...with a few notable exceptions, the art world's MSM (mainstream media) seem to have spent this era of historically hot markets re-inventing themselves as little more than monthly brochures for their advertisers.

I'm not sure how inclusive 'this era' is supposed to be. For example, the relationship of advertising to reviews in arts publications was a major topic of discussion in the 'Theories of Art' class I attended in the late-80's [was that the same hot market, or the pevious one?] It was understood that all media have economic forces acting on them, so reader beware. That doesn't mean thay shouldn't taken to task by their paying readers, but I guess it never occurred to me that ArtForum could be considered 'journalism.'

Anyway, I'm going to cut to the chase. My favorite ads in ArtForum this month are:

• pg15, Christopher Williams at David Zwirner. This photo looks like a character from an early-60's Goddard film holographically reconstituted by vastly superior beings from another galaxy.
• pg28, Warren Isensee at Danese. Isensee's paintings look like Gene Davis playing video games c.1983.
• p31, Portraits of Artists at Luhring Augustine. Gene Davis + real data.
• p42, Steven Shearer at Galleria Franco Noero. This one is pure candy; I wish I'd thought of that.
• pg103, Thomas Ruff at Galerie Nelson. Sooner or later someone was bound to exploit the formal properties of JPG compression artificts. [Actually, Colby did it soomer.]
• pg127, Julie Mehretu at Crown Point Press. 19th century printmaking is the new black.

What do these ads have in common? All the artwork is photogenic.