This weekend I got my hands on an advance copy of The Believer’s annual visual issue (out in November), and it is hot.

OK, yes, I do have a piece in it—a Q&A with artist Liz Cohen, represented in Seattle at Lawrimore Project—but that’s just a tiny morsel of the meal.

Writer Dave Hickey not only talks trash (as usual), he also lays out 10 of his favorite works of art. (One is John Wesley’s hysterical 1972 painting Leda and the Man, with the swan being chased by a fellow wearing just socks and garters. In its absence online, I give you another Wesley: The Mouse Tells Jokes, from 2002.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Slog tipper Donald, here’s Leda and the Man!

Artist Ai Weiwei—he of the fallen doors at Documenta—describes the (malfunctioning) system of contemporary art in China, and talks some shit of his own. (This is a fairly Bukowskian issue, come to think of it.)

There are also three portfolios: Unsentimental contemporary portraits of muses, Las Vegas carpet patterns, and temporary tattoos (by Raymond Pettibon, Ai Weiwei, and Gregory Blackstock, among others).

And there’s an essay linking Michael Landy’s 2001 performance Break Down, in which he destroyed all of his belongings (including valuable artworks and a car), Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York (the self-destructing machine that self-destructed unsuccessfully),

Corbu’s vision of a cleaned-up New York with skinny soundproof skyscrapers amid big parks, the 1958 fire at MoMA—amazing photos here, and Sept. 11. Now that’s a Believer piece.