– New XXX Jesus!: "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey, who has been dining out on his memoir-fabricating notoriety in the art world — what is real? what is art? etc. — by writing catalogue essays for Sotheby's and various galleries, is going to be publishing his next book, "The Final Testament of the Holy Bible," through Gagosian Gallery. Frey, a close friend of bibliophile rule-breaker Richard Prince, says the novel is "a radical book" is about a bisexual, alcoholic prostitute-frequenter who discovers that he's Jesus, only to slam religion as an evil tool of oppression. "I'm sure the religious right will go crazy because of the story of Ben," Frey tells the New York Post. Somewhere, Kathy Folden is really wishing they hadn't taken away her crowbar privileges. [NYP]

– Christie's COO Steps Down: Fifteen-year Christie's veteran Lisa King will resign and from the company at the end of the month. The sudden and unexplained news, reported by the Art Newspaper, comes after a year in which the world's leading auction house made a record $5.2 billion in sales. No successor has been announced. Stay tuned. [TAN]

– Did We Mention They're Attractive?: In what just may be the most breathlessly starstruck
art-world profile of our time, David Coleman writes about John Currin
and Rachel Feinstein, the wedded artists who "have become the ruling
power couple in today's art world — perhaps the most potent marital pair
since Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in the 1950s," with Currin
"arguably the most provocative and successful painter of his
generation." Gee, they're like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, F.
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and George Burns and Gracie Allen all rolled
up into one cultural supernova that has "not only mapped out a new
place for the artist in society, [but] also hired a decorator to make it
look fabulous." Wow! But if you read to the bottom, though, you'll find
the two interesting parts of the article: Jerry Saltz's glinting
estimation of the pair as artists, and the fact that Currin and
Feinstein are libertarians, if not full-blown Republicans. (Also, read our take on art-world power-couples here.) [NYT]

View Slideshow:

– Why No Conservative Political Art?: Reviewing the recent surge
of artistic solidarity with the protesters in Madison, and the
Smithsonian's attempts to archive posters related to the protests, the
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal's Mary-Louise Schumacher asks the question, "Where are all the great Republican artists?" Hey, Mary-Louise, see the above item. [Journal-Sentinel]
 
– Frieze Picks New Architects: The Frieze Art Fair has announced that London-based firm Carmody Groarke will be the annual market event's official architects going forward, succeeding Caruso St John, which filled that position from 2008 to last year. The winners of Architectural Review's International Emerging Architecture Award, Carmody Groarke has also done exhibition design for museums including the Barbican Art Gallery, and the firm has worked on artist projects, notably Carsten Holler's "Double Club" at Fondazione Prada. [Press Release] 

– One Monster Week: L.A. Times's invaluable Culture Monster kicked off its first weekly "Monster Quiz," asking readers to weigh in on the arts news of the week. [LAT]

– Hockney's Wise Words: Amid all the chaos of revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, you may have found yourself asking: "What's David Hockney's take on all this?" Bloomberg's Martin Gayford has the answer, talking to the celebrated painter and sometimes iPad evangelist to get at the key of the recent uprising in Egpyt. And what is it? "Pictures." More specifically: "What we are now seeing is that old mass media are crumbling," Hockney tell us. "The power is shifting again, in a way that will have unpredictable consequences. It is spreading to the masses themselves. We don't know where that will go." [Bloomberg]

– MoMA Nabs MetLife Grant: The museum has received its third grant from the foundation to support its Making Art Accessible to People with Dementia outreach program for those people with Alzheimer's. The $200,000 grant brings the MetLife Foundation's offerings to the project to a total of $1,050,000. [Art Review]

– Louis Vuitton Cracks Down on Artist, Again: The Dutch painter Nadia Plesner got in trouble with the fashion designer in 2008 for appropriating the couture bag-maker's pattern for an artwork arguing for the divestment from Sudan over the atrocities in Darfur. Now she's getting sued again. [Eyeteeth]

– The Mystical Allure of Peter Zumthor: Critic Michael Kimmelman begins his long profile of venerated architect Peter Zumthor with a heaven-sent morsel of celebrity gloss, describing as the Swiss Pritzker Prize-winner commands actor Tobey McGuire and
his studio heiress wife to make a pilgrimage of his European buildings
before he agrees to build an L.A. home for them. A poet of material,
form, and atmosphere who enjoys the atavistic art of Richard Serra and Michael Heizer,
he tries to forge mystical, questing alliances with patient clients —
which is just the goo-goo spirituality that L.A. loves, while also being
exactly the thing that might drive the businessmen on LACMA's board, who have hired him to remake the museum's campus, crazy. [NYT]