Some bits of this little Odyssey write up became part of the post I wrote about Musk’s A.I. Odyssey—part of why I like keeping this journal, it helps generate ideas.

Movie of the month is hard, probably a three-way tie between Withnail and I, Come and See, and Lady Snowblood. All of them stay with me, just in very, very different ways.

All the be…

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A bit late with this. Here’s what I got for you.

All the best,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “Elon Musk’s Threat of an A.I.-Made ‘Odyssey’”

I had already written up thoughts on The Odyssey after I saw it for my movie journal (which I’ll send tomorrow), so when the Musk A.I. Odyssey thing swirled up I had thoughts to plug in.

***

— “I Watched the Unhinged Anti-Smithsonian Congressional Hearing So You Don’t Have To”

I am glad that I forced myself to watch the full hearing on the Smithsonian Museum of American History’s alleged wokeness, just for the visceral reminder of how cooked we are.

***

— “Are We Facing a Cultural ‘Turnover Pulse’? And Other Art World Matters”
— “Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Big Budget Crisis—and Other Art World Matters”
— “Will Philly Protect Its Beloved Keith Haring—and Other Art World Matters”
— “Raphael Is the Met’s Post-Pandemic Prince! And Other Art World Matters”

I was feeling down about how little I wrote this month, and then I remembered… oh, right, I helped kick-start this morning digest for work. The idea is one writer gets to pick 5 art-related items every morning, of whatever kind grabs them. Gives a place for random passions and stories that we otherwise wouldn’t have time for. I am loving the exercise (though I am not sure I will include them in this newsletter in the future). My Bulletin day is Tuesday, incidentally, if you are looking for me.

***

PODCASTS

— “Welcome to the Society of the Psyop”

Trevor Paglen has been everywhere recently off of his excellent Verso book, How to See Like a Machine, but I think I get a few unique things out of him. I did after all actually plug in to the hypno-art device he has created.

***

— “The Case for M.C. Escher”

I like talking about M.C. Escher.

***

— “Re-Air: The Magic of ‘The Artist’s Way’”

It’s summer so we went back to this popular episode. As I say in the re-air intro: I started doing Morning Pages for the interview last year, I am still doing them, and I get a lot out of it.

***

MENTIONS

— I was the judge of the 2026 Vermont Prize

You can read about it in the Burlington Free Press, here. There were some other excellent finalists, but in the end I picked Travis Van Alstyne’s hand-drawn animation, Love of the Land. You can watch it here:

And here is the blurb I wrote:

“Travis Van Alstyne’s Love of the Land is a beautiful little work. I say ‘little,’ but I don’t mean minor. It’s a story about smallness and quiet, about commitment to place and a rhythm of life that deliberately is off on its own. And I think the work captures the grandeur and consequence as well as the smallness and specificity of this Vermont story in a wonderful way. Romaine Tenney’s life story is powerful. But I’d focus more on the form of Van Alstyne’s film to explain why I loved it. At first, its style feels like finding a treasured old picture book coming to life, which makes the toughness of the story hit harder, when it hits. And hand-drawn animation also feels unexpectedly right for this subject matter: a labor of love and a commitment to time-intensive craft, crackling with quiet life.”

***

— From The New Yorker’s Ana Mendieta profile.

Thanks to Jonathan Hulland for sending me this pic. Random quote, but happy to contribute to the discourse.

***

I got a flurry of DMs about this post (from @tomi.faison) of the crowd at Joshua Citarella’s interview with David Harvey, after this screenshot started circulating, so I’ll just say… I just have resting critic face. I thought the talk was good! I learned a lot about marmalade.

Some of my favorite things I have watched all year, new and old, in June. Maybe I just watched a lot of movies while I was languishing in the heat, and so just happened to see some good ones because I just saw more movies, period. I don’t know. But the ones that I find myself most thinking about still—Burt and Cure—are also the biggest outliers…

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Sorry this is a few days late. I was under the gun for some podcast interviews. Plus, bringing this Museum Artist project to a close is always a grind, and I was trying (and failing) to get it all done by the end of the month.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

All the best,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— These 18 Artists Are Having the Biggest Moment at U.S. Museums Right Now

Writing-wise, it’s not what I’m proud of. But the process of looking at so many museum shows and sorting through so many names does give me a lot to think about. The names are illuminating. Even when a lot of the same ones appear from the last time, that still tells me something.

***

— The Almost-Canonized: A Closer Look at the Artists Museums Are Showing Now

I did not even know the name Toots Zynsky before.

***

— What’s Going on With the Met’s Odd New Giacometti Show?

A strange Met show, but a fun one to write about. And an opportunity to read Jean Genet’s 1957 “The Studio of Alberto Giacometti,” which I’ve heard called one of the best-ever texts about art.

***

— What Was the Art World Like the Last Time the Knicks Were in the Championship?

Obviously, this was dashed off just just before Game 5, and is a trifle. But it was not a bad way to put some art history into perspective. (The photo here is from painter Tom Sanford’s article about the New York Post trying to make a political issue out of his Knicks art.)

***

— Boston’s Dashing Museum Prankster Does Not Exist

They definitely should actually do these kinds of fake tours.

***

PODCASTS

— Roberta Smith Still Has Notes

A long-time goal of mine to interview the now-retired New York Times critic. The release of the movie about her and husband Jerry Saltz, House of Criticism, was a nice excuse. Smith is vulnerable here, both about the agonies of the job and the agonies of giving up the job.

***

— How to Make a Sculpture With Sound

Tarek Atoui’s sculptures that double as music instruments are fantastic. Here, we talk about the “sonic turn” in art, an idea I think I’ll write more about soon.

A satisfying constellation of films this month, many about artists dealing with the conditions of art-making in different, interesting ways. Also, a couple of good novels in the mix, because I had a week off, and that gives a little more time…

Thanks for being here,

BEN

***

The Moment (2026), directed by Aidan Zamiri

Worth watching to see a smart p…

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An abbreviated month for me, because after a whirlwind of activity that included the opening of the Venice Biennale, I took a short vacation to Prague. I have a little art discovery from there at the bottom of the email.

Thank you for reading!

All the best,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— First Impressions of a Venice Biennale Torn Apart by the Present

This was my first swing at making sense of the 2026 Venice Biennale, filed from the preview. People have told me they just want the one-line top-line takeaway, so here it is: B-minus show, a passing grade, just fine; more going on than it seems, if you take the time, but it still feels extremely one-note and dutiful. Two years ago, I did a three-part follow-up essay on the different themes and threads in “Foreigners Everywhere.” I don’t feel as if “In Minor Keys” merits the same kind of treatment, partly because the major ideas remain so similar. But I am working on a bigger piece.

***
— Contribution to the New York Review of Architecture Guide to New York

I don’t think this is online yet, but I am in NYRA’s Issue 50 guide to 50 places in New York. I pick Terraza7, a favorite place to see music, the jewel-box venue in Queens (though NYRA struck my description of it as a “jewel-box venue” as an architectural writing cliché).

Also, I’ll take the moment to congratulate my wife, NYRA editor Chloe Wyma, who was at the National Magazine Awards when they won the award for Best Criticism for a package of reviews and essays, beating some giants, like New York and the New Yorker. Here’s them taking their Alexander Calder-designed award.

***

PODCASTS

— Does LACMA’s Bold New Museum Work?

Carolina Miranda talks with me about the new Peter Zumthor-designed LACMA: pros, cons, and unknowns. To clarify something I mutter here: A takeaway is that all museums have to be “immersive experiences” now, whether in the lowbrow Museum of Ice Cream sense or in the highbrow Zumthor sense.

***

— Arthur Jafa’s Radical Theory of Readymade Art

I find the discourse around Jafa often cloying and overworshipful. The guy himself, though, is a great interview, full of energy and ideas.

***

MENTIONS

— A great review from Boots Riley

I have said before, in print, “I admire Boots Riley more than almost any other figure who gets to play at his level of pop culture.” So this is probably the best possible shout-out (and great company to be in, with his other picks for Haymarket). Riley also blurbed Art in the After-culture, and he has said (several times, actually) how the art subplot in Sorry to Bother You was partly inspired by the essay “What Good Is Political Art In Times Like These?” from 9.5 Theses on Art and Class.

***

— “Criticism in the Contracted Field” panel at The Gallery

Brian Droitcour (who’s doing good work at Outland) organized this panel with me and Cultured head critic Johanna Fateman on new approaches to criticism, given the downward spiral. I haven’t listened to this, but the event at The Gallery was a truly packed house, with an exceptionally engaged crowd for a topic that is usually so dreary.

***

…And a Great Art Discovery

I don’t know where else I could possibly put this, so I’ll put it here.

Went to Prague’s Museum of Medieval Art in the St. Agnes Convent while I was on vacation. A predictably great experience. And in a hot back gallery, I discovered this artist, a new favorite: Monogrammist IP (so called because he is identified only by his “IP” monogram; Anglicized, the name would probably be the “IP Monogrammist.”) His 16th century Zlíchov Altarpiece shows Christ saving the work’s patron from a very gnarly Death, all in great wood relief. You can’t quite see here how the trick perspective adds to the effect, but I hope you can see: It’s great. See it if you are ever in Prague.

Look at Death’s beard! Look at his snake necklace! Look at the frog in Death’s stomach!

Thanks for reading! Below, some movies of the month. (If I had to pick just one, it would be Blue Moon—more of a complement to Linklater than it is a slight to Rohmer.)

All the best,

BEN

***

MOVIES

Operation Hail Mary (2026), directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Interstellar meets ET meets a giant block of soy cheese. Looks great, sounds gre…

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I am in Lake City, South Carolina as one of the judges of the annual ArtFields competition. After three days of viewing art throughout this small town and then a seven-hour deliberation, we announced the winners of the big prize yesterday. A very deserved congratulations to Jason Lord and Kelly Riek.

It’s been an exhausting, illuminating, and rewarding experience. It’s also why I am late by a couple of days sending this out.

Below, the round-up of what I’ve been working on for the last month.

Thank you for reading,

BEN

***

ARTICLES

— “Are We Too Reverent of Duchamp?”

My big review of the month, of the Met’s huge Duchamp show. Lots of fun Duchamp details to bring out, but also a chance to ask the question that has been on my mind: How you make the case for conceptual art now that the internet has eaten most of its special promises?

***

— “Here’s What LACMA’s Lavish New Building Looks Like”

I got a chance to go to L.A. to see the big art event of the month, the debut of the lavish new LACMA with its new spin on art history. Here, just a few quick thoughts on what it feels like, plus a lot of pictures, as I nurse my thoughts for something longer.

***

— “The Artists Who Ruled the Biennial Circuit Over the Last Four Years”

Surfacing the 22 artists who have shown the most at global art biennials in the last 4 years. A time-consuming but rewarding endeavor. I did not even know the name Nolan Oswald Dennis before that artist came up at the top.

***

— “The Defining Themes of Today’s Biennial Art”

Thoughts on what the figures above have in common, and what that means about the shape of art now.

***
— “Visions of Depravity” (review of Ceija Stojka at the Drawing Center)

My New York Review of Books debut. They asked me to kick off a new page they are launching, “At the Galleries,” consisting of short gallery reviews of the kind that used to be important but that publications have mainly abandoned. That kind of writing is the most basic cell of art discourse. Without it, there’s no way for new art critics to find their voice or less-known artists to get attention. So it’s nice to see that the NYRB is throwing their support to it. You should support them! And reviewing the work of the late Romani artist Ceija Stojka at the Drawing Center opened my eyes to a whole art history. A very intense, worthy show.

***

PODCASTS

— “The Philosopher Who Predicted Our Post-Literate Art Moment”

Critic Martha Schwendener talks about her new book Society of the Screen on the Czech-Brazilian media philosopher Vilém Flusser, a fascinating thinker who has a lot to say about what happens to thinking when images dominate words, a problem that seems more relevant by the minute.

***

— “What Biennials Reveal About the Art World”

Artnet writer Jo Lawson-Tancred joins me to talk about her research into the upcoming Venice Biennale and my “Biennial Artists” project.

I’ve gotten a few new paid subs recently here, off of my Raphael review. Thank you!! I truly do appreciate the encouragement.

I guarantee that if you subscribe to, say, Tim Schneider’s The Gray Market or Elvia Wilk’s fast writing, you get much more for your sub buck, though…

But I do enjoy writing these little film reviews.

All the best,

BEN

***

Ni…

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A very busy month, between all these big shows. Meanwhile, the “Reality Decay” essay is probably one of the more serious things I have written in a bit, and the one piece I’d say I wanted people to read.

Thanks for reading, and listening,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “At the Met, Raphael’s Beauty Has a Dark Side”

A lovely show. That said, the link I’m drawing between Raphael, Renaissance, and Reformation pairs unexpectedly well with the theory of reality decay, below…

***

—“‘Reality Decay’ Is at the Root of All the Bad News”

The theory of cultural feedback loops provides a master key for the increasingly berserk situation across a whole number of domains. One way to think about the painful breakdown we are living through is as the civilizational equivalent to the uncontrolled, spiking shriek when a mic and speaker feed into one another—only solved by someone doing something to break the loop, or by blowing out the speakers or your eardrums or both.

***

— “‘New Humans’ and the Strange End of Contemporary Art as We Know It”

The New Museum first show in its new building, “New Humans,” is full of good stuff, old and new. I liked it. Interestingly, even though it’s all about artists and technology, you actually can see it as being about uncoupling the idea of the “contemporary” in art from the idea of the “digital.”

***

— “The 2026 Whitney Biennial Just Wants You to Feel Something”

I still feel like mainline biennial art is sort of stuck in a holding pattern. But you can at least see the curators trying to find a place to land.

***

— “The Tensions Seething Beneath the Surface of the 2026 Whitney Biennial”

Further thoughts on things said and unsaid in this show.

***

— “Here’s All the Art in the 2026 Whitney Biennial”

Just a bunch of photos!

***

PODCASTS

— “The Young Painter Curators Are Rushing to Work With”

I had a passage in my Whitney Biennial follow-up that I took out, about how contemporary art feels very “faceless.” Everything feels like it wants to hide from you and that you’re not quite sure which direction to approach it from or where its center is. The interesting thing is that Taína H. Cruz, the youngest artist in the show, literally gives a face of the whole thing—one of her paintings, of a girl’s face, is blown-up to greet you outside the museum. And talking to her does seem like a shift in mood is in the air.

***

— “Are We Entering a Post-Individual Era of Art?”

If you told me that the biggest art institutions are showing work that is trying to convince you that human individuality, art, and democracy are all frauds that should be abandoned, it would seem kind of shocking. But that is Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s argument.

***

— “Whitney Biennial Trends, a New Baroque Art Star, and Banksy Unmasked”

End-of-month round-up, featuring a lot of the above and more, in chat form.

Sorry this is a little late. It’s not as if there is any breaking news here—just some pretty good things to watch and some thoughts I got out of watching them.

Thank you for being here,

BEN

La Haine (1995), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz

Great, gripping movie that people compare to Do the Right Thing in its depiction of urban dysfunction and racial …

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Almost certainly the big thing this month is the TrueAnon appearance, but a decent mix of stuff otherwise: a review, a trends piece, and a couple of artist interviews for the podcast that offer a lot of food for thought.

Thanks for being here,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “How Wifredo Lam Made Surrealism More Surreal Than the Surrealists”

I loved this MoMA show, love this artist, am happy to get the term “syncretic surrealism” out there. The trip out of Marseilles, where Lam, Breton, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Victor Serge find themselves on the same refugee boat, is one the most interesting nodal moments of art history for me. I’ve been meaning to write something about the politics of Surrealism, and I guess this half-qualifies (though there is much more to say).

***

— “What Will Define Art in 2026? Key Themes From the Big U.S. Shows”

This began as just me trying to research what was upcoming just to be personally prepared. But it’s interesting to look at the artist lists for the upcoming Whitney Biennial, Greater New York, and the Carnegie International together and scan for overlaps and themes. We’ll see what these events actually feel like and what the specific visions feel like, starting this week at the Whitney.

***

PODCASTS

— “How the Debates Over Art, Race, and Tech Have Changed”

As an artist and particularly as a theorist, Aria Dean has been an important voice in the last 10 years. I found it especially illuminating to hear how her thoughts on Afro-Pessimism have evolved.

***

— “An Artist’s Guide to Psychedelic Mushrooms”

Painter Ryan McGinness on several decades of reality spelunking using psilocybin mushrooms, and what tripping does, and does not, teach you about creativity.

***

— “The Art Boom in the Middle East, Are Old Masters Cool Now?, and a Fresco Fracas in Italy”

This came out last week. I have to admit that it seems like ancient history already given the bleak events of this weekend.

***

— “Parsing Jeffrey” (for TrueAnon)

This is paywalled (you can hear a little clip here). If you spring for the sub to the show, which you should, you get: 2 hours of me and Brace Belden talking about Jeffrey Epstein’s ghoulish art, my big theory of how his art taste says something about the changing face of power and what’s really driving the shady super-rich, and Brace’s ranking of Skankin’ Pickle in the punk hierarchy. We have a heart-to-heart towards the end about the new kind of person being built by that digital world that stays with me. Probably a topic to write about later.

First one of these of 2026! And some ones that I really got something out of thinking through too.

All the best,

BEN

***

MOVIES

Marty Supreme (2025), directed by Josh Safdie

Great ping-pong at the beginning, great ping-pong at the end, and, in the middle? A long midsection that is vivid and fairly gripping, but meandering. In retrospect, I realize th…

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A modest month for me, in terms of posting stuff. I am working on a book, which means trying to clear my mind, which means posting less. Still, I am going to have to be back on the ball next month, no matter what.

In the name of getting resynced with the world, I’m going to try something: If you want to talk about any of the themes from my “Cultural Trends” piece (below), or just talk about art, and you are in New York, I will be breaking my Dry January at the great Francis Kite Club on Thursday, February 5, from 5-7 pm. Swing by, say hi.

All the best,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “Cultural Trends I’m Watching at the Beginning of 2026”

A collection of ideas, observations, and predictions that have been in my Notes app without the time to write about them. I thought that the beginning of the year was the time to get a bunch of ideas out on the table. If I were going to add two things to the piece now, I would say: 1) putting this all down like this makes me realize that the jittery feeling of snapping back and forth between very alarming things and very trivial things that the list embodies probably should have itself been an item in the list; it is one of the characteristic feelings of now, and I need to write about it in the future; and 2) in the “Post-Antiwoke” graf, I talk about how the art-politics axis seems frozen, but that an explosion will probably come; this was just a week before the events in Minneapolis touched off nationwide solidarity closures of art spaces, last Friday. Things are moving—I’m just not sure how much or in which direction, exactly.

***

PODCASTS

— “Can Brainrot Be Art? Beeple Thinks So”

Was nervous about this one, since I wrote early and critically about some of Beeple’s stuff. My editor says she once walked into a party where he was loudly yelling, “I hate Artnet!” back in 2022. But he’s apologized for the most puerile stuff (as he does again here), and it’s interesting to me how his thoughts have developed since that moment. Whatever you think about him as either representing the fall of art or the future of art or somewhere in between, museums are betting on him and he is a very symbolic figure, of something. I got a lot out of this.

***

— “The Round-Up: A Venice Biennale Meltdown, the Prado Is Too Popular, and a $2.7M Speed Painting”

Hard to know what tone to strike at this moment on a chatty art podcast. But here we are.

As I said in the year-end links post, I was home in Seattle for most of December. Which meant seeing less art—but lots of cozy movies. Also, some of the best films I saw all year.

Appreciate you,

BEN

***

MOVIES

Fanny and Alexander (1982), directed by Ingmar Bergman

Stately, sumptuous epic of childhood that is basically a kid’s movie for adults, as yo…

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I started doing monthly personal newsletters here at the beginning of 2025. It’s been a very positive experiment (I know this was the year every writer got a Substack, so calling it an “experiment” is funny, but that’s how it still felt to me in January). I like that people who want to follow my writing have an easy way to find it, and there is definitely a new crew that has connected through the site. Also, just taking the time to gather what I’ve done each month gives me perspective.

Even though what I am publishing right now is mainly just a digest of links to things I’ve worked on, there are a funny few people who immediately signed up as paid subscribers. It’s not really enough of a thank-you, given how encouraging that is, but I have been publishing monthly Movie Diaries for those subscribers. Mainly, I just enjoy writing little things about movies, which is good critical exercise and generates ideas that fit in with other things.

That’s a long route into saying: Here are the December links. And because it’s the end of the year, and I have been keeping track all year through those Movie Diary posts, at the bottom I’m putting the long list of every film I wrote something about this year in the newsletter, ordered by how much I liked them, just for fun.

Thank you for following my work.

All the best,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “9 Terms That Helped Navigate a Confusing Year in Art”

An excuse to revisit the things I put the most of myself into this year, like my “cursed vibe” essay and my “slurry” essay, but it’s also useful to look back at the year through the terms that emerged in it.

***

— “These 15 Artists Are Having the Biggest Moment at U.S. Museums Right Now”

You know the drill: My round-up for the final month of 2025, looking at which artists are showing at the most museums. On the year-end Art Angle podcast (below), I said I thought that Kara Walker might be #1, but that was before I did the final sorting (though she’s still on there).

***

— “Thoughts on a Year of Tracking the Top ‘Museum Artists’”

As I mention in the December Museum Artist list (above), I started writing an intro, then decided that it was worth using the opportunity to generalize about the year, and that became a free-standing essay.

***

— “Jeffrey Epstein’s Janky Art Pops Up at Auction, and Here’s What We Learn”

Minor update to an earlier theory about what the “hanging bride” sculpture from Epstein’s UES mansion meant.

***

I also had entires in Artnet’s “Best” and “Worst” Art of the Year lists (mine are Mark Fingerhut’s Halcyon.exe: The Ride and Steven Klein’s Cybertruck/Kardashian photos).

***

PODCASTS

— “The Magic of ‘The Artist’s Way’”

Julia Cameron, on the occasion of her new The Daily Artist’s Way, on the unbelievably popular book that made her name from the ‘90s. I started doing “Morning Pages”-style journaling in preparing for the interview, and I’m sticking with it. I get a lot out of it.

***

— “The Round-Up: 2025’s Highs, Lows, and WTFs”

Kate Brown, Andrew Russeth, and I meander over 2025 in the art market, art trends, art politics, and art institutions.

***

— “Why This Famed Art Writer Turned to True Crime”

I found Chris Kraus’s new novel, The Four Spent the Day Together, to be a very challenging piece of work to talk about in a simple way. Since Kraus’s novels are generally autobiographical anyway, it ends up being a way to talk to one of the most well-known art writers about class, creativity, contemporary art, literature, social media, her take on cancel culture, and more besides.

***

MENTIONS

— “Machine Dreams” video

This was filmed for Columbia School of the Arts some time ago, and the series has just gone up. Thoughts on creativity and art school, against the background of A.I.

***

— I won second place in the L.A. Press Club “art critic” category.

Sort of like the “You’ve Won Second Prize in a Beauty Contest” card from Monopoly, minus the $10. (I think the submission was this essay, BTW.) That’s fine—the LAT’s just-retired Christopher Knight took the top, and that makes sense to me.

***

— Nice link from The Verge

***

VIDEOS

Since I went home to Seattle to recover from the year at mid-month, not a lot of these little video reviews. But I liked these two shows.

— Ming Fay, “Midnight Porridge” at kurimanzutto

— Tishan Hsu, “emergence” at Lisson gallery

MOVIES OF 2025

Part of the reason I like keeping a Movie Diary for the newsletter is that it encourages me to watch good things in precious spare time rather than grazing on junk—though looking this over, I did graze on plenty of junk. Still, this list doesn’t get truly bad-bad, I’d say, until pretty far down. Here’s every movie I wrote an entry about for my newsletter in 2025, ordered from the one I liked the most to the one I liked the least:

1. Harakiri

2. Southland Tales

3. Cabaret

4. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

5. Ikiru

6. Los Angeles Plays Itself

7. Yi Yi

8. Sorcerer

9. Onibaba

10. Kiss Me Deadly

11. Fanny and Alexander

12. Double Indemnity

13. The Cranes Are Flying

14. The Cruise

15. The Straight Story

16. The Wicker Man (1973)

17. Mother!

18. Underground

19. Barton Fink

20. Perfect Blue

21. Picnic at Hanging Rock

22. The Taking of Pelham 123 (1977)

23. The Great Beauty

24. The Holy Mountain

25. Memories of Murder

26. The President’s Analyst

27. The Lady Eve

28. Chimes at Midnight

29. Stage Door

30. Blue Velvet

31. Grizzly Man

32. The Big Heat

33. Joe Rogan and The Black Keys Diorama

34. Bedazzled (1967)

35. Koyaanisqatsi

36. Deep Cover

37. The Wild Bunch

38. The Last Seduction

39. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

40. Infernal Affairs

41. No Way Out

42. Sherlock, Jr.

43. Once Upon a Time in China

44. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

45. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

46. One False Move

47. Good Time

48. Memories of Underdevelopment

49. Singin’ in the Rain

50. Sinners

51. Predator (1987)

52. Anora

53. Speed

54. The Big Lebowski

55. The Game

56. Crimson Tide

57. Wild at Heart

58. Detour

59. Wild Tales

60. A Foreign Affair

61. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

62. Groundhog Day

63. D.O.A. (1950)

64. Cat People (1942)

65. One Battle After Another

66. The Blues Brothers

67. Street Fighter (1994)

68. Kneecap

69. The Secret Glory

70. My Octopus Teacher

71. Captain Phillips

72. The Asphalt Jungle

73. The Firm

74. Shoot the Piano Player

75. Glengary GlenRoss

76. Duck Soup

77. Black Bag

78. Some Like It Hot

79. Romeo + Juliet (1996)

80. Diva

81. K-Pop Demon Hunters

82. Sisu: Road to Revenge

83. Tombstone

84. In a Lonely Place

85. Superman (2025)

86. Crossing Delancey

87. Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat

88. Mission Impossible IV: Ghost Protocol

89. Banditas

90. Cloud

91. Eddington

92. The Master

93. The Rock

94. War of the Worlds (2025)

95. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

96. Casino Royale (2006)

97. DOA: Dead or Alive

98. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

99. David Lynch: The Art Life

100. Moneyball

101. Megadoc

102. The Naked Gun (2025)

103. Nobody

104. Whiplash

105. Weapons

106. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

107. Lust, Caution

108. Ninotchka

109. Born Yesterday (1950)

110. Mickey 17

111. La Quimera

112. A Complete Unknown

113. Lone Star

114. Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

115. Casino Royale (1968)

116. The Phoenician Scheme

117. Saturday Night

118. MacGruber

119. Money Plane

120. Out of Sight

121. Jade

122. Thunderbolts*

123. The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

124. Wicked

125. Fantastic Four: First Steps

126. Mortdacai

127. Baby Invasion

128. Wake Up Dead Man

129. Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life

130. The Brutalist

131. Minecraft

132. Forrest Gump

133. Emilia Pérez

134. Captain America: Brave New World

135. Materialists

136. Mountainhead

137. Olympus Has Fallen

138. Stargate

139. The Electric State
     
     Happy new year. Onwards into 2026.

I am on a roll of watching things I actually really like. As with last month, not too many new films; though I did see Los Angeles Plays Itself in the cinemas, at John Wilson’s Low Theater in Ridgewood, because Thom Anderson did a special screening with The New York Review of Architecture—that was rad.

In the background and between dodging deadl…

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I got less done in November than I thought or hoped. I think a lot of that was because I was doing work that’s going to pay off in December—though December’s here, and those deadlines are approaching. End of the year is always a slalom.

Thanks for being here,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— "Highs and Lows of Guatemala’s Scaled-Up Biennale de Arte Paiz”

I decided to go to the opening of the Biennale de Arte Paiz in Guatemala thinking that Central America was very important as part of the bigger political conversation right now, and that it was likely to feel relevant. There are ways that intuition was rewarded, and ways that it was vexed by what’s actually going on with this show… A challenging review, but I arrived at something through it, and I found a few artists I liked.

***

— “What Is the Mysterious New Group Behind Trump’s Venice Biennale Pick?”

Post-government shutdown, the Trump administration finally announced a pick for the Venice Biennale: Alma Allen, an abstract sculptor who lives in Mexico. More interesting to me was the group behind it, the American Arts Conservancy. Poking around really gave me a sense of a whole “alternative” scene, if that word fits for this mix of Palm Beach socialites, NFT hustlers, and MAGA media entrepreneurs (the guy who gave the speech about how political consulting is like Duchampian conceptual art, because a candidate is like a toilet… that’s worth having accepted the assignment).

BTW, the great Greg Allen replied to me on Bluesky when I posted the story, and I think there’s probably something to his theory:

***

— “What Those Jeffrey Epstein Emails About Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ Really Mean”

Spent some time in the Epstein/Trump email dump, trying to figure out the “art angle.” Yes, he had opinions about the sale of Salvador Mundi, and how it linked to Trump, though he, seemingly, was just reading the news like a lot of us… But following that string, I feel like I came to a new understanding of him, the whole Russian story, his relationship to Trump, and his hold on the media.

***

PODCASTS

— “The Dramatic Story of Nigerian Modernism”

Proud of this interview with scholar and curator Chika Okeke-Agulu on the history of “Nigerian Modernism”—it’s keyed to the big show in London at the Tate. I really admired his book Post-colonial Modernism, and I got a lot out of revisiting it.

***

MENTIONS

— I’m in the Pretty Dirty documentary (very briefly)

This documentary about the painter Marilyn Minter played at DOC.NYC. You can read about it in the Times. I am in it for a second as a character—they interviewed me in Minter’s studio. I believe in the film it goes like this: she asks me, “Why won’t I be celebrated until after I am dead?” and I say, “Because then you can’t talk back, Marilyn.” All I could see was that that the top button of my shirt was open, so this huge patch of my chest hair was in the center of the screen. I laughed and laughed at myself afterwards. Why didn’t they tell me??

***

— A puzzling reference in “What Would an Exhibition of Trump’s America Look Like?”

I don’t quite get what British art critic J.J. Charlesworth is on about here! “Sullen disillusion”? Yeah, things are bad, man! The way Charlesworth zigs and zags around the central question and comes to an unsatisfying non-conclusion suggests to me that the particular form of “left anti-woke-ism” that he has staked out is not as sharp an instrument as he thinks it is. See what you think.

***

VIDEOS

My second month of doing this experiment in personal video reviews. Still liking it, though I’ve slowed down a bit, as it really eats my brain. Not so much the doing of it, but the managing of the attention I pay to the reaction after it goes up. That’s a brain-eater.

— Jeff Koons, “Porcelain Series” at Gagosian

— Isaiah Davis “Confessions of Fire,” at King’s Leap galleryat King’s Leap

— Sosa Joseph, “Rain Over the River” at David Zwirner

— Jonier Marín, “Amazonia Report” at Henrique Faria Fine Art

— John Zurier, “Pink Dust” at Peter Blum

Not a lot of new movies this month, as none really interested me. But something for every mood and occasion.

Thank you, as usual, for your support and attention.

All the best,

BEN

***

Cabaret (1987)

A really beautiful, bittersweet, thoughtful, and twisted movie which, by confining its musical numbers to the stage, honors the seriousness that the sub…

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A crowded plate of stuff from me that more or less represents my normal buffet of interests, though with some unexpected flavors (back-to-back Art Angle interviews with a manga curator and a magician-artist). Big development this month are these short little Instagram gallery reviews that I am experimenting with—I write a bit about them at the bottom of the email.

Thank you for reading,

BEN

***

ESSAYS

— “The Disturbing Lessons of the 1937 ‘Degenerate Art’ Show”

The most involved thing I wrote this month. It’s art history, but I don’t really think I need to explain why I wrote it.

***

— “Sora 2 and Bob Ross Are a Match Made in A.I. Hell”

I got a code for the Sora 2 A.I. TikTok clone, which still isn’t open wide. If the words “Sora 2” don’t mean anything to you yet, I go into it. But if they do, I also try to move things forward a little bit when it comes to speculating about what its impact on creativity might be.

***

— “After Fierce Outcry From Arts Groups, Australia Changes Course on A.I.”

A quick post, simply because this seemed like an interesting development, and I didn’t see a lot of reporting on it. How consequential it is remains to be seen, but worth watching how protest has changed the conversation…

***

PODCASTS

— “Manga Mania Gets Its Big Museum Moment”

What a joy to talk to curator Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere about the De Young Museum’s “Art of Manga” show. Plus, I genuinely do think that this culture’s movement into the museum space is something to keep an eye on.

***

— “The Magician Who Became an Artist”

I’ve had a theory about “magic as art” for a few years now, which has to do with perception and mediated life, and how your experience of something as “magic” is refreshingly different than a “special effect”… Jeanette Anderson and I talk about that theory and a lot of other things.

***

— “The Round-Up: Louvre Heist Stuns the World, Europe’s Art Fair Season, and The Queasy Art of Sora Videos”

We had to do the Louvre jewelry heist, even though it is an ongoing and unfolding news story. That is always dicey, but I hope we talk about enough of the interesting facets of the case to make it relevant even as the story develops. Plus, we talk through my A.I. Bob Ross story.

***

MENTIONS

— I’m in the Vanity Fair “Art Galaxy”

Derek Blasberg put me in Vanity Fair’s star map of what matters in art in 2025. Truth be told, the list has a logic I don’t understand so I didn’t share it anywhere yet (and I do not respect Tina Rivers Ryan—who took David Velasco’s job at Artforum after he was fired for the pro-Palestine letter—to the point where her name being on the list makes me not proud of it; I only found Emily Colluci’s essay on this matter recently, but read that).

***

— I’m a finalist for the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism award for “Art/Design/Literature Critic”

Cool!

***

— Site Santa Fe panel is now online

In summer, I moderated this curatorial super-panel for the anniversary of Site Santa Fe. I was talking with Cecilia Alemani, Francesco Bonami, and Rosa Martinez, three curators who have done both Venice and Santa Fe, and was told after it was a very lively panel. That was my main goal going in, to keep it lively, so call it a win.

***

VIDEO

For October, as a personal side project, I have started to post these short little gimmick video reviews on my Instagram. It is truly an experiment at this point, trying to figure something out.

The idea actually in part came out of my essay on “slurry,” which was bleak. I am not built for social media, aesthetically or temperamentally, so I would say they are slurry. One of the many reasons I decided to try to make something work, however, was just to have an excuse to do small gallery reviews, which are very hard to justify now, given the business logic. The format I came up with makes obscurity into a game, and doing it for myself means it doesn’t have to be justified (i.e. once commercial logic gets in there, you are going to only review known quantities and very splashy shows, to get likes).

I have enjoyed actually getting to talk about unexpected shows and getting a new influx of references, and I’ve also experimented with a couple little video promos for things I have written while I am at it, so am hoping there’s a synergy. And it is unbelievable how into short video people are, even the ones who come into my DMs to tell me I am debasing myself. People want to talk to me about these toss-offs more than anything I’ve written recently—just the opposite of normal small gallery reviews.

I’ll probably write an essay eventually about what I learned doing them. In the meantime, I am sincere that they are an experiment I am working out. Let me know what ya think!

Links below:

— Max Hooper Schneider at 125 Newbury

— Urs Fischer at Salon 94

— Olivia van Kuiken at Matthew Brown

— Sam McKinness at Jeffrey Deitch

— A little teaser for my “Surreal Sixties” essay

— Jonathan Bruce Williams at Kai Matsumiya

— Ambera Wellman at Hauser & Wirth

— A little teaser for my Sora/Bob Ross essay

— Roman Ondak at Peter Freeman

— Hardy Hill at 15 Orient

— Caroline Monnet at Nunu Fine Art

— Emi Kusano at Offline Gallery

That’s what I got!