Pettyfer ‘Now’
from Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch
Matthew Bomer and Alex Pettyfer join Justin Timberlake in ‘Now’
Image Credit: PRN/PR Photos; Sylvain Gaboury/PR Photos
Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and Olivia Wilde are already starring in Andrew Niccol’s upcoming sci-fi film NOW(which was titled I’m.Mortal until the marketing department stopped laughing and got serious for a second). Now, Deadline reports that the cast’s Hot-o-Meter has just moved from “atomic bomb” to “universe-devouring supernova,” with news that I Am Number Four breakout Alex Pettyfer and White Collar star Matthew Bomer will also be acting in the dystopian drama. (Fox confirmed Pettyfer’s and Bomer’s casting to EW.) Combined with a nifty premise — in the future, people can live forever, but time itself becomes a currency to prevent overpopulation — Now looks like it might be the Andrew Niccol comeback that I (and maybe five other people on earth) have been waiting over a decade for.
The Greatest White Guitarist Ever: Randy Rhoads RIP
“Energizing The Magic Machine Anew”
Spielberg and DreamWorks Energize the Magic Machine Anew
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — In the perfect little town of Paradise, Ohio, a pretty-faced new kid has a crush on the sweet blonde who is showing him around. By the way, the kid is also a space alien, on the run from some other aliens who are anything but pretty.
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John Bramley/Dreamworks |
After two years in the throes of a financial restructuring, Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks Studios are back with some typically Spielbergian stuff. And they are starting the next round with the sort of fanciful, scary, sometimes heartwarming movies they know best — and their new distribution ally, Walt Disney Studios, needs most.
The inaugural film from the revamped DreamWorks, “I Am Number Four,” with those hormonal teenagers and nasty aliens — and a heavy “Twilight” element — is set for release on Disney’s Touchstone banner on Feb. 18. Mr. Spielberg is not expected to take a credit on the film, remaining in his executive role. But neither is he taking chances with the first in a string of movies that will inevitably have investors, business allies and the audience watching for his trademark screen magic.
“There’s a lot of him in there,” said Marti Noxon, who is among the writers of “I Am Number Four,” and is perhaps best known for her work on the television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” More than once, said Ms. Noxon, she found herself laboring with Mr. Spielberg in a conference room in his adobe-style complex on the Universal Studios lot here in an effort to get the teenagers and aliens just right.
DreamWorks — now owned by Mr. Spielberg and Stacey Snider, with financial backing from Reliance Big Entertainment of India and distribution via Disney — carefully picked the release date. It is the kind of winter slot that has been good to popcorn fare like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” which generated over $183 million at the global box office last year, and “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” which took in $226.4 million in February.
The director of “I Am Number Four,” D. J. Caruso, gave DreamWorks a pair of PG-13 hits, “Disturbia” and “Eagle Eye,” during its unhappy tenure as a partner of Paramount Pictures. The producer is Michael Bay, who mixed teenagers and space creatures for DreamWorks and Paramount in the blockbuster “Transformers” series. In an e-mail, Mr. Bay said he brought the project to Mr. Spielberg, whom he described as a “mentor and friend.”
“I can’t understand why most people believe in medicine and don’t believe in art, without questioning either.” – Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst ‘Medicine Cabinets’ Exhibition at L&M Arts NYC
I can’t understand why most people believe in medicine and don’t believe in art, without questioning either.
Damien Hirst, 1997
L&M Arts present an exhibition of early medicine cabinets by Damien Hirst. Assembled together for the first time are the seminal Sex Pistols cabinets from 1989. Each cabinet takes its name from one of the twelve title tracks of the legendary 1977 debut punk album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”
A fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by Arthur Danto, James Frey and Steve Jones, including a catalogue raisonné of the complete medicine cabinets, will accompany the exhibition.
Wrong-Way Edna
The Automatypewriter
A new way to interact with fiction
October 29th, 2010
Introducing the Automatypewriter, a new way to experience interactive fiction! It’s still a little rough around the edges (in particular, you can see that the spacebar sticks a little, and the whole thing needs to be tidied up), but you get the idea: the Automatypewriter is a typewriter that can type on its own, as well as detect what you type on it. By reading what it types to you and responding, it can be used interactively to play a game or participate in a story (in this case, Zork).
Though the medium may be the message, a games platform is only as good as its content. To that end I’m collaborating with novelist, graphic novelist, filmmaker, community organizer, and award-winning interactive fiction developer Jim Munroe, who is creating custom software specifically tailored to the Automatypewriter.
Why?
Interactive fiction is a great genre that is too often overlooked. By providing a tactile and surprising way to experience these games, I hope to engage a wider audience. More generally, moving the platform to a typewriter highlights the role the user assumes as an “author” in helping to create the story, and not just as a “player.”
Also, the usual hacker reason: because we think it’s cool!
“Hey! Him against me – side by side. Side by side!”
Man Shot Dead After Refusing His Turn in Russian Roulette
By TERESA MASTERSON
A group of men were drinking and playing Russian roulette at a party in Delaware last weekend. As if out of a scene from The Deer Hunter, when one of the men refused his turn, another took the gun, pointed it at the man’s head and pulled the trigger.
A bullet was in the chamber for that round of the “game.” The man was shot dead.
Master Sgt. Steven Barnes says the men had been drinking with others Saturday at a house on the 1100 block of West Third Street.
Hell’s Knuckle Duster
Hells Angels sue luxury fashion house
ByJonathan Birchall in New York
Published: October 27 2010 01:37 | Last updated: October 27 2010 01:37
The world of edgy high fashion has collided with the legal grit of the Hells Angels motorcycle group in a US lawsuit that accuses the Alexander McQueen fashion house of misusing the Angels’ trademarked winged death’s head symbol.
A complaint filed in federal court in California on Monday by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation alleges that the Alexander McQueen brand, owned by France’s PPR luxury group, breached trademark protections.
The Return Of Mayor Koch in Mural
Graffiti of New York’s Past, Revived and Remade
Robert Wright for The New York Times
With “Joan of Arc,” at a warehouse along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, the graffiti collective Slavery is paying homage to a 1980 work that read “Hand of Doom.” More Photos »
Anyone who has been lost in the last few weeks around the southern reaches of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn could be excused for experiencing a powerful Koch administration flashback. On the wall of a brick warehouse there, visible from the parking lot of a furniture store, a huge mural unfurls itself, a loving, seemingly spray-by-spray re-creation of one of the more infamous pieces of graffiti ever to ride the subway: a 1980 work by the artist known as Seen that covered the length of a No. 6 train car with the ominous phrase “Hand of Doom.”
The original work — among those canonized in Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper’s 1984 landmark photographic history, “Subway Art” — was a token of its troubled urban times, a reference to the Black Sabbath song of the same title with the words flanked by a hooded executioner and a time bomb. The 21st-century version, on closer inspection, turns out to be a bit gentler and a lot more oblique. It reads “Joan of Arc,” and the hatchet man has been replaced by an armored representation of the martyred French saint.
A few miles away, on a streetfront wall in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, a similarly odd example of historical revival has sprung up: a kinetic-looking 1980 piece by the graffiti writer Blade has been recreated, with the five letters of his name changed to read Plato. On a coffee shop wall in Bushwick, a name piece from the same year by the artist known as Dondi has been faithfully resurrected but changed to read Gandhi. And a copy of an early-’80s subway tag by the artist Sin appeared just last week on a row of lockers inside Louis D. Brandeis High School on the Upper West Side, with the addition of a few letters and some philosophical heft; the name is now Spinoza.
They’re Coming.
Humans to Asteroids: Watch Out!
Erik T. Johnson
By RUSSELL SCHWEICKART
A FEW weeks ago, an asteroid almost 30 feet across and zipping along at 38,000 miles per hour flew 28,000 miles above Singapore. Why, you might reasonably ask, should non-astronomy buffs care about a near miss from such a tiny rock? Well, I can give you one very good reason: asteroids don’t always miss. If even a relatively little object was to strike a city, millions of people could be wiped out.
Thanks to telescopes that can see ever smaller objects at ever greater distances, we can now predict dangerous asteroid impacts decades ahead of time. We can even use current space technology and fairly simple spacecraft to alter an asteroid’s orbit enough to avoid a collision. We simply need to get this detection-and-deflection program up and running.
Stephen Elliot’s “Adderall Diaries” for iPad
Blurring the Line Between Apps and Books
By NOAM COHEN
STEPHEN ELLIOTT, a 38-year-old from San Francisco, just introduced his first piece of software for sale: an app for the iPad and iPhone called the Adderall Diaries.
He’s not exactly a programmer — better to call him a writer. And the app that he conceived looks a lot like an electronic book. That is, most people who buy the app will do so to read the text of “The Adderall Diaries,” his “memoir of moods, masochism and murder” based on his childhood in Chicago group homes, which was published in hardcover last year by Graywolf Press.
But Mr. Elliott says he has good reasons for producing his own iPad app, separate and apart from the e-book version of “Adderall Diaries” that is for sale, say, for the Kindle or the iPad reader from Apple. But those reasons are not the artistic, meta-fictional ones you might suspect — you know, so that when characters enter a bar, you suddenly hear music and a glass dropped by the waiter, or more fancifully, you can make them turn around and go somewhere else.
The Ecosystem Of Independent Publishing
Small Press Maestro: Jeffrey Lependorf and the Ecosystem of Independent Publishing
By Kate Travers
In 1967 a motley crew of magazine editors including George Plimpton (The Paris Review), Robie Macauley (The Kenyon Review) and Russell Banks (Lillabulero) created the CCLM: Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. The original mission statement was to support individual magazines and publishing cooperative by organizing regional conferences and offering grant support. Today, that same organization is known by a different name: CLMP, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and its mission goes well beyond running conferences and finding sources of funding.
Jeffrey Lependorf, CLMP’s current Executive Director, has been with the organization for almost a decade. In 2001, when CLMP hired Lependorf, the organization was beginning to face the new realities of publishing. It was a time when the Internet had created new challenges and opportunities, while for independent publishers was at a perilous standstill. Many independent publishers it did not have non-profit status and therefore were not receiving any public funding. They were working in a vacuum, unaware of a larger community of support. Lependorf came in and reinvigorated the organization at one of the most critical moments in its history.
Despite CLMP’s immense progress, the organization can always use more help. Next Tuesday, October 26th, CLMP will be holding its annual “WHAT THE SPELL?!” benefit, a celebrity spelling bee to raise awareness and money for CLMP. Last year’s event (covered here by Publishing Perspectives)proved to be quite the spelling battle of the year; this year looks to be no different, with contestants including Francine Prose, Sloane Crosley, James Frey and current champion Ben Greenman.
[ click to read full article at PublishingPerspectives.com ]
Flat Iron Steak Sandwich with Chipotle Mayo
Glee Gets Sexy and Everyone Blames Terry Richardson
The Kids From ‘Glee’ Steam Up The Cover Of GQ
Posted 10/19/10 2:25 pm ET by Chris Ryan in Celebrity, Photos
(Credit: Terry Richardson/GQ)
Personally, I remember high school rather fondly. You played some sports, occasionally deigned to do some homework and generally spent a lot of time thinking about friends and video games. But I gotta say, I think I would remember high school even more fondly if it was anything like the way it is depicted in these steamy, Terry Richardson-shot photos of the cast of “Glee” for the new issue of GQ magazine.
Inside, we see rather risqué shots of Cory Monteith (who plays Finn), Lea Michele (Rachel)–in just her underwear and high heels–and Dianna Agron (Quinn) cavorting, gallivanting and generally getting up close and personal with one another, in a high school setting.
Father & Son Launch iPhone Into Space & Film It – Cool Dad!!
Vintage Ad Browser
Mandlebrot Gone
Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85
By JASCHA HOFFMAN
Published: October 16, 2010
Dr. Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.
“Applied mathematics had been concentrating for a century on phenomena which were smooth, but many things were not like that: the more you blew them up with a microscope the more complexity you found,” said David Mumford, a professor of mathematics at Brown University. “He was one of the primary people who realized these were legitimate objects of study.”
In a seminal book, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature,” published in 1982, Dr. Mandelbrot defended mathematical objects that he said others had dismissed as “monstrous” and “pathological.” Using fractal geometry, he argued, the complex outlines of clouds and coastlines, once considered unmeasurable, could now “be approached in rigorous and vigorous quantitative fashion.”
Charlie Finch on “Il Divino Bambino”
WHERE’S THE BABY?
by Charlie Finch
My friend, the controversial novelist James Frey, insisted that I come to his art show at McWhinnie Gallery on East 64th Street, so, of course, I was first in the door. Second in the door was Richard Prince, whom I must truthfully confess, I had never actually met before.
He gave me a sour look, upon learning who I am supposed to be. Back to Jim Frey: he was commissioned by Sotheby’s to contribute an essay to the catalogue for “Divine Comedy,” a contemporary take on Dante’s epic poem, and, as Jim explained to me, “Charlie, I think of myself as an artist, so I have put these texts on panels at McWhinnie and a collector has purchased this unique piece for $95,000 in advance of the show.”
Jim wouldn’t tell me the name of the collector, but challenged me to read the whole text, which I proceeded to do. It begins as a clever pastiche of Dante’s tour, taking Virgil, the great Roman epic poet, on a journey through hell and, then, heaven, which Frey summarizes as a contrast between WalMart (Hell) and Candyland (Heaven).
The explication is felicitous but the kicker lies in the last panel, for here Frey chronicles the death of his infant son in New York Hospital’s neonatal unit in 2008. The end of Frey’s text redounds with his walks through Central Park, hearing the voice of his child. Jim told me, “I think of him every moment,” and I responded, “Jim, you have 16 balls to expose your tragic thoughts on a gallery wall.”
It may seem superfluous, but I, Charlie Finch, spent 47 days in the New York Hospital neonatal until my mother was given the word that there was no hope.
I’m still here, but Jim Frey’s boy is not. I embrace you, friend, for turning him into “art,” for if something is missing, it must be art, love, Charlie.
James Frey, “Il Divino Bambino,” Oct. 13-Nov. 9, 2010, at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 50½ East 64th Street, New York, N.Y. 10065
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
Charlie Finch on “Il Divino Bambino”
WHERE’S THE BABY?
by Charlie Finch
My friend, the controversial novelist James Frey, insisted that I come to his art show at McWhinnie Gallery on East 64th Street, so, of course, I was first in the door. Second in the door was Richard Prince, whom I must truthfully confess, I had never actually met before.
He gave me a sour look, upon learning who I am supposed to be. Back to Jim Frey: he was commissioned by Sotheby’s to contribute an essay to the catalogue for “Divine Comedy,” a contemporary take on Dante’s epic poem, and, as Jim explained to me, “Charlie, I think of myself as an artist, so I have put these texts on panels at McWhinnie and a collector has purchased this unique piece for $95,000 in advance of the show.”
Jim wouldn’t tell me the name of the collector, but challenged me to read the whole text, which I proceeded to do. It begins as a clever pastiche of Dante’s tour, taking Virgil, the great Roman epic poet, on a journey through hell and, then, heaven, which Frey summarizes as a contrast between WalMart (Hell) and Candyland (Heaven).
The explication is felicitous but the kicker lies in the last panel, for here Frey chronicles the death of his infant son in New York Hospital’s neonatal unit in 2008. The end of Frey’s text redounds with his walks through Central Park, hearing the voice of his child. Jim told me, “I think of him every moment,” and I responded, “Jim, you have 16 balls to expose your tragic thoughts on a gallery wall.”
It may seem superfluous, but I, Charlie Finch, spent 47 days in the New York Hospital neonatal until my mother was given the word that there was no hope.
I’m still here, but Jim Frey’s boy is not. I embrace you, friend, for turning him into “art,” for if something is missing, it must be art, love, Charlie.
James Frey, “Il Divino Bambino,” Oct. 13-Nov. 9, 2010, at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 50½ East 64th Street, New York, N.Y. 10065
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
Moscow Morning Motorcycle Commute
James Frey vs Oprah: The Art of Literary Revenge
Poison pens: The art of literary revenge
Jilly Cooper has named a goat in her latest novel after a critic who wrote a biting review. She got away lightly…
By Andy McSmith
James Frey vs Oprah
There is no better way to boost sales in the US book market than being featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, but for James Frey, author of a memoir called A Million Little Pieces, about his recovery from drug addiction, the experience turned nasty after it was revealed that a good part of his book was made up. He was called back on to the show when a sometimes tearful Winfrey demanded to know why “he felt the need to lie”.
Three years later, in 2009, a paperback edition of Frey’s novel Bright Shiny Morning, appeared, with a new section entitled “Chat Show Host” that was not in the original hardback. It described how the protagonist was hauled on to a chat show to be called a liar, and how he later recorded a telephone conversation with the chat show host in which she said that she had written a book that had never been published. When asked if he really had a recording of a phone conversation with Winfrey, Frey replied: “The book is fiction. Interpret it however you want.”
I AM NUMBER FOUR Meets HARRY POTTER On The CARTOON NETWORK
Mysterious ‘Tower Prep’ Lands On Cartoon Network
Written by Violet on October 16, 2010 – 6:01 am
Tower Prep – sounds formal, stuffy and maybe even a little boring – but this prepschool is anything but. The new show on Cartoon Network (not animated, by the way) about gifted teens with supernatural secret abilities is described as a cross between Harry Potter and I Am Number Four.
The show centers around several real teens played by Drew Van Acker,Elise Gatien, Ryan Pinkston and Dyana Liu, who attend a mysterious preparatory high school. Each of them has a secret power and Drew’s character is just discovering what his is – that’s the part that is kind of like ‘I Am Number Four.’ The school itself is a bit like Hogwarts in the sense that it’s only for gifted students. But that’s where the similarities end. The school is kind of creepy and its headmaster is no Prof Dumbledore. Yeah, we said it. We don’t like him.
The four teens spend their time investigating the school’s hidden agenda while trying to escape.
“James Frey takes Dante’s Inferno into his own hands…”
Notable New York, This Week 10/11 – 10/17
ART: James Frey takes Dante’s Inferno into his own hands, driving it in a different direction. Il Divino Bambino is Frey’s interpretation of the legendary work. Text from Bambino has been translated onto canvas by Frey and presented in an exhibit of the same name. The part literary and part visual exhibit will take you on a ride through heaven and hell. October 13th – November 9th. Rare Bookstore & Art Gallery, 50 ½ East 64th Street.
I AM NUMBER FOUR Featurette
James Frey’s IL DIVINO BAMBINO Tonight
James Frey “Il Divino Bambino”
Starts Today, Closes in 27 days
At John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller
Media: Prints, Other
Il Divino Bambino is an exhibition of text based artwork taken from James Frey’s latest mansucript of the same name. Frey’s tale is a contemporary riff on Dante’s Divine Comedy and it offers up a story of his raucous trip through Heaven, Hell and Purgatory with a modern Virgil as a guide. For the exhibition, Frey has transformed his manuscript into a series of artworks: They are equal parts literary manuscript and visual artwork, things to be hung on a wall and read. With Il Divino Bambino, Frey once again gives us a glimpse of his own version of literary and artistic medicine, mixed and mashed-up in the subterranean basement of his wild imagination, a place where truth is stranger than fiction and fiction is a paler version of the truth. If you have ever wanted to see Frey in hell, wander through purgatorial malaise, or bask in the allurements of heaven, you need not go any further than Il Divino Bambino.
Nine Nuggets From The Set of NUMBER FOUR
Nine Things We Learned on the Set of ‘I Am Number Four’
By
High school can be a rough time for any kid: the peer pressure, the bullying, the hormones and even, on rare occasions, the studying. Sometimes, even for the best of us, the pressures of high school can become overwhelming. But when we visited the set the new DreamWorks action blockbuster ‘I Am Number Four,’ we learned that there’s at least one thing worse than being in high school: being in a high school overrun by murderous alien beasts.
And you thought zits were a big problem.
Based on the young adult novel of the same name by authors Jobie Hughes and James Frey (yes, that James Frey), ‘I Am Number Four’ has been touted as the heir apparent to ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight’ since before the book was even published. Yet, as insanely popular as both of those series are, neither of them became true mega-hits until the movie adaptations introduced millions of new fans to the books.
Bart Banksy Simpson Strikes
El grafitero Banksy y una polémica en la apertura de “Los Simpson”
11/10/10 – 10:48
El artista dejó su sello en la apertura del último programa, con una sombría secuencia donde se ve a trabajadores asiáticos produciendo merchandising de la serie animada
El grafitero Banksy, el artista callejero mejor cotizado del mundo, dejó su sello en Los Simpson, y con polémica.
En la última emisión de la serie animada en los Estados Unidos, en lugar del tradicional gag del sofá, cuando la familia Simpson se reúne ante el televisor, lo que ve es una sombría secuencia con decenas de trabajadores asiáticos fabricando merchandising de los personajes en pésimas condiciones laborales.
A lo largo del par de minutos que dura la secuencia se ve cómo los operarios,prácticamente en condición de esclavitud, rellenan las figuras de Los Simpson con pelo de gatos muertos o usan el cuerno de un maltrecho unicornio para perforar los DVD.
Ratas, niños explotados y sustancias tóxicas son otros de los elementos que conforman la banskyana apertura.
James Frey’s ‘Il Divino Bambino’ @ John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz
from John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz
October 13th-November 9th
James Frey: Il Divino Bambino
John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller is pleased to announce a new exhibition by James Frey, Il Divino Bambino. Il Divino Bambino is an exhibition of text based artwork taken from James Frey’s latest mansucript of the same name. Frey’s tale is a contemporary riff on Dante’s Divine Comedy and it offers up a story of his raucous trip through Heaven, Hell and Purgatory with a modern Virgil as a guide. For the exhibition, Frey has transformed his manuscript into a series of artworks: They are equal parts literary manuscript and visual artwork, things to be hung on a wall and read. With Il Divino Bambino, Frey once again gives us a glimpse of his own version of literary and artistic medicine, mixed and mashed-up in the subterranean basement of his wild imagination, a place where truth is stranger than fiction and fiction is a paler version of the truth. If you have ever wanted to see Frey in hell, wander through purgatorial malaise, or bask in the allurements of heaven, you need not go any further than Il Divino Bambino. An opening reception for the author will be held on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010, from 6 to 8 p.m. More details to follow.
WSJ: “A Divine Intervention”
A Divine Intervention
By RALPH GARDNER
It made sense that Sotheby’s asked writer James Frey to walk me through “Divine Comedy,” a sale of artworks open to the public through Oct. 19, with the auction house operating more like an art gallery. The show’s three rooms, inspired by Dante’s epic poem, are divided into Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, with works ranging from African masks to those of Rodin, Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst, loosely reflecting the themes of damnation, suffering and ecstasy.
Though only 41 years old, Mr. Frey, who updated Dante’s masterpiece for the show’s catalog, has already visited all three realms during his eventful career. For those familiar with the name but who can’t quite recall its cultural significance, Mr. Frey is the author of “A Million Little Pieces,” the best-selling memoir that turned out to be part fiction, and that Oprah Winfrey, who’d championed it, invited Mr. Frey on her show to apologize. Back in Dante’s time, the price of bad behavior was getting sucked into hell. These days it’s to bow prostrate before a national TV audience and beg for forgiveness, as Mr. Frey did, submitting to his punishment with no more protest than one of Michelangelo’s doomed Sistine Chapel souls.
But since coming out as a hopeless sinner, the author has traveled the fast lane to redemption; there’s no better proof than that Sotheby’s, which is in the science of minimizing rather than encouraging risk, asked the author to contribute his reinvention of the Divine Comedy, entitled “Il Divino Bambino,” and starring an expletive-named protagonist. Since the “Million Little Pieces” debacle, Mr. Frey has written a couple of other bestsellers, is working on a pilot for HBO about the porn industry and can afford to indulge his passion for art. He told me he owns works by several of the contemporary artists, who he also counts as personal friends, featured in the show. If that’s suffering, I want to sign up.
“Art influences me much more than writing does,” he explained. “I can imagine Warhol sitting there,” he continued, of “Repent and Sin No More,” a 1985 silkscreen of just those words against a black canvas (and one more example of Warhol’s genius escaping me) “and having a conversation with somebody, and talking about sex and drugs, and somebody says, “Repent and sin no more.’ ”
” ‘Should I repent and sin no more?’ ” Mr. Frey went on. “My answer is no. I’m very pro sin.”
While I am too—finding virtue, or what masquerades under its name these days, greatly overrated—I can’t say we bonded until we arrived in front of Richard Prince’s “School Nurse,” who looks nothing like my school nurse. Mr. Frey said he has a Prince nurse in his own collection, and while he resisted describing the subject matter on the record, he said the Sotheby’s piece, of a vixen with blood streaming from her operating mask, is tame by comparison.
“That has to stay in my office at home,” he reported. “We have a 5-year-old daughter who sees it all the time and asks what is it. ‘It’s art. It’s like paintings of beautiful women that are 500 years old.’ ” I doubt she bought the explanation. Neither did my daughters when I told them that the Pop Art painting over our mantelpiece of a love goddess—whose face is obscured by a black cloud, but whose breasts are rendered with great elan—was a color-field painting. Like Mr. Frey, my wife informed me when we moved into our new apartment that it was going to reside in my home office. Twenty years later, it still has pride of place in our living room. A member of the family.
I’m not an art critic (which should be obvious by now) but I’ve always enjoyed exhibitions such as “Divine Comedy,” which juxtapose artists from different centuries, since that rarely happens in a museum setting. Seeing your fourth Corot landscape in a row, or even a roomful of Cézannes, has a way of deadening the eye and putting the brain on autopilot. But to have the opportunity to compare Bouguereau’s “L’Amour Vainqueur,” a virtuosic 1886 painting of Cupid and Psyche in flight, sitting side by side with Jeff Koons’s “Cherubs,” a couple of kitschy putti that ought to kill the market in porcelain collectibles for good, flatters both works.
The show also helped me finally to develop an appreciation for Damien Hirst. His “Summer in Siam,” of butterflies fluttering against pale blue sky, suggests that one may as easily encounter paradise on Earth as in heaven. And Will Cotton’s 2010 “Beatrice” proves that goddesses abound in downtown bars where Mr. Frey, who collects Cotton’s work and counts him a friend, explained the artist sometimes finds his models. This one is perched on pink cotton candy and white meringue clouds, a simultaneous tribute to both dessert and female beauty.
Mr. Frey, who was asked to contribute “Il Divino Bambino” by Lisa Dennison, the former director of the Guggenheim Museum, now at Sotheby’s, said he wasn’t paid. “I never charge people to write about art.”
Instead he had the Microsoft word document of “Il Divino Bambino” transferred to canvas, the resulting artworks for sale at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, a rare-book shop on East 64th Street, starting next week.
If Mr. Frey basted in hell for a while, he seems currently to be basking in the cooling breezes of a more habitable climate. “I asked for the Francken,” he said he joked when Ms. Dennison insisted on some sort of compensation. He was referring to Frans Francken the Younger’s 1635 “Mankind’s Eternal Dilemma— the Choice between Vice and Virtue,” with vice looking far more fun. “They said no.”
