Larry Stanton was born in 1947 in upstate New York and got down to New York City in 1965, when he was 18. Your classic “beautiful boy,” Stanton set about finding himself as an artist: he studied for one semester at Cooper Union, then headed to Los Angeles for the Art Center College of Design. He met David Hockney in L.A.—the older artist became a friend and mentor—and his art was soon much admired. A portraitist, Stanton’s paintings in oil and acrylics have the quality of sketches, airy and direct. He mostly painted young men who were in the process of becoming—as he was—and his style caught faces yet to be filled in. But the timing was terrible. Stanton was one in a generation of young men mowed down by HIV and the complications of AIDS. He died at 37, in 1984. “Images” is the first retrospective dedicated to Stanton. It follows the success of the publication Larry Stanton. Think of Me Where It Thunders, and contains sketches, drawings on paper, oil paintings, slides, and videos. —Laura Jacobs