Sid Avery

FACES "I respect artists who make work that's intellectually challenging," says New York-based sculptor Erik Levine, a 1989 winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's prestigious Awards in the Visual Arts, who has his first Los Angeles solo show at Santa Monica's Meyers/Bloom Gallery through Nov. 27. "I like to emphasize the mathematical, analytical, conceptual, philosophical approach to art making; the intellectual substructure, I think, is critical.

"Face of L.A.," a collaborative public art project directed by Frank Romero, will highlight the 16th International Festival of Masks, a popular, free, annual event taking place Saturday and next Sunday at Hancock Park. Romero has constructed a skyline of four eight-foot-tall towers, upon which visitors can attach masks representing the various faces of L.A. residents. The project will be installed in Los Angeles City Hall after the festival.

German artist Martin Kippenberger is the art world's latest enfant terrible. A protean figure who dabbles in nearly every medium, Kippenberger draws, paints, makes sculpture, photographs, collages and books, and does installation and performance pieces. The unifying element in this freewheeling body of work is that most of what Kippenberger does is a conceptual goof.

Photographer Jane Gottlieb has loved cars for as long as she can remember. Not just the sleek, expensive beauties of the day or the refurbished classics of yesteryear, but crunched-up old ones covered with dust that have been left to languish among the weeds and small, funky European models not usually seen in this country. For almost 20 years, she has spent her Sundays wandering around the Southern California landscape with her camera in search of, among other things, cars with personalities.

An unabashed admirer of Robert Frank, Jack Kerouac once told the great Swiss photographer, "You got eyes. " This new batch of film books show off the Hollywood photographers' eye. Largely photo essays, they are celebrity chronicles, told through the camera. While none have the remarkable intimacy of "Jean Howard's Hollywood," they do offer absorbing images of artists, actors and craftsmen--at work and at play.

Two books, one published, the other poised, are stirring old adulations and fresh contention around Marilyn Monroe. Hollywood's photographic elders accuse the first of pirating several dozen of their pictures. And a Monroe estate official says an inscription and her signature in the book appear forged. The second is a prodigal boxed volume that may never reach publication.