On Selling The Bible

A sweet Sarah Schmidt NYT article on the Hamberechts, a Williamsburg husband-wife team seeking converts to their cause: a Bible illustrated verse-by-verse by artists. As Gawker proves, in a shock'n awesome display of Powerpoint skillz, hipsters-only will do, if artists are few. Check out the Bible-in-progress at Flaming Fire, or the Hamberechts' other site, God Magazine. Being in Williamsburg and Christian, there's also a band involved somehow.

Visionaire Bible: it looks like God, but it's PURE Mammon, baby, image: ica.org.ukProblem: So you want a (non-hipster) Bible, but when you hear "Madonna and Child," the first thing that pops into your mind isn't, "Raphael," but "Oh, she's got a children's book coming out."
You have two options:
Pocket Canons, cheap, stylin' little hip-pocket books of the KJV (the greatest hits, really) with cool covers and forewords by actual, thinking writers. Praise the Lord.

Visionaire 28: The Bible, which, at (at least) Ł99, means rendering a helluva lot of Caesars for the gospel according to Mario (Testino) and Wolfgang (Tillmans). (Warning from an owner: You may worship Philippe Starck, but, at the final judgment, he's gonna pay for making the plastic Bible case covered with navels--navels which collect 100x more lint than your own. Repent ye, Philippe, repent ye.)

But if it's bible pushers you're interested in, there are only two (well, technically three) people to see:

  • The Maysles brothers, whose amazing 1969 fly-on-the-wall documentary, Salesman got me into this filmmaking business in the first place (I saw in my marketing class as Wharton.), and
  • Flannery O'Connor, whose short stories of amputee-wooing bible salesmen ("Good Country People"), and novels about stuffed-monkey-worshippin' phony preachers ("Wise Blood" -- John Huston did the movie.) once awakened/warped my fragile, little North Carolina mind.

  • Since 2001 here at greg.org, I've been blogging about the creative process—my own and those of people who interest me. That mostly involves filmmaking, art, writing, research, and the making thereof.

    Many thanks to the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Program for supporting greg.org that time.

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