To start off the new year, Artforum casts an eye on critical works of our moment—from the seminal set pieces of Trisha Brown to the "official" art of North Korea—while also looking ahead:

· Artists and writers forecast the upcoming season, previewing 45 major exhibitions opening worldwide—including John Baldessari on William Leavitt at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Rosalind Krauss on "Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

· Douglas Crimp delves into the relationship between dance movement and film montage in the work of renowned choreographer Trisha Brown on the heels of her dance company's forty-year anniversary.

· Six distinguished figures—Mike Kelley, Gary Indiana, Carolee Schneemann, John Miller, Neil Jenney, and Chris Kraus—take stock of the life and oeuvre of Paul Thek on the occasion of the artist's first US museum retrospective.

· J. Hoberman discerns a "Pop Before Pop" in the films of Orson Welles, Douglas Sirk, and Alfred Hitchcock.

· Joan Kee plunges into the roiling waters of contemporary North Korean painting as exemplified in Ryu Hwan-gi's Soldiers Longing for Return, ca. 2002.

· Hal Foster and Robert Pincus-Witten offer two separate reads of figuration and fascism in the Guggenheim Museum's "Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936."

· Robert Irwin reveals four little-known site-specific proposals that never made it past the drawing board.

· Saâdane Afif recounts the history behind his Centre Pompidou exhibition "Anthologie de l'humour noir," with an introduction by François Piron.

· Graham Bader pieces together the art of Kurt Schwitters, a Dadaist for our time.

Also this month: Two "Openings"—Brendan Fay on the photographer Miriam Böhm and Nick Mauss on the videos of Nina Könnemann. Plus, John Elderfield chronicles Greil Marcus's collected writings on Bob Dylan; Alan Licht transposes the musical output of Martin Kippenberger; Jordan Kantor sizes up the Kerry James Marshall show at the Vancouver Art Gallery while Daniel Birnbaum visits the 8th Gwangju Biennale; Steven Watson contends with the Smithsonian's controversy-laden exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture"; and Amy Yao posts her Top Ten.


Visit Artforum online at www.artforum.com

To subscribe, visit www.artforum.com/subscribe

Visit artguide—Artforum's free directory of the international art world, listing art fairs, auctions, and current gallery and museum shows in more than 400 cities—at www.artforum.com/guide