Shunk-Kender, © Lichtenstein Foundation

Niki de Saint Phalle shooting with a .22 rifle in the Impasse Ronsin, Paris, 1961.

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Everything on this week's list is either radical or rebellious, or hopelessly nostalgic about being radical and rebellious.

5. Revolutionizing the Sunset Strip
The original Artists' Tower of Protest, a looming yellow steeple surrounded by artist-designed posters, went up in 1966 at La Cienega and Sunset in direct response to the Vietnam War. One night, painter Irving Petlin, who helped organize the tower, used a broken lightbulb to fend off a vandal. Another night, people tried to burn the tower. "If you were an artist at the time, you were a radical," says Mark di Suvero. He designed the first Tower of Protest and the reincarnation that's now on the corner of Sunset and Hilldale in West Hollywood. The new tower doesn't feel as provocative as the first must have, but it does interrupt the Sunset Strip's ad-heavy veneer. Through the end of March. (310) 559-0166, laxart.org.

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Courtesy of the artist

Ming Wong's film Making Chinatown

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Two exhibitions with Chinatown in the title top this week's list, and both are remakes. One further twists Roman Polanski's already twisted classic film about where incest meets corporate corruption. The other is a sequel to an exhibition that never actually happened.

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Courtesy Hammer Museum

Rhys Ernst's Secret Men's Club Moment #133, 2009

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Great video is slated to screen Valentine's Day at the Hammer, and the inspired My Barbarian collective is moving into Human Resources' Chinatown space for a monthlong residency, which can only bring good things.

5. Art or lawn furniture?
Diana Molzan's painting Untitled, shaped like a table and patterned like cheap upholstery, feels cozy even though it's on canvas, and Math Bass's Body No Body Body series of striped canvases draped over easels or sawhorses is like fossilized mammals dressed as lawn furniture. The other work in Overduin and Kite's group exhibition "Il Regalo," which means "the gift," is strangely familiar and comforting, too, even if it's impossible to articulate exactly what it's about. 6693 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd.; through March 23. (323) 464-3600, overduinandkite.com.

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© Eugenia P. Butler Estate

Eugenia Bulter Jr. showed Electric Cord Piece (1967) at her mother's gallery

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The best art this week is all in Hollywood, where major-leaguers look like superheroes and an eccentric 1960s gallerist makes a thrilling comeback.

5. Sunglass art
Artist Alex Israel, who makes surreal installations out of Hollywood props, also designs sunglasses for his L.A.-centric brand Freeways Eyewear (John Baldessari's quote "I will not look at any more boring art" is on a new pair). Israel's new Abbot Kinney mural isn't a sunglass ad but, intentionally, it has that crisp, seductive feeling of a beachside advertisement minus a brand name. Will you be able to spot it as art? And does it matter if you can't? 1212-C Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice; up indefinitely. (310) 426-8040, vsf.la.

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Courtesy 1301PE Gallery

A still from Modern Times, Forever, which might be the longest film ever made

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Pacific Standard Time's performance-art festival continues through this weekend, but there are a few great exhibitions to see as well. One in Chinatown is almost therapeutic, while another, on Wilshire, seems low-key at first but becomes more and more ominous.

5. SoCal's greatest, most boring composer
John Cage, the composer who believed silence could be music and boredom could be beautiful, graduated from Los Angeles High School and went to Pomona College, so it's no surprise PST would single him out as a symbol of SoCal's specialness. Friday at SCI-Arc, four performances by contemporary California artists and composers will explore Cage's influence. Re:Composition; SCI-Arc, 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., Jan. 27, 8 p.m. (213) 613-2200, k-pst.org.

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Courtesy Margo Leavin Gallery

William Leavitt's set design for "The Particles (of White Naugahyde)"

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From a pseudo-sitcom and beachside choreography to feminist nostalgia and midcentury design, this week's list feels particularly well-rounded. (Also check out our preview of Pacific Standard Time's Performance and Public Art Festival, which begins this week).

5. Italy in Westwood
Galleria del Deposito ran for six years, from 1963 to 1969, in an old coal depot in Italy. It showed fantastically geometric, sleekly graphic work and produced a staggering number of limited-edition serving trays (along with ceramics and prints). Eccentric L.A. artist and dealer Eugenia Butler distributed these wares in L.A.; since the nonprofit Los Angeles Nomadic Division is currently bent on proving Butler's brilliance, you can see a selection of work from Deposito at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood. The highlights are the brash, fluorescent capes and tunics graphic artist Eugenio Carmi made with fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. 1023 Hilgard Ave., Wstwd.; through Feb. 2. (310) 443-3250, nomadicdivision.org.

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Courtesy of Ace Museum.

The Gao Brothers' stainless steel sculpture, Miss Mao (Trying To Poise Herself At The Top of Lenin's Head) from 2009, now on La Brea

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Pacific Standard Time's "Performance and Public Art" and Liz Glynn's "Spirit Resurrected," two performance art festivals, happen this month, so for once the event and performance lineup will outshine the exhibitions.

5. How I Learned to Draw
A tombstone made of rye bread and eaten with cream cheese; a gunshot; surgery beneath a clothesline; Groucho Marx glasses; a murdered ballerina: All this was part of Barry Markowitz's 1980 performance at the short-lived Provisional Theater of Los Angeles. Saturday, he'll bring back at least the clothesline for a performance at Human Resources, called How I Learned to Draw, about what taught him to represent, then distort, the world around him. 410 Cottage Home St., Chinatown; Sat., Jan. 14, 8 p.m.; free. (213) 290-4752, humanresourcesla.com.

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Copyright Joe Deal

Joe Deal's 1980 photograph "Backyard, Diamond Bar, California."

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This week, the stories behind the art are at least as interesting as the art itself, like the one about a small insurance company that started a big art collection, and the photographer who documented Diamond Bar.

5. Anonymous Letters
Odeya Nini, an experimental composer whose music moves between melodramatic and comedic, invited anyone to send an anonymous letter to Machine Project, the alt art space on Alvarado. The letters were supposed to express some sort of desire, maybe describing an object you wanted or a language you want to learn, a New Year's resolution or a refrain stuck in your head. Nini will give the contents of these letters rhythms and music for her performance Voice of Your Desire. Machine Project, 1200-D N. Alvarado St.; Jan. 8, 1-3 p.m.; free. (213) 483-8761, machineproject.com.

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African American Performance Artists Archives

"Flying," a performance piece presented at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1982.

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This week's picks pretty much sum up the year: L.A. boosterism, '70s nostalgia, autobiographical installation art and women artists recognized a few decades late.

5. The Original Paparazzo
At MOCA, Weegee is more showman than craftsman. The photographer, who started his career as an aggressive New York photojournalist and has been called the original paparazzo, came to Hollywood to shoot the stars and the starstruck, and made cameos in a few films. The museum show documents all that, but what's best are Weegee's campy experiments: blurred Marilyn with pig nose, elongated Liz Taylor, Marlene Dietrich with a second set of sultry legs replacing her torso and head. 250 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; through Feb. 27. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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The "Experimental Impulse" exhibition at RedCat.

Photo by Scott Groller

​Except for an amazing little church near Rampart, all the art on this week's list is out of the 1970s. But enough from that decade is still so good that I guess it's OK to rehash a little longer.

5. Feeding Time
Orange County may be a trek, but the O.C. Museum of Art's "State of Mind" show will be up for only one more month, and it includes work rarely seen elsewhere, including Bruce Nauman's trippy "light space" (a narrow plywood room lit by yellow fluorescent lights) and images of Bonnie Sherk's 1971 Public Lunch, in which she ate in a cage next to the lions at the San Francisco Zoo. 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach; through Jan. 22. (949) 759-1122, ocma.net.

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