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For the film “The Third Man,” Orson Welles wrote a line stating that Italy had produced Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci after living under the Borgias’ reign of terror for 30 years, yet in Switzerland, “they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

I thought of that quip during my visit to “Disorderly Conduct: Recent Art in Tumultuous Times” at the Orange County Museum of Art (ocma.net). The show features contemporary artists who may not deal with political issues directly but seem to express a “psychic unsettledness,” as curator Karen Moss says.

Mike Kelley combines a life- size surface-to-air missile with video screens showing dancing gospel singers, Daniel Joseph Martinez offers a full-scale reproduction of the Unabomber’s hide-out decorated in Martha Stewart Signature paints, and Glen Kaino takes a small model of a suburban home and places it on a spinning propeller blade.

Disorderly conduct? Perhaps. Intimidating or scary? Hardly. In fact, the show’s most interesting aspect is that this generation seems to delight in slickness and candy-colored images as opposed to the more traditional form of rebellion, meaning dark and messy. “These artists are creating serious artworks that discuss challenging issues,” says Moss, “yet they’re beautiful and even humorous.”

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-- theguide@latimes.com