“This month: ‘Gogol in Seoul: The Films of Bong Joon-ho.’ Novelist and critic Gary Indiana looks at the practice of a Korean filmmaker who elides high-low distinctions, encoding deep social commentary in such popular genres as the detective picture, the romantic comedy, and now, with the imminent release of The Host, the monster flick.

And: “Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s.” Art historian Graham Bader visits this exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and finds that Weimar’s unflinching portrayals of villainous politicians, maimed veterans, sex-trade casualties, and rapacious tycoons present a riveting picture of a troubled time unnervingly resonant with our own–with implications for how artists, and the state, approach the body today.

Plus: Artforum continues its annual tradition of ‘First Takes,’ in which critics and curators profile the work of up-and-comers around the world for 2007. Artforum contributing editor Hans-Ulrich Obrist weighs in on Xu Zhen, Bob Nickas on Adam Helms, Debra Singer on Kalup Linzy, Anne Ellegood on Sara VanDerBeek, Mark Godfrey on Rosalind Nashashibi, Michael Ned Holte on Amanda Ross-Ho, and more.

Also: Cindy Sherman speaks with Johanna Burton about A Play of Selves, a 1976 work recently on view at Metro Pictures in New York for the first time in three decades. A split-personality narrative acted out in seventy-two black-and-white tableaux–Sherman, of course, plays all sixteen roles–the photographs prefigure the epochal “Untitled Film Stills” the artist would begin the following year.

And: Claire Bishop sees the world through Cerith Wyn Evans’s eyes at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; contributing editor Bruce Hainley meets the men of filmmaker William E. Jones; Tom Vanderbilt looks at the big pictures of Doug Aitken’s first large-scale public artwork in the US, appearing this month on the facade of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Julia Bryan-Wilson gleans the work of Sadie Benning, subject of a retrospective this month at the Wexner Center for the Arts; Michelle Kuo discusses Space Invader’s tile-tag takeover; contributing editor Daniel Birnbaum considers the slippery slope of critical takes on Carsten Höller’s slides at Tate Modern; Tom Holert reflects on the paintings of Silke Otto-Knapp; Harry Cooper finds hits and misses at the Whitney’s “Picasso and American Art”; artist Eileen Quinlan lists her Top Ten; and Lisa Phillips remembers Marcia Tucker, the founder of New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Also in Artforum’s January issue: Our seasonal guide to fifty international exhibitions opening this winter will keep you informed of the New Year’s essential wheres and whens.” -from the publisher