ART/SNEAK PEEK : `SIX L.A. PAINTERS' RAISES PROFILE OF SOME UNKNOWNS.

The joke around Tasende Gallery is that its current show, ``Six L.A. Painters,'' is unofficially subtitled, ``None of the usual suspects.''

Point taken. While many fine, established painters make their homes in Southern California, so do many fine, unestablished (or non-Establishment) painters.

Of the six painters exhibited at Tasende, only two - Charles Arnoldi and Roland Reiss - are generally well-known in this region. Arnoldi has made his reputation with paintings on layered plywood, chiseled in part with a chain saw; painted assemblages of sticks and twigs; and large canvases densely layered with images.

Reiss, chairman of the art department of the Claremont Graduate School, has been working with the relatively new medium of interference pigment, so called because it breaks up light waves into a two-color effect.

Others in the show are Eric Mao; Richard Shapiro; Tonia Aminoff, who executes watercolors on duralene; and Danny Shain, whose work was included in the Venice Biennale.

Located at 8808 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, the gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Call [phone].

Public eye

Most great works sold at auction disappear into private collections for years or decades. So when one resurfaces for public appreciation, it makes headlines. That happened recently when the Cleveland Museum of Art bought Andy Warhol's famous 1962 ``Marilyn x 100.'' The 7-foot-high, 18-inch-wide painting consists of 100 close-up images of Marilyn Monroe. It hadn't been exhibited publicly since November 1992, when it was sold to Shigeki Kameyama, a Japanese businessman who gained a reputation for paying top dollar for contemporary and modern art at auction. It's the Cleveland Museum's first pop piece.

Ring leaders

Los Angeles lately is tying itself in knots, and we don't mean the MTA Red Line. No, these are Celtic knots, ringed crosses, intertwined bands, and other mystical, geometric motifs that helped inspire the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

First we had the large Charles Rennie Mackintosh retrospective this summer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Now comes the Huntington's ``Archibald Knox (1864-1933),'' a survey of silver and pewter works by the superb British metalworker whose creations were heavily marketed by Liberty & Co. of London.

Organized by the Silver Studio Collection at Middlesex University in England, the exhibition presents pieces executed in silver and pewter combined with enameling and semiprecious stones, including boxes, clocks, tableware and jewelry, as well as samples of Knox's drawings and watercolors.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens are located at 1151 Oxford Road in San Marino. For hours and information, call [phone].

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Photo: (1--3) A silver, enamel and turquoise vase, left, a silver and lapis chalice, and a pewter and abalone clock are all on display for ``Archibald Knox (1864-1933),'' at the Huntington Library in San Marino.