• Catalog board SW, page 2 (Ivan Davis, John Hagnagy), c. 1960. (Photo courtesy of Invisible Exports Gallery)

Whether or not you were an early subscriber to homoerotic nudie mags, you've been exposed to the influence of photographer Bob Mizer. A pioneer in the beefcake genre, Mizer began his career in the mid-40s, when imagery of the male nude was banned, and the female nude permissible only in an "art" context. So in 1945, Mizer started the Athletic Model Guild, producing films and photography of scantily-clad men in an "athletic" context.

I saw a Cheetos-bucket-plant-mirror sculpture at Regina Rex. That strange object made my day. It’s small, strange joys like this that make having a job in the arts worthwhile. But strangeness alone won’t keep me coming back to art: there has to be more than a Cheetos thrill. That’s why Corey Escoto’s Volume for Volume succeeds; the Cheetos sculpture was just one part of the artist’s mostly photography exhibition. It wasn’t the strongest work, but like any good marketing tool it got me hooked.

• Screen shot from Olaf Breuning's "Home," Part One

As many shows and artist projects reach their apex, many seem to have saved the best for last. This week, we'll witness Flux Factory's last Death Match, the Artist’s Institute’s final Haim Steinbach event, and the complete trilogy of Olaf Breuning’s “Home.”

• Shannon Gillen + Guests

Watching Shannon Gillen + Guests perform "A Colored Image of the Sun" means being struck over and over by the human ability to achieve the sublime. The constant push and pull between beauty and terror and ecstasy and violence was apparent in every minute of the piece, which transcended the limitations implicit in the human form and became something more than human, it became universal.

Are you gay? Do you like to draw hot men? Are you good at it?

If you answer “yes” to all these questions, then you’re qualified to participate in the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art’s life drawing studio.

• Original pizza by Hethre Contant, screenshot courtesy of paintyourpizza.com

Add this purple pizza to your list of reasons to attend Eyebeam’s Annual exhibition of emerging new media artists tonight. It was created on paintyourpizza.com, an extension of Eyebeam artist Jonas Lund’s thepaintshop.biz. You can paint and order your own at tonight’s opening, and a local pizza shop will replicate it for you in toppings. In doing so, you carry on Eyebeam’s long tradition of pizza-based computer art work, dating all the way back to Cory Arcangel’s “Pizza Party.”

• Paintings by Sharon Butler currently on view at Pocket Utopia. Photo courtesy the artist and Pocket Utopia.

Casual precisions and semantic objectivity envisioned in this series of art picks from our 1/16 issue.

Gertrude Stein, the esteemed poet, Modernist matron, and, according to little-known fact, pot brownie chef, gets the full Triple Canopy treatment this weekend. The online magazine is hosting a marathon reading of Gertrude Stein in its Greenpoint offices for a second year in a row. It must have been fun the first time around.

SPECIAL EFFECT @ The Museum of the Moving Image, New York - January 18th, 2013 at 7pm from cartune xprez on Vimeo.

Sick of Picasso and Keith Haring? This week, international and underground shows will present the greatest art stars we’ve never heard of.

This is Celia Hall, auditioning for the role of “Clipboard Woman.” She’ll cry real tears. She’ll bend over backwards. She’ll even make herself vomit, and then she’ll clean it all up. In real life, filmmaker/choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall’s actually kind of a rising star; you may know her for this Keller ad, in which she gets horny and dies over a pair of shoes, or Prom Night, which was presented at SXSW last year.

Storefront Bushwick has never looked better. This past weekend, the two-room gallery, tucked inside a space that, at one time, could’ve been a barber shop, opened a show of work by Adam Parker Smith. Whenever the gallery ends up showing more than a handful of works, it overwhelms the small gallery space. This time around, the gallery held back, helping Smith siphon his talents down to just three artworks. It paid off.

• Elsie Kagan, "ways to be good and happy," 2012

While we can’t confidently declare that all Sandy-damaged Chelsea galleries will be back on their feet this week, many of them will be reopening for the first time after the storm. Advance apologies for leaving most of those out below:

Brooklyn is getting wet, just thinking about the new season of Girls. It’s not coming out until January 13th, but we’ve got a solution to your blue balls. Back before Lena Dunham was one of the Girls, she was one of the Delusional Downtown Divas, and you can watch all the episodes in full-screen glory on their new website.

• Sherman Price, still image from The Imp-Probable Mr. Weegee, 1966. Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Spend properly the first weekend proper of 2013 with these course-credit-worthy museum exhibitions, noted also in our 1/2 print issue.

• Newspaper boy, image from http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com

It's been a miserable year for culture writers. First, the ongoing Village Voice firings. Then artnet tanked. Then The Daily died. Then Newsweek's print version folded, The Daily Beast lay-offs began, and the New York Times announced that it would be offering 30 more buyouts to newsroom staff.

• Installation "2012-2555", by emerging artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, who was profiled in Rhizome this year

New media artists live on the edge. Like the Fluxus performance artists or the Vienna Actionists before them, their work is pretty much unsellable. Did you know that in 1975, Fluxus founder George Maciunas broke four ribs and went blind in one eye after being beaten up for not paying his electric bills? Don’t let it happen again.

• On Kawara's Date Paintings at David Zwirner

Everyone makes resolutions, and art critics are no different. I could’ve written more, and about the things I really care about rather than the latest news morsel. No matter what we resolve to do in the New Year, as critics, we should keep to that reason why we’ve chosen our particular calling. In my case, it’s because I value art and those who make it happen. But there’s always room to improve how we talk about it, and what we choose to talk about.

With New Year’s on my mind, I’ve compiled my own resolutions about art writing. Regardless of whether I end up keeping them throughout the year, they’re just plain good reminders for anyone to heed while roaming the galleries and reading the reviews.

• 2001 Space Odyssey gif by Gustaf Mantel, courtesy http://iwdrm.tumblr.com

Thanks to the holiday, some of us will not be at our finest this week. Our massive hangovers will likely be compounded with the news that taxes are going way up and arts funding’s going way down. Happy New Year!

In light of all that, here are some art events that are easy on both your stomach and your wallet.