Art in Public Buildings commission to produce the three-dimensional relief entitled “Interchange.” Falkenstein, 78, will use copper tubing to produce the public art work, covering an area 17 feet high, 64 feet wide and 12 feet deep.

Other Los Angeles artists awarded arts council public art commissions are painter Frank Romero, neon artist Lili Lakich and experimental artist Beth Thielen. The trio will receive $10,000 each to form a design team to develop artistic themes for 26 stations of CalTrain, the commuter rail line that runs between San Jose and San Francisco. Sculptor Gary Dwyer of San Luis Obispo will also help the team design boarding areas, parking access and depots.

In addition, the council awarded three commissions totaling $45,000 to California artists Roslyn Mazzilla, J. B. Blunk and James Phillips. They will produce individual art works to be placed in three CalTrain stations. Also, artists John Roloff, Heather McGill and Michael Kenna were awarded a total of $20,000 for projects to beautify the Elkhorn Slough Sanctuary in Northern California.

The Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum has acquired 13 paintings and four lithographs by American artist Henry Mosler (1841-1920). Mosler’s granddaughter, Mrs. Jack H. (Audrey) Skirball, made the acquisitions possible through the Skirball Foundation and Investment Co.

The new acquisitions are European landscapes and genre scenes dating primarily from the late 19th Century.