Downtown

Every retrospective of a major artist spawns small, satellite shows hoping (at best) to beef up our information or (at worst) to benefit from the media fallout. A small, visual footnote to the County Museum of Art’s Billy Al Bengston retrospective does a little of both. You could argue that after 20 years of living with the glitzy, never news-shy Bengston, L.A. viewers don’t need updates. On the other hand, this show treats us to quintessential late ‘60s Billy at his bad-boy-pretty-surface best.

Mostly prints, the show demonstrates that whatever your feelings about Bengston’s ability to handle paint, he’s a deft printmaker. From the late ‘60s, there are violet and lime green chevrons printed on dented aluminum. There are also scores of lithographed irises--coiled in pretty patterns, blanched to minimal white on white, reduced to dots and dashes. The real fun comes from large, handsome lacquer and resin on aluminum pieces that give Bengston’s car-culture slickness a touch of the emblematic. (Cirrus, 542 S. Alameda St., to Feb. 14.)