Your dear Culture Editor was on the radio the other day.  There was a question asked on what we thought were the best exhibitions of the year.  Fortunately, my selected show is still on.

Aspen magazine ran from 1965-1971.  It was, arguably, the first multimedia magazine, containing articles, artworks, all kinds of music on 7” flexidiscs, and films included on rolls of 8mm film.  Altogether, it came in a box that was redesigned by the guest editors of each issue to match its theme.  Contributors to the magazine included some of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century.  Bear with me; from a total of almost two hundred I will name John Lennon, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Jean Renoir, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Andy Warhol, Marshall McLuhan, Roy Lichtenstein, Allen Ginsberg, Willem de Koonig – I could go on.  Aspen magazine is one of the most recognisable objects of 1960s Conceptual avant-garde, and until March can be seen in the Archive Gallery at Whitechapel Gallery.

What makes this show so good?  It’s the depth.  It’s fantastically difficult to make a coherent exhibition when you’re working from publications – simply, by displaying them in boxes and vitrines you take away one of their great benefits: their tangibility, their objecthood.  This is essentially their sense of being that is being undermined.  But Whitechapel Gallery have added layers and layers of contextual material, interviews, multimedia audiovisual material, both archive and newly-created.  It’s a serious point of learning through art and fulfils the potential of the gallery magnificently.

Aspen Magazine 1965-1971 is at Whitechapel Gallery until 03 March 2013.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite in the Christmas spirit in the traditional sense, but one of the most charming, frightening and heart-rending indie films to come out this year gets its release this week in the UK.  Smashed is the second film from writer/director James Ponsoldt (who shares writing credits here with Susan Burke) and stars two of my favourite young actors at the moment, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul.

They are your stereotypical young couple in love.  Married and straight out of university, Kate and Charlie live in Los Angeles.  He’s a music journalist and she teaches primary school.  Like any twenty-something couple, they drink.  We know what it’s like.  A lot of the time, it’s a fun and sociable reason to hang around together.  Only in their case, their drinking spirals helplessly out of control and the two are stuck in this ménage-a-trois with the bottle as the unwelcome guest.  Before they know it, their lives are crashing down around them.

American self-help movies are generally littered with clichés, except Smashed isn’t really a self-help movie.  Smashed is a slice-of-life drama, and one with more than just a hint of social realism about it – something that is severely lacking in the contemporary American independent film.  Winstead (best known for her roles in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Death Proof) and Paul (Breaking Bad and Big Love) are just as believable and utterly adorable.  A surprising eye-opener, and well worth catching if you’re in town this weekend.

Smashed opens this weekend.

We know: Christmas is a week away.  Have you done your Christmas shopping?  No, I didn’t think so; neither have we.  Fortunately, it’s not biting cold outside so maybe it won’t be too deliriously frustrating to tramp through the West End on these final shopping days.  Hey, we might even have time to take in a show.

Jena Düsseldorf is the new show by German artist Sabine Moritz; it’s currently on display at Art@GoldenSquare, a beautifully expansive dipped ground floor space just off the southwestern end of the square itself, and is a lovely diversion as you make your way between Soho and Regent Street.

Moritz was born in the former East Germany, in a small town called Jena.  From 1981 she studied art in West Germany, in Düsseldorf.  This exhibition comprises a series of works (in pencil, crayon, charcoal drawing, watercolour, acrylic and oil paint) were made in the years following the reunification of the country and are composed of Moritz’s memories of growing up under Soviet occupation and Communist rule.

Deliberately naïf and rich in expressive detail, the exhibition is as much a diary of recollections – as much an exploration of the experiences that we believe made us who we are – as it is a hazy, first-person look back at a time when the world was a very different place.

When the exhibition opened, there was much to be made Moritz’s art world champions, and unfortunately the shadow of two of contemporary art’s heavyweights hangs heavy over this show.  You’ll see who when you visit the exhibition itself, I won’t mention them here, because to do so would detract from taking the works on their own terms and grasping the singular vision that’s being presented.  At times dazzling, at times subtle, the show is well worth a moment of your time before it closes at the end of this week.

Sabine Moritz: Jena Düsseldorf is at Art@GoldenSquare until 20 December.